The Reluctant Healer

by Andrew D. Himmel

  But this was madness. My math had to be wrong. Anyway, he had expenses like rent, salary, and photocopying, and that would cut his pretax income down to, what, $150 million? In fact, other than rent and travel, what were his expenses anyway? And how much money did Mindy earn? For that matter, where was Mindy born, and did Vanja deduct social security from her paycheck?

  Erica came outside the hotel, looked around, spotted me, and crossed the street to sit down next to me on the bench. We sat there for a few moments as I looked straight ahead and watched mud-caked taxis speed by to plunge into the intersection of Thirty-Third Street and Seventh Avenue. A homeless person across the street advised anyone who would listen about the currency he would accept in his hour of need. “I’m talkin’ quarters, I’m talkin’ nickels, I’m talkin’ dimes.”

  Erica stood up and grabbed my hand. “Come with me,” she said. I was compliant, as I had assumed that we had already reached the denouement of the day’s proceedings, which explains why I paid so little attention to the fact that we were headed right back into the hotel, up the stairs, pushing through the crowd waiting for the next session, and into the alignment room. We walked across the now-empty hall toward the back and entered through double doors into a spacious vestibule devoid of furniture except for a few folding chairs placed along the side walls. Toward the rear, Vanja was seated on a large cushion, and directly before him were two area rugs of Persian design. Standing behind Vanja was an overweight man in his sixties, who I assumed was Draza. As we drew nearer, I saw that Vanja and his father shared the same oblong head structure and droopy facial features. I came out of my slumber, surveyed the room, and made an inventory of those present. Vanja, Draza, Erica, and me. Where was Mindy?

  Erica guided me to sit down on one of the rugs directly in front of Vanja, and she then sat crossed-legged next to me. “I have a letter which suggests that you may be an individual of some capability,” Vanja said. “I receive these kinds of letters frequently, but I often discard them. I paid attention to this one, however.”

  I looked over to Erica. “What is going on?” I asked.

  “Let me elaborate,” Vanja said, in an accent both foreign and slightly British. He seemed more self-assured than he did on stage. “Your friend wrote a letter advising me of your power and your hesitation. I thought it might be useful to speak to you directly.” He then ruffled my hair. I pushed his hand away roughly and stood up. I looked over at Erica.

  “I’m at a point where this has gone too far,” I said.

  “I’m inclined to agree with your companion,” Vanja said. “You are possessed of an endowment which could be beneficial to those around you.”

  I continued to look at Erica. “Please listen to him, Will, just for a minute, and then, we’ll go.”

  I walked over to Vanja and stood directly over him. “Make this brief,” I said.

  “Simply, then,” he said, “you have a gift, and given the constraints of time, I will not elaborate how I can know such a thing by merely establishing eye contact with you, although we can speak of this at a later time if you wish. Allow me this observation: I have little faith in the holy grail of random events. I believe that all things happen for a reason. Sometimes we cannot divine the purpose, and so, by default, we use the label ‘random.’ But this is a false label, as labels tend to be.”

  “With respect, this sounds like rank nonsense,” I said.

  “I will tell you something about the gift of healing and the doctrine of random events,” he continued. “I have found that those who are granted the gift of channeling universal energy do not fit any recognizable pattern. The gift is meted out not necessarily to those who train for it or who seek it, although this is often the case. People often view the causality in those who seek, but this is only because those who seek and receive will be more likely to vocalize the connection, thus leading to the false notion that training and education beget the ability to spiritually heal.”

  I faced Erica. “Do you understand a single word of this?”

  “Here is what you may find intriguing,” Vanja said. “I have come across those who dismiss what we do as nonsense, yet who are also gifted beyond measure. They have the power and the ability, but they lack the will and the belief. Sometimes this makes a difference, and it is sad. But just as often, it is not sad. There are those who are healers, reluctant healers if you will. And you are that, Mr. Alexander. You are perhaps a reluctant healer but powerful all the same.”

  “I need to go,” I said.

  Vanja stood up, and I found it annoying that he was taller than I was. “Please understand. I do not seek to convince you to join any cause or practice. And I will not waste one syllable trying to persuade you to alter your life, to alter your beliefs, or to try to help others. Consider this simply a notification, to use language that I think you would understand from your profession. You are on notice, although not ominously so, but you are on notice all the same that you have this gift. What you choose to do with it, this is your concern; it is not mine. If, in time, you come to believe and decide to channel your power productively, I am here, and perhaps others will be here as well, to assist you. If you decide, for the remainder of your days, that this is all nonsense, I am untroubled by this as well. You will help others whether you want to or not, whether you realize it or not. I am honored to have met you, and I am unoffended by the reality that the feeling is not mutual.”

  Frustration swept over me, and I found that my irritation stemmed less from the content of his nonsense than the poise of his delivery. I wanted to equalize our postures, either through my own relaxation or through some heightening of his discomfort. But I could think of no strategy, and I turned to leave.

  “Wait,” Vanja said, softly but with an urgency I hadn’t noticed before. He walked swiftly toward me, and as I turned to face him, he clamped his palms over my cheeks. I was briefly infuriated, but then, I glimpsed a mild panic in his eyes, and my curiosity froze further movements. I wanted to watch him descend.

  “Cortella,” he said. Then he pressed my cheeks harder, so that my face looked like the reflection in a fun-house mirror. “You will be visited. How and when I cannot say, but you will be visited, by a person, or entity, or force, or perhaps just a wispy phenomenon, and you will know it by its name. Cortella. And then, you will understand.”

  He dropped his hands and stared at me, and some of his confidence seeped back.

  “Cortella,” I heard Erica say. “Who is this? When . . . ?”

  Vanja backed away and waved his hand dismissively, as if he could not be bothered to shed further light.

  I had had enough. I walked out. There were no footsteps behind me.

  15

  Dangling Hands

  When we met later in her apartment, Erica seemed eager to offer an explanation, but I was too weary to sustain any annoyance or anger. I was fine, I assured her. But I drew a line in the sand that night. I can’t leave you, Erica. If you want to leave me, that’s your call. But I don’t share your beliefs. And I won’t be recruited, or persuaded, or even rendered sympathetic to the cause, if indeed there is any identifiable cause in all of this. Take me or leave me as I am. I am at least as passionate in my skepticism as you are in your devotion. Erica accepted all of this with a tranquility that I found more unsettling than the expected protest.

  I resolved that it was time to simply get on with substantial things. I was on a team of litigants our firm had assigned to represent Jerry Halter, one of those dynamic wunderkinds for whom I had nothing but envy. He had developed an automated options trading system that had caught on with some heavy hitters in the financial community, and now, in his midthirties, he was unimaginably rich. He was also being sued by his largest rival, Lindquist Analytics, for patent infringement. The complexity of the case had metastasized on every level, jurisdictionally and procedurally, and Halter refused to entertain settlement. He was a dream client.

  Halter insisted on meeting the entire legal team periodically for
updates. I think he enjoyed showing up in designer jeans and scuffed shoes while demanding meticulously detailed updates on every aspect of his case. He had applied his considerable intelligence to mastering the intricacies of the litigation, and his questions were incisive and annoying, as most attorneys expected their clients to be inattentive to the day-to-day progression of their cases.

  Halter had asked for a team meeting a few weeks after the Great Harmonic Alignment, and I was glad for the diversion. At the meeting, however, I could barely keep my eyes open as each litigant on the case droned on about minute details of document production. My presence at the meeting was entirely unnecessary, as was so often the case with large firm staffing. Halter seemed far less engaged than usual, allowing comments to pass without interrogation. He seemed as tired as I was.

  As I came perilously close to nodding off, the meeting ended, and everyone began the process of packing up their papers to leave. My head jerked fully awake, and I quickly scanned the room to make sure that my exhaustion was unnoticed. I was safe. I then joined the ritual of folding, stacking, and stuffing papers into my briefcase. When I stood up to leave, I observed that all of the other attorneys had already left and that Halter was sitting alone at the end of the conference table. His head was resting on the table, and it appeared that he had fallen into a deep sleep, his sandy hair tossed across his scalp, barely concealing an emerging bald spot. Then, I noticed that his hands were trembling, and I heard him whisper, faintly but quite clearly, “God help me, I’m falling apart.”

  It dawned on me that he did not realize I was in the room. I walked toward the exit, and the room was large enough and the exit discrete enough that I could have slipped out without him noticing that I was there. I could have been sitting next to him, and I think he would have been oblivious to my presence. As he continued to whisper his despairing words, I wondered what it would be like if his trauma was nothing more than a tangible object, like an uncomfortable weight on his shoulder that could be lifted carefully and placed to the side. Or maybe placed inside a container. Better yet, the object could be scattered or dissolved. It became a fascinating source of inquiry, all the various ways that an unpleasant object could be removed, and maybe removal was not even the main goal. Maybe it was enough to simply place enough time and distance between the object and . . .

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  I opened my eyes, which brought on the realization that at some point I must have closed them. I saw Halter staring at me, and I also saw my hands outstretched, reaching toward him. We both looked at my hands, and we both had the same question. What were they doing there?

  “I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I was stretching, didn’t realize you were there.”

  He busied himself, gathering up his papers, jamming them into his briefcase. He shot me another look and then left abruptly.

  I stumbled back to my office and fought off a wave of panic. I needed this job, not just for financial reasons, although those reasons were of considerable importance. I had no other source of income, no trust fund, no rainy day accounts. I lived comfortably, but I also lived paycheck to paycheck. I figured I had another few years before partnership decisions were made, and while I was not intent on staying with the firm permanently, I’d enjoyed the comfort of knowing that for the foreseeable future, I was secure.

  But I needed this job for psychological purposes as well, especially in light of my involvement with Erica. I needed the dull stability of the law, and I needed the predictable social anchor that the office relationships provided. Erica was not someone I came to after work. Instead, the office had become my sanctuary from the world of mysticism.

  Stefan entered my office and slouched his large frame onto my couch, a habit he had cultivated since our dinner together. I briefly went over what had just taken place with Halter.

  “Well, maybe we can spin this in an undamaging way,” Stefan said. “How about this? You recognized that you needed to stretch your muscles, so you did this by sneaking up on our most important client in an empty conference room, standing a few feet from him, and then extending your arms out toward him. With your eyes closed.” All of this was delivered with a surface cheer, but I sensed an effort to stave off irritation.

  “I didn’t sneak up on him.”

  “Will, is there something that perhaps you wish to share with me?”

  “I’ve been told that I am a natural healer, that I have the ability to channel energy to those in need. Erica believes this. Her mentor believes this.”

  Stefan nodded, allowing in a trace of warmth. “Let us stick with the stretching muscles explanation. Unless we can say you were taking your newfound abilities out for a test drive. On Jerry Halter. I admire the confidence. For me, I might have started lower on the food chain, with perhaps a family member complaining of neck pain. I’d like to ask you a question, Will. Do you mind?”

  “I’m not sure I can withstand a withering cross-examination just now.”

  Stefan snorted, then looked at me more closely, finding no levity. “Do you entertain, even just slightly, the possibility that, well, that Erica and perhaps you have certain . . . powers or abilities?” I glanced sharply at Stefan, searching for signs of sarcasm.

  “No. But I’ll tell you what I do believe.” I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “I believe that I am so attached to Erica that, deep down, I’m trying to accommodate her. And it’s messing up my head. I’m not myself. Or I’m at war with myself. Or I don’t know myself.”

  Stefan stood and stretched. “I doubt it is necessary,” he said. “But we could reassign you off the team. I would hate to lose you, though, because your research has been terrific. Plus, if any of us fall ill, you could transform us back to good health.”

  “I’m not convinced that’s funny.”

  “It is a little funny.”

  I was relieved as Stefan seemed to relax, and I tried to repress a smile. “See?” Stefan said. “You are smiling. ‘The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.’ Thomas Paine, by the way, in case you thought it was from me.”

  “I didn’t think that was from you.”

  “That’s hurtful, Will.”

  16

  The Road to Vermont

  I stopped off at my place to gather a few belongings before heading down to Erica’s apartment, and as I left my building, a large black Mercedes pulled up alongside me. The rear window lowered, and I saw Halter seated, dressed in designer jeans and polished boots. Did he dress up for his car rides and don the scuffed shoes only for attorney meetings? “Will, right? Would you mind getting in?”

  I had this fleeting thought that I was about to be escorted into the car against my will, but Halter was asking, not demanding. I got in. We began to drive, and Halter raised the window separating us from the driver. We sat in silence while the car headed south on Central Park West.

  “When I was sixteen years old,” he finally said, “I was driving up to Vermont to go skiing with friends. There must have been five of us in the car. I was sitting in the back seat and looking out the window. The conversation paused, and we were just cruising along and listening to music. I even remember the song. ‘Shape of My Heart,’ the Backstreet Boys. Remember that one?”

  I turned to face him. He had the kind of face that looked young from a distance but suffered upon closer scrutiny, with stretched faint lines and troubled eyes. “I do,” I responded.

  “I liked that song, and I caught a lot of grief from my friends that I even admitted that group existed,” Halter said.

  I didn’t know whether he expected me to smile or not.

  “I was relaxed,” he continued, “and listening to a song that I liked, with friends that I liked, on our way to go skiing in Vermont, which I loved to do. I was sixteen. I was happy. I had no troubled past. I had no difficult relationships. My family loved me. I loved them. My older sisters were annoying, but that’s a whole ’nother story. The point is, all was
good.”

  Halter then took in a deep breath and released it in a rickety fashion. He regrouped and continued. “Then, as I’m just sitting there, just sitting there, looking out the window, I’m gripped by a horrifying anxiety. I don’t want to describe it in detail, because just . . . saying it out loud, well . . . I’ll just say this, that it was, it is, a fearful and obsessive fixation. It’s been described to me later, by all sorts of experts, as OCD without the compulsion, just the obsessiveness.” He looked at me, braced for skepticism. “I was damaged, psychologically. Right there and then. It was all so weird.”

  His body shook, and for a moment it seemed like he forgot I was there. “One minute, I’m just sitting there. The next minute, I’m still just sitting there. If you had a video camera trained on me for those minutes, you’d see nothing. I don’t think I changed my posture. I don’t think I moved a single bone in my body. But in those minutes, my whole life changed. I was broken.”

  His face streamed with tears. “I’m not going to make this a sob story. The fact is, it’s not a sob story. I was crippled, and that weekend in Vermont was the weekend from hell. My life wasn’t ruined. But I had a companion now. An unwanted companion. And over the years, he would show up, sometimes with debilitating force, other times not so much. But he was always there.”

  He was set to continue, but I felt compelled to interject something, anything to prevent all of this from descending into a runaway monologue. I couldn’t say whether this was to relieve his pain or to lessen my own anxiety. “Mr. Halter, I don’t know what to say.”

  “You can call me Jerry. Let me just get through this. Just a few more minutes of your time.”

  “That’s not a problem.”

  He relaxed considerably. “It’s not like I couldn’t function,” he said. “If anything, I threw myself into my work, my career, anything, to distract me from my companion. It was a working strategy, not really successful all the time, but I never completely fell apart. But there have been times over the years when I’ve been close. Really close to the edge.”