The Touch

by F. Paul Wilson

  “Evidently he lived on the streets for the past few years until for some reason he came out here to Monroe and found me, gave me some sort of electric shock, and died. Is that how the Dat-tay-vao is passed on?”

  Ba said, “I’m sorry, Doctor, but I do not know. It is said that the Buddha himself brought the Dat-tay-vao to our land.”

  “But why me, Ba?” Alan desperately wanted to know the answer to that question.

  “I cannot say, Doctor. But as the Song tells: It seeks the one who would touch, Who would cut away pain and ill.”

  “‘Seeks’?” Alan was uneasy about the idea of being sought out by this power. He remembered the derelict’s words: You! You’re the one! “Why seek me?”

  Ba spoke simply and with conviction. “You are a healer, Doctor. The Dat-tay-vao knows all healers.”

  Alan saw Sylvia shudder. “Do you still have that poem, Ba?” The driver handed her a folded sheet of paper and Sylvia passed it to Alan. “Here.”

  Alan read the poem. It was confusing and sounded more like a riddle than a song. He found one line particularly disturbing.

  “I’m not too keen on this part about the balance. What’s that mean?”

  “I’m sorry, Doctor,” Ba said. “I do not know. But I fear it might mean that there is a price to be paid.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that!” Sylvia said.

  “Neither do I.” Alan felt his uneasiness growing. “But so far I’ve kept my health. And I haven’t got any rotting portrait in the attic. So I think I’ll just keep on doing what I’ve been doing—only a little more discreetly.”

  “A lot more discreetly, I hope,” Sylvia said. “But just what have you been doing?”

  Alan glanced at his watch. He still had a good hour and a half until his first patient showed up. And there was something very important he wanted to discuss with Sylvia.

  “I’ll tell you over breakfast.”

  Sylvia smiled. “Deal.”

  19

  Sylvia

  Alan sat across from her, sipping his fourth cup of coffee, silent at last. They had left Ba to run some errands and Alan had driven her to this Glen Cove diner where he swore they made the best hash browns on the North Shore.

  They sat in a rear booth. While polishing off scrambled eggs, bacon, a double helping of the famous hash browns, and a torrent of coffee, Alan had talked nonstop about what he had accomplished since the Dat-tay-vao had found him.

  Sylvia listened in wonder and awe. If all this were really true…she thought about Jeffy for an instant, and then blocked the thought. If she let herself hope for a single minute….

  Besides, as much as she respected and admired Alan, she simply couldn’t believe all the cures he described had really happened. This was the real world. Her world. Miracles didn’t happen in her world.

  “God, it’s good to be able to talk to someone about this,” he said as he hunched over his cup.

  “Doesn’t your wife…?”

  He shook his head. Pain hid in his eyes. “She doesn’t want to hear about it. She’s frightened about the publicity.”

  “She should be. You both should be.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “And you should be concerned about what Ba told you about who is the master with the Touch.”

  “I can handle that, too. I’m going to cut back on when and how I use it. Don’t worry. I can control it.” He laughed. “I sound like a drunk, don’t I?” He suddenly switched to an authentic Brooklyn accent. “‘Don’t worry, Doc. I may put away a fifth now an’ den, but I ain’t no alcoholic, y’know? I can han’le it.’”

  Sylvia laughed. “That’s good. Where’d you pick that up?”

  “From life. I grew up in Brooklyn. Mine was the token Wasp family between Jewish and Italian neighborhoods. We lived on…” His brow furrowed. “I don’t know. The street name slips my mind. Doesn’t matter. I think the only reason they tolerated us was because we were poorer than they were.”

  They sat in silence a moment, then he said:

  “Ginny and I have had our problems since Tommy died. She changed. Maybe it would have been different if he’d been stillborn or had died in the first couple of days. But he held on.” She saw a wavering smile pull up the corners of Alan’s mouth. “God, what a little fighter he was! He wouldn’t give up. He shouldn’t have lasted as long as he did. And that was the real problem, I guess. A priest told us it was better to have had him for a little while and lose him, than not to have had him at all. I don’t know about that. You can’t ache like this for what you’ve never known.” His hands gathered into fists. “If only Tommy hadn’t become a real person to us, a little guy who could grab your finger and smile, and even giggle if you tickled him in the right spot. But to have him and love him and hope for him for those three months—eighty-eight days, to be exact—and then to lose him, to see the life drain from his face and the light in his eyes go out. That was cruel. Ginny didn’t deserve that. Something inside her died right along with Tommy, and nothing has been the same since. She…”

  Alan let the word dangle as he leaned back in the booth. Sylvia hung on, waiting for him to continue, dying to know what went on in his marriage.

  “I shouldn’t be talking about her,” he finally said. “But the fact remains, I can’t talk to Ginny about this…this thing I have. I can’t talk to any other doctor about it, because I know they’ll all want me to see a certain kind of specialist—stat.”

  “A shrink.”

  “Right. So excuse me for running off at the mouth, but this has been dammed up for too damn long.”

  “Glad to be of service.”

  His gaze burned into her. “Do you believe me?”

  Sylvia hesitated, taken aback by the directness of the question. “I don’t know. I believe in you as a person, but what you’ve told me is so…so…”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. Took me a while before I could accept it myself, even with the cures happening right before my eyes. But now that I have accepted it, and learned how to use it, it’s just…” He spread his hands. “It’s wonderful!”

  Sylvia watched his face, feeling the glow of his enthusiasm.

  “I can’t tell you what it means to be able to actually do something! Most of medicine is just buying time, staving off the inevitable. But now I can make a real difference!”

  “You always have,” Sylvia told him. “You shouldn’t sell yourself short.”

  “Why not? I was like a guy trying to swim the Channel with both arms tied behind his back. God! There was so much I could have done! So many lives…”

  His eyes got a faraway look, as if he had wandered into a private world and couldn’t find his way back right away. Which was fine with Sylvia. It made her angry to hear him put down his pre-Touch self.

  “You always had something special!” she told him as his eyes focused again. “You had compassion and empathy. I still remember the second or third time I saw you with Jeffy and told you how you were the only doctor who made me feel I wasn’t imposing by asking a few questions.”

  “Good. Then let me ask you a question.”

  “Okay.” The intensity of his gaze made her uncomfortable. “What?”

  “Jeffy.”

  Her stomach twisted. She sensed what was coming. “What about him?”

  “I’ve been thinking about him ever since I found I really had this power, this Touch or what ever it’s called. But I didn’t know how to approach you. And you haven’t brought him in since he had that abdominal pain and, I mean, I couldn’t exactly come knocking on your door.” He seemed to be fumbling for words. He took a deep breath. “Look: I want to try the Touch on Jeffy.”

  “No!” Sylvia said automatically. “Absolutely not!”

  Alan blinked. “Why not?”

  She didn’t know why, exactly. She had refused reflexively. The thought of placing Jeffy at the mercy of some power she couldn’t quite believe in frightened her. It was too mystical, too scary. But it went deepe
r than mere fright. A nameless dread, baseless and formless, had risen within her as Alan was speaking. She didn’t understand it, but knew she was helpless before it. Who knew what the Dat-tay-vao might do to Jeffy? Bad enough if she got her hopes up and it didn’t work. But what if it backfired somehow and made him worse? She couldn’t risk anything happening to her Jeffy.

  “I-I-I don’t know.” The words tumbled out. “Not yet. Not now. I mean, you said yourself you don’t know how it works, or exactly when it will work. There’s too many unknowns here. And besides, all the cures you’ve told me about have been for physical ills. Jeffy’s problem isn’t purely physical. It’s developmental.”

  Alan was watching her closely, searching her face. Finally he nodded.

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should wait. It’s up to you. Just remember: I’m at Jeffy’s service anytime you say.”

  “Thank you, Alan.” She felt the dread and near panic recede.

  He glanced at his watch. “Getting late. I’ll get Ba to drive you back.”

  Sylvia felt a nudge of concern. Alan seemed to be forgetting a lot. She’d always been struck by the keenness of his memory in the past.

  She shrugged it off and laughed as she reminded him that Ba was gone and that Alan was supposed to drive her back. With the strain he must be under—between grappling with this miraculous power and now with the press—it was a wonder he could concentrate on anything.

  “And thank you for thinking of Jeffy.”

  “Oh, I think of him a lot. Tommy would be just Jeffy’s age if he’d lived.”

  20

  Alan

  Alan drove toward his office in an almost lighthearted mood. Finally he’d found someone to talk to about the Hour of Power. It was like having a great weight eased from his shoulders; he had someone to share it with now.

  Too bad it wasn’t Ginny. He truly enjoyed talking to Sylvia. Enjoyed it too much, perhaps. He’d revealed more of himself than he wished today. Perhaps the fact that she’d seen him crying had opened the door. He’d always preferred to leave his feelings for Sylvia unexplored, but he could see the day approaching when he would have to confront them. An intimacy was growing between them, almost in direct proportion to the lengthening distance between Ginny and him. He wished it weren’t so, but saw no use denying the obvious.

  He knew when things had started going downhill. He’d almost blurted it out to Sylvia today but had caught himself. It was a private thing, between husband and wife, and he wouldn’t have felt right talking about Ginny behind her back like that.

  Saying that something in Ginny had died with Tommy had been true enough. But only a piece of the story. Guilt and the self-flagellation had strangled a part of her too.

  Ginny had smoked during the pregnancy. Only an occasional cigarette—she had been a pack-and-a-half-a-day smoker for years but had ostensibly stopped when she became pregnant. Ostensibly. When the house was empty she would sneak a smoke. Only one or two a day, and heavily filtered.

  Tommy’s cardiac defect had had nothing to do with her smoking. Nicotine had ill effects on the fetus, but this type of heart problem was completely unrelated to smoking. The pediatricians and cardiologists had assured her of that, her obstetrician had reinforced it, and Alan had repeated it like a mantra.

  None of that mattered to Ginny. She’d decided that she was responsible and no one could convince her otherwise. Over the years she had slowly poisoned herself with guilt and self-loathing. She locked a part of herself away forever and refused to even consider the thought of another pregnancy. She had decided that she wasn’t fit to raise a child and that was that. She’d walled off the memory of Tommy, too. She never mentioned him, never visited the grave site. It was as if he’d never existed.

  Alan sighed as he drove. He almost wished he could do the same. Maybe it would ease the pain of the wound that never seemed to heal; the wound that tore open every May 27.

  The parking lot was jammed. So was the front entrance. Alan didn’t recognize any of the faces. And the way all those strange people stared at him as he drove by on his way to the rear of the building made him glad he’d given up his MD plates years ago. Having his car broken into and ransacked twice had been enough to convince him that the few prerogatives granted the MD plates were not worth the hassle of drug-hungry junkies popping the lock on his trunk.

  His nurse, Denise, red-faced and breathless, met him at the back door.

  “Thank God you’re here! The waiting room’s filled with new patients! I don’t know what to do! They all want to be seen today—now!”

  “Didn’t they see the sign? ‘Patients Seen by Appointment Only’?”

  “I don’t see how they could miss it. But they’ve all seen that newspaper, The Light. Most of them have a copy with them, and they ask if you’re the Dr. Bulmer in the article. And even when I say, ‘I don’t know,’ they say they’ve got to see you, got to see you, and they plead and beg with me to give them an appointment. I don’t know what to tell them. Some of them are dirty and smelly and they’re crowding out our regular patients.”

  Alan cursed The Light and he cursed Joe Metzger, but most of all he cursed himself for letting things get to this point. He should have known, should have foreseen…

  But what to do now? This was an impossible situation, yet he shied from the unpleasant decision it called for.

  He should say no to these people. They had come to him expecting to be healed, and anything less would disappoint them. To agree to see them and then withhold the power would be unconscionable.

  The trouble was, they were looking for miracles. And if he supplied them, they would talk. God, how they would talk! And then the National Enquirer and the Star and all the rest would be knocking on his door. Followed soon by Time and Newsweek.

  To protect himself and his ability to practice any sort of medicine, he would have to lie low for awhile. With nothing new to fuel it, the controversy would die down and eventually be forgotten. Then he could start using the power again.

  Until then he would be just another family practitioner. Good ol’ Doc Bulmer.

  He had no choice. He was backed into a corner and could see no way out.

  “Tell them I’m not taking any new patients,” he told Denise.

  The nurse rolled her eyes skyward. “Thank God!”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well,” she said, suddenly hesitant and uncomfortable, “you know how you are about turning people away.”

  “This is different. This is chaos. I won’t be able to see anybody with that mob outside. They’ve got to go.”

  “Good. I’ll tell Connie and we’ll shoo them out.”

  Alan headed for his office as Denise bustled toward the front. As he flipped through some of the morning mail, he heard Connie’s voice rise to make the announcement. She was answered by a babble of voices, some angry, some dismayed. And then he heard Denise shouting.

  “Sir! Sir! You can’t go back there!”

  A strange voice answered: “The hell I can’t! My wife’s sick and she needs him and I’m gonna get him!”

  Alarmed at the commotion, Alan stepped out into the hall. He saw a thin, balding, weathered-looking man in an equally weathered-looking leisure suit striding down the hall toward him.

  “Just where do you think you’re going?” Alan said in a low voice, feeling anger boil up in him.

  That anger must have shown in his face, for the man came to an abrupt halt.

  “Are you Dr. Bulmer? The one in the paper?”

  Alan jammed a finger into the man’s chest. “I asked you where you’re going?”

  “To…to see the doctor.”

  “No, you’re not! You’re leaving! Now!”

  “Now wait. My wife—”

  “Out! All of you!”

  “Hey!” someone yelled. “You can’t kick us out!”

  “Oh no? Just watch! Connie!” His receptionist’s worried face appeared around the corner behind the crowd. “Call the pol
ice. Tell them we have trespassers in the building interfering with patient care.”

  “But we need care!” said a voice.

  “And what’s that mean? That you own me? That you can come in here and take over my office? No way! I decide who I treat and when. And I don’t choose to treat any of you. Now get out, all of you. Out!”

  Alan turned his back on them and returned to his office. He threw himself into the chair behind the desk and sat there, watching his trembling hands. His adrenaline was flowing. His anger was genuine and had been effective in confronting the crowd.

  His heart finally slowed from its racing tempo; his hands were steady again. He stood and went to the window.

  The strangers were leaving. In singles and pairs—walking, limping, in wheelchairs—they were returning to their cars. Some were scowling and muttering angrily, but for the most part their faces were withdrawn, vainly trying to hide the crushing disappointment of one more lost hope.

  Alan turned away so he would not have to see. They had no right to take over his office, and he had every right to send them packing. It was a matter of self-preservation.

  Then why did he feel so rotten?

  People shouldn’t have to be so hopeless. There was always hope. Wasn’t there?

  Their forlorn expressions hammered at him as he sat there, assaulting him, battering his defenses until he felt them crumble. He flung open his office door and strode up the hall. He couldn’t let them go away like that, not when he had the power to help them.

  I’m going to regret this.

  He hated stupidity. And he’d decided to do something very stupid. He was going to go out into the parking lot and tell those people that if they went home and called up and said they had been here this morning, his receptionist would make appointments for them.

  I can do it, he told himself.

  If he was scrupulously careful to swear each of them to secrecy, maybe he could make it work without screwing himself.