“Marlenita, take as long as you need” was all he said. “I’ll be right here, waiting for you. I’m not going anywhere. No matter what.”
It was like he was telling me to consider not showing up for my audience. That he would be fine helping to facilitate just this. I bet my mother is going crazy, wondering where I am. People will be arriving. What will she do? Will she cancel? Will she wait until the last minute, hoping I’ll show up?
Will I show up?
There’s still time.
The machine shuts off and I am sliding into the lab again. I blink, trying to adjust to the light, and sit up. The skirt of my gown is wrinkled from lying down. Angie is already walking away.
“Give me a few minutes to read the results,” she calls over her shoulder, then disappears down the hall and into the room with the screens that light up the brain scans.
Angie has been all business since I arrived. Like she’s afraid if she says something too intimate, too pushy, I’ll flee and never come back. She didn’t even comment on my attire, or make a joke about how I am overdressed for an MRI. The skirt of the gown rustles as I swing my legs over the side of the platform. Carefully, I climb down. I pad off barefoot to wait in Angie’s office. The light is different in wintertime, with the sun gone and the snow covering the ground to the sea.
I sit down on the couch. Ten minutes pass. Then fifteen.
When I can’t stand it any longer, I get up and knock on the door of the lab. Angie opens it. “What’s taking so long? Can I see my scan?” She moves aside so I can enter. On the big screen in the middle are several brain images, lit up bright. “Are all of these me?”
Angie nods.
I walk up to the one in the center. It is drenched in purple and I am struck, even more than before, by how similar it is to one of my visions. I point at it. “What does this color tell you about me?”
“That you’re terribly sad, Marlena.”
I drop my arm. “Well, that’s true.” I try not to be disappointed that the color’s significance is so ordinary. That it doesn’t somehow confirm my brain is unusual, the brain only a healer could claim. I gesture at another scan with a big round image in black and white. If I could paint it, it would be an oak tree, its trunk nearly obscured by its leafy branches. I wish I could read the scan like a scientist would. Or a doctor. “And that one?”
The knot in Angie’s hair is sliding to the side, coming undone. “Why don’t we go back to my office and talk about it there?”
She is stalling. “What aren’t you telling me, Angie?” I ask as I follow her.
Angie takes her usual position, cross-legged on the rug. When I am once again sitting on the couch, she starts talking.
“Marlena,” she begins. “Your brain, it’s . . . ,” she goes on, then stops. Her mouth opens again. Nothing comes out.
I hold my breath. I want to know if Angie has found something in my brain, some mark she can point to that distinguishes my brain from others. For the first time in my life I want scientific proof that I am different. Or scientific proof that I am not. “What?”
Angie shakes her head, slowly. “Your brain is totally normal,” she says. “I didn’t see one thing that was unusual. Your brain is perfect. Healthy.”
I stand up again, then I sit.
I’m not sure how to process this. Angie has informed me of the very thing I’d longed to hear—until I found out about Finn. That I am normal. “Really.”
Angie crosses and recrosses her legs. “You’re upset.”
I shake my head. “No. I don’t know.” I wonder if the machine would have showed something different about my brain if I’d done this in August. Would we have before and after pictures for comparison? Before Marlena Quit Healing and After Marlena Quit Healing? Could we literally see the difference, scientifically document it? Or is it that my brain has always been this way, and healing is more like what Alma suggested, a union of two people, of two matching desires? Or even what my mother suggested, a simple passing of hope from my body into the body of the person who needs it?
I guess I’ll never know.
“You’re surprised,” I tell Angie.
“I am,” Angie says.
“Why? What did you imagine you’d see?”
“Honestly?” Angie pulls apart the knot in her hair, then starts fixing it up all over again. Soon the knot is neat on the top of her head once more. She gets up and comes to the couch to sit next to me. “Marlena, I thought I’d find a tumor.”
I nod. “Are you disappointed you didn’t?”
“No! How can you even think that? I would never wish a brain tumor on you! Or anyone.” She is studying me. “But are you disappointed I didn’t find one?”
“I don’t know. It would have explained a lot, right? The visions, the colors. The fainting spells. That’s why you suspected one.”
“Yes,” she admits.
“It’s not like I haven’t wondered,” I admit back. “My mother never allowed anyone to check. I’ve never been to a doctor.”
Angie gets up and cracks a window. The icy air feels good amid the heat of the building. “I know. I remember you telling me that one of the first times we met in this office. I’ve been worried ever since. It’s a relief, Marlena, to find out that you have a perfectly healthy brain. Tell me how you feel about hearing this.”
I pull my knees to my chest and wrap my arms tight around my shins. “Well, brain tumors, epilepsy, migraines, are what some people believe explains the visions of mystics. Any sort of brain abnormality that might cause hallucinations. Today we don’t think of what happens to me, what used to happen to me, as real. We only think of visions as delusions. Or girls who perform miracles as crazy people.”
Angie is still studying me. What is she hoping to see? To figure out?
“Did you think I’m delusional, Angie? Or do you think it even more now that you’ve seen my brain?”
She doesn’t answer this question. Instead, she says, “You wanted a reason to believe in yourself, didn’t you—a concrete, scientific explanation for your visions?”
I shake my head, then I shrug. “I don’t know what’s true anymore. People act like I can still heal, you know . . . after . . . these last months . . . but I don’t feel my gift. It’s gone. Poof.” I snap my fingers. “Like it was never there. I’ve been going to see people in the hospital. I’ve been watching these doctors and nurses and trying to understand what they do, and seeing how different it is from my healings, but how similar too. Tell me the truth, Angie. After all your research, what did you conclude? Am I a healer or not? Or was it always just one big wish?” I stare out through the window at the falling snow and the ocean behind it.
I feel Angie’s arm slide around me.
“I know this is about Finn,” she says. “It’s not your fault that he’s sick and it’s not your responsibility to heal him. It never was, and he never thought that it was. He doesn’t think that now either. Neither do I. No one does.”