She hesitates. “Marlena, I came because . . . I didn’t know how else to talk to you. I haven’t been able to get in touch with you. Why won’t you see me or answer my calls?”
I force myself to hold her gaze. “I’m sorry, but I just . . . can’t. I made a promise not to.” I don’t mention that the promise is to God.
“Okay,” she says. It doesn’t sound like she believes me. “But . . . how can you refuse to see Finn? If I’d known, I never would have involved myself. Marlena, he’s—”
I put up my hand. “Angie, don’t. Please.” I glance at the man behind her in the line, waiting less and less patiently. “It’s more than I can explain right now.”
“Come by the center and explain it to me there,” Angie says, a little defiant.
I shake my head. “No.”
“This is not you, Marlena.” She sounds angry. No, worse. She sounds disappointed. “The you I’ve gotten to know would not act like this. She would not refuse her friends and the people she loves. And who love her,” she adds quietly.
I grip the skirt of the gown and hold on tight. “But it is me. This is how things have always been. You just knew me in a strange time.” My voice catches. “And that time is over.”
Angie stands there, words brimming on her lips. I wait for more admonishment. But just before she walks away, she says, “I am here for you, no matter what. If there is anything you need, or even anything you still want to know about yourself. I haven’t given up on you, Marlena.” She hesitates. “And neither has Finn.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
The days turn into weeks that turn into months.
Every morning I get up out of bed, empty and tired. I look around my room, searching, as though God may have left me a note during the night. But nothing is ever different. No lightning strikes in the remaining hours of the morning. It’s always just me, alone, in my uncertainty. In my regret.
The air gets cold with the onset of winter. On the first day of December snowflakes hover in the air.
Every Saturday I perform for my audience. Every Saturday I go through the motions. The offerings come into the house and are stored in the gift room. At the end of the month they are donated to Goodwill. Gertie was true to her word about changing her wares, though the shift downtown is gradual. Tourists come looking for souvenirs and snatch up whatever remains at the stores that still sell them.
People act as though my touch still heals. Has it come back, even if I don’t feel it? Why would people behave this way if nothing really happened? Or is my mother right, that it doesn’t matter whether I feel proof of healing like I used to? Maybe God needs me to take a leap of faith, to trust that though my gift remains invisible to me, it is still there.
But that sort of test just seems cruel.
Until I can feel my gift, until I know it’s there, I can’t go to Finn. I can’t do that to him. It wouldn’t be fair.
“Thank you for coming to get me, José,” I say, when I walk out of the house and see him standing there by the car.
“Ten a.m. sharp, just like always, Marlenita.”
I slip into the back seat. Alone. My mother has stopped accompanying me everywhere. I try not to notice José glancing at me in the rearview mirror as he drives me where we are going and parks in front.
He hands me an umbrella when I get out of the car. “I’ll be here, waiting.”
I can feel his eyes on my back, watching as I head inside the visitors’ entrance of the hospital. The antiseptic smell of the air is familiar to me now, the fluorescent lighting, the shiny tiled floors and long hallways.
The Healer has started doing house calls.
It started because of a letter I received from a mother whose six-year-old son, Jacob, was in the hospital with leukemia. The hospital was close, only a twenty-minute drive. One day I just got in the car and went. Found his room and his mother, sitting there next to him. She was so happy I came, I talked to her, to Jacob, held their hands. I don’t know if my touch healed or not, but I know it mattered to them that I showed up. So I kept going.
Keep going.
First was Jacob, then there were Aurora, Sarena, Dante, Ethan, Diego, Gabby, and Laurel. The list goes on. In the beginning it was penance, it was practice for Finn, it was the hope of the feeling of healing returning. But now, I’m not so sure what compels me. I see the people who’ve written me, and I see their doctors. I watch the medics and nurses come and go, study the things they do, the pills offered, the machines and bags of fluid adjusted. The kind words, the brusque manners, the hope they bring, the way they are needed by the sick and the suffering.
Are we somehow the same? Is there any connection between what the nurses and doctors do and what I do? These questions grow louder with each visit. Hildegard was a visionary and a doctor, a medicine woman in her day. Could I be another kind of healer, too?
“Can you tell me how to find room 302?” I ask the nurse at the reception desk.
She stands and points. “Down the hall to the left, take the bank of elevators to the third floor, turn right, and go all the way to the end.”
“Thank you,” I tell her, and try to remember the directions.
When I get to the room, I’m nervous.
Today’s visit is special.
I knock.
“Come in,” calls a voice.
I go inside.
A short woman who is all soft edges gets up to greet me. “Marlena! I’m Valeria.” Valeria’s face is round and friendly. Her voice is reverent. “I can’t believe you’re here. After all this waiting. Thank you.”
“I’m glad I could come, but you need to know, I can’t make any promises.”
“But I have faith that you will save my daughter!”
“Mama! Stop!”
My eyes go to the bed. I see a girl with dark wavy hair and big brown eyes. A thick metal-and-plastic brace is like a box around her torso. Her arms are thin, and from the outline of her legs underneath the blanket, they are thinner. “Hi, Alma,” I say. “It’s good to finally meet you.”
“I can’t believe you’re here, either.” Alma glances at her mother. “Though not for the same reasons as Mama’s.”
“Alma, ¡no seas así!”
Alma gives her mother a pleading look. “¿Nos dejas un minuto a solas? ¿Mama?”
Valeria inhales. I can tell she’s about to protest her daughter’s request to give us time alone. “I work better that way,” I say, before Valeria can speak.
“I’ll be in the hall then,” she says, grabbing her sweater and hurrying out.
When the door shuts I sit down in the chair next to Alma’s bed. “I’ve appreciated your letters.”
Alma’s eyes drop to my hands, which rest on the railing of the bed. “So you decided you wanted to come fix me?”
“I meant what I said to your mother, that I’m not sure if I can.”
“Don’t you want to try?”
The brace Alma wears looks so uncomfortable. It’s difficult not to wish for her to be free of it. “Do you want me to?”
Alma blinks her long lashes, breathing labored. She reaches out and places her hands on top of mine. “It’s what my mother needs.”
“Okay.” I close my eyes, draw Alma’s hand to my cheek. Wait, as I always do, for that feeling in me to stir. Sometimes I think it might be there, just waking up after a long sleep, yawning its way back into my veins. Plenty of gifts of gratitude have arrived at the house, alongside claims of miracles.