And then, I would call upon my gift.
I called and I waited. Called and waited.
Again and again, I tried to heal Finn, even though he made me promise I wouldn’t. I couldn’t help myself. How could I not at least try? What Finn didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, I decided. But my knowing that I gave up would hurt me.
Eventually, I would retract my hand.
I still don’t know why I couldn’t heal Finn. Maybe I never will. Maybe that is just life. Normal life.
It’s what I always wanted, isn’t it?
Then one night, late in March, I had a vision. That charm of mine, the charm that is my gift, was suddenly, magically, back in my pocket. One palm closed around it, tight, while the other pressed into Finn, seeking the heart within his chest.
First came the pain that filled up my body, and the exhaustion that forced my eyes closed. But soon I was awash in colors, so many colors.
At first they were only shades of gray, but I fought beyond this darkness to the brighter shades, the reds and the pinks and the vibrant roses. I settled into this vision like the comfiest of chairs, like going home after the longest of absences. That’s when the scenes came to me, came for me, and I was content to see all that was there, to watch as hope bloomed under my fingertips. One after the other I saw them, scenes of Finn and me on the beach, of Finn and me with friends, of Finn cooking dinner while I watched over his shoulder, of Finn and me walking through the snow, through the rain, through the neighborhood where my grandparents and mother once lived and where I live now, of Finn and me talking late into the night as we lay in bed. It was a moment of true ecstasy, of union between our souls. I don’t know how many scenes I experienced before I realized what every single one of them had in common.
I retracted my hand.
They were all scenes from the past.
I swallowed around the thick lump in my throat. Watched the labored breathing of the boy I loved, the rise and fall of his chest.
I should feel consoled, I suppose.
Even after everything, I am still a visionary.
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if the girl I used to be knelt down to take the hand of the girl I am today. The one who walks the beach on this evening, looking out at the sea.
What would that girl see and feel if she pressed her forehead to my skin, against the back of my hand? Would the vision start in the heart like so many others? Or might it begin in the chambers of the soul, darkened by grief? Would there be colors, and if so, which ones? Would the scenes she saw be an endless stretch of emptiness, or would they be laced with a love that carries a person forward, like an endless swell across the ocean?
There are some people who will never forgive me for letting the healer that I was go. They send bags of letters saying I shouldn’t have given her up, that I owed the world more miracles and that I turned away from the responsibility that comes with being a living saint. There are people who believe I was rightly punished by God by having to face the loss of someone I love. By not being able to save him. That being unable to save Finn is a fitting payment for the lives I have taken.
But there is one thing I know, and that is that I do not regret Finn.
I could never.
“I thought I was protecting you,” my mother said the other day, nearly at this very same spot on the beach where I stand now.
She and I are speaking again. Or trying to.
“I knew that I wouldn’t be around forever, but the church, your gift, the house, the money, your legacy as a healer, they would still be there for you after I was gone.”
I nodded. I’ve been doing my best to understand my mother’s logic, because she’s been doing her best to explain it to me.
“But you’re still here,” I said.
“And your Finn isn’t,” she said back. “I’m sorry for that.”
“I know, Mama.”
“Remember what you promised, Marlena,” Finn said to me during one of the last days we shared together. He took my hand into his across the table.
His was shaking.
Not long before, I’d told Finn a secret.
“I’ve been thinking that maybe I’ll become a doctor,” I said.
We were tangled together on the porch swing, under a blanket. It creaked as it moved.
“A doctor like Angie? A doctor like . . .” Finn trailed off.
Like me. That’s what he was going to say but didn’t.
“Not like Angie,” I told him. “Like, in a hospital.”
Finn tightened his arms around me. “So the healing kind.”
“Yes,” I said. “You know, Hildegard was a medicine woman. She studied herbs and plants. She cared about healing the bodies of her fellow nuns.”
“I did not know that.”
I laughed. “I’ve always admired her. I used to kind of wish I was more like her than like Julian.” I thought about my self-portrait on the wall of the living room in my mother’s house, wondering what new one I might paint if I was to try again. “And then, I keep dreaming about those brain scans, the way they remind me of my visions. Maybe they were . . . are . . . a sign of sorts.”
“Look at me,” Finn said.
I shook my head.
“Marlena, come on.”
Slowly, I shifted so I could meet Finn’s eyes.
“You shouldn’t be embarrassed,” he said. “I think it’s perfect.”
The next day when Finn came home, he had a present for me. “You have to promise me you’ll use this someday.”
I looked at the gift he’d placed on the table. It was wrapped in bright pink paper, the same pink of the peonies in the painting on the wall of the living room. “What is it?”
“Just open it.”
I removed the paper carefully, and opened the box inside. Took out what was waiting for me.
“Do you like it?” he wanted to know.
I nodded. Held it up in my hands. Finn helped to put it around my neck. I picked up the round metal circle that dangled like a heavy charm down the front of my chest and pressed it against Finn’s. And I listened.
I looked into his eyes, heard the thump of his heart quicken.
“It’s perfect,” I told him.
Finn gave me a stethoscope.
I am twenty. It’s October. The trees are a fiery red and orange and yellow. It’s drizzling outside, the leaves wet and sticking to my shoes. I don’t care.
Big thick textbooks are hugged to my chest.
I am a college student.
The campus is buzzing with people hurrying to the cafeteria. To class. To the library. To their residence halls.
“Hi, Professor Carse,” I say when I enter the biology lab.
“Marlena,” she says, nodding.
Professor Carse doesn’t smile much. She’s all business, so unlike Angie. But she’s also all brilliance, so very like Angie.
I take my seat on the stool by the tall black table I share with Kelsey, another first-year student. She is my lab partner. My books land with a loud thump. “They should give us carts to carry these things around.”
Kelsey laughs. “Speak for yourself. The late nights and lack of partying are enough to distinguish us premed people, I think.”
“Probably,” I say, laughing along with her.
Kelsey and I are becoming friends.
My first friend at college.
My mother was wrong about so many things, but she was right about this:
I was born to heal.
Knitting together the bones of the body, the muscles, the flesh, ridding a person of what ails them, soothing the pain in people’s hearts and minds, is what I am called to do, what I have always been called to do.