Healer Chapter 7

Chapter 7

I spent all of Wednesday trying to keep busy. I didn’t have a client scheduled until the next day (my appointment book revealed that I was booked almost solid for the next two weeks), so I decided to go to the hospital and see if I could be of some help. I’m not really a glutton for punishment, but I couldn’t sit around the house waiting for my heart to break further.

I took the dress and shoes I’d borrowed from Natalie so that I could give them back to her if I saw her. The hospital was quiet when I got there. I greeted Sandra and Leo who man the front desk.

“Is there an emergency?” Sandra asked me.

“No, no. I just didn’t have anything to do today so I thought I’d stop by.”

“Honey, you need a life, and you know I say that lovingly.” Sandra is about thirty-five, married, with two kids in middle school. Leo is easily sixty and a grandfather to five.

“I know, but it’s been a stressful couple of days—I’ll get a life tomorrow.” I smiled at them and went up to Natalie’s office. The hospital is small, so the doctors share a pair of conference rooms that they use as collective offices. But they each have their own desks and filing cabinets. Natalie had lucked out and got a desk by the window. I was putting the bag with the dress in it into her chair when she walked in.

“Hey! What brings you here?” she gave me a hug. “Is that the dress? Girl, that was a present. Keep it. I know Nathan will enjoy seeing you wear it again…and again.” She smiled at me, holding my shoulders at arm’s length. “What’s wrong? You don’t look like a girl who’s enjoying a post-coital high.”

“Yeah, things are weird with Nathan right now. It’s nothing to worry about, but…yeah. Look, I just want to help a few people, maybe pass out for a few hours, and if you don’t want the dress back, that’s fine, because I gardened in it and I don’t think I got all the dirt stains out.”

“You gardened in that dress?” Natalie might be an insanely busy doctor, but she always takes the time to be impeccably dressed, unlike me.

“Yeah, it was a bad day and I forgot what I was wearing. Sorry.” I was feeling miserable again.

“I think you need to talk to a doctor, instead of playing doctor. What’s going on?” She led me into the doctors break room and made me a cup of hot chocolate and herself a cup of coffee.

I slumped in my chair, wanting to hug my chocolate. “I can’t talk about it specifically, but we can’t be intimate with each other.” I took a big gulp of the drink and burned my tongue.

“Is it because of your…gift?” Natalie was probably the closest thing to a friend I could claim. I guess at some point I could have let her into my life, but I didn’t want to risk destroying hers. I’d figured out a long time ago that it was safer for everyone if I kept myself to myself, kept everyone at a distance. Nathan was the first person who’d, well, steamrolled his way in.

“Yes, no, maybe…so.” I laughed; it was a short and harsh noise. “It’s complicated and annoying as hell.”

“And is Nathan aware of the problem?”

“He’s as aware as he can be…well, he was. Now he’s very aware. And he’s going to get tired of the awareness and he’s going to find someone else.”

“Honey, you excel at being vague.”

I looked around to make sure that no one could overhear us. “He can’t get hard when he’s around me. Or well, he can, but then his brain leaves his body,” I said in a low voice, inclining my head.

“Uh, I’m pretty sure that you’re a virgin, but that sounds like typical male behavior. The blood leaves their upper brain and goes to their lower brain. After that, they’re only thinking about one thing. Are you really that inexperienced?”

I blushed. “I know how men normally react. But Nathan is different. He goes completely vacant. He can’t even move.”

“Like a stroke?”

“Almost, but the after effects aren’t so serious. Once the stimulus subsides, he’s completely back to normal and he didn’t even realize what was going on until I told him.” I couldn’t believe that I was having this discussion with Natalie.

“Weird. And I guess it’s entirely outside of my expertise.”

“Yup. Outside mine too.” I took a smaller sip of my chocolate. I felt better, for some reason. I still wanted to get trashed and pass out, but at least I didn’t feel like I was completely alone. There was now someone I could hope would be there to pick up the pieces when Nathan went to someone else.

“And it only happens around you?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow, no wonder you look awful. Do you really think he’s the type that would dump you just because he can’t have sex?”

“A: we’re not dating, so how could it be considered dumping. And B: it’s not just sex. It’s getting turned on. When I walked out of the bathroom wearing that dress, he lost it. We can’t even get to first base without him flaking out.”

“Have you tried?”

“No, but come on. How hard is it for a guy to get hard?” It was a rhetorical question, but even if she planned to answer, she was interrupted by a pair of male doctors coming into the room seeking coffee. Thank God they didn’t enter the room until after I’d asked my question.

“Oh, hello Scarlet. Are you just visiting?” Dr. Howard Murphy, average height, average face, above average tan—I think he spray tans biweekly, but otherwise is a nice guy—looked at me appraisingly. I’m not often checked out, and given the current status of my…relationship? I actually didn’t like it, but I ignored his looks.

“Ehh…visiting, working, whatever. Just tired of sitting around the house.” I smiled at him.

“I don’t think you should be hanging around the hospital.” I looked over at the second doctor that had just walked in and stifled a groan. It was Nick Smith, the hospital’s resident Brownie. The sneer he was giving me was awful. “We don’t take kindly to ambulance chasers here.”

“You know she isn’t an ambulance chaser,” Natalie started.

“Ms. Stephans, you should know better than to defend her heathenism.” The glare in his eyes made my stomach squirm. I was not built for this and I was about to back down and go home when I saw Natalie’s demeanor change. I watched as she visibly turned her back on me. She had stood up when Nick first spoke, standing in front of me. As his glare bore into her, she shifted her weight, stepping away from me. I stood up and looked at her face. She didn’t look at me, but her eyes looked slightly glazed over and her face was blank. I reached out with my senses and felt the magic flooding the room. I wondered if Nick even realized that he had the talent, or whether he believed that it was his personality that made him so commanding. It really ticked me off, especially when I looked at Howard and saw his smile turn into scorn. I guess that whatever the magic was telling him, I was now just a hot body encasing the devil.

“Why must you antagonize me?!?” I can’t believe that I shouted at Nick, stepping up to stand in front of him. I don’t shout at people, but here I was. “I HELP people! I literally give everything I can of myself to help and all I get is a crappy life! I have NO friends, no family,” my voice broke as tears began to stream down my face, “and the one guy who’s ever shown an interest in me can’t be with me because of his stupid family! I HATE IT!” I turned around and ran out of the room, blindly heading for the restroom that I knew was located down the hall. I locked myself in the first stall and cried like I’d refused to let myself cry for years.

No one came looking for me. Once the tears subsided, I realized what I’d just done. I never raise my voice, I never confront people. Now that my anger was gone, I was just embarrassed. I’d acted like a child, blowing up like that. If I was supposed to be making friends with the Browns, I’d definitely gone about it the wrong way. I did allow myself to bang my head on the door then.

“Ms. Hawthorne?” a timid voice asked, actually knocking on the door to the restroom.

What? I wanted to growl, but I decided that would not be a good idea. “Yes?”

“There’s a situation downstairs, and Dr. Stephans wanted me to ask you to join her.”

“Okay.” I opened the door of the stall and washed my face in the sink. I squared my shoulders, burying my feelings once more where they belonged. My eyes weren’t very read and my nose had stopped running—I guess I wasn’t going to scare too many people.

 The girl that had been sent to fetch me looked barely eighteen and I guess she was a volunteer. I followed her to a room downstairs where a woman was in labor. Natalie was waiting just inside the door, talking with the obstetrician. She looked ashamed when she caught my eye, but I’d already forgiven her and gave her a small smile.

“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me. You know that I don’t agree with what they say…”

“It’s fine. Trust me; I know that you have no control over what they want you to feel. I know probably better than anyone.” I turned to look at the woman in bed. “So, what do you need me for?”

“Well, Mrs. Swane is going to have a baby in a few hours and wants a completely natural birth with no pain medication. The problem is that we’ve found that the baby is breech. We were wondering if you would help take some of the pain while we attempt to manually turn the baby.”

“Uh…sure. This is the first time I’ve attempted something like this,” I told Mrs. Swane walking over to her bed. “But it shouldn’t be too radical. Are you familiar with what I do?”

“Yes,” she grimaced through a contraction. I waited while she regained her breath. “Yes, I’ve heard what you do. I don’t agree with it, but I’ve never been one to judge a person. But I’ve heard just terrible things about medications and babies. I think that if you can help it would be better than the harm that medicines cause.”

I pulled a form from my purse, but it looked like Mrs. Swane wasn’t exactly in the right frame of mind to read the tedious form. “This is my standard contract. I don’t think you want to go through the technical jargon right now, but I’m going to go ahead and write in what I’m going to do. If you want, you can sign it now or later or never, and I’ll leave you a copy. I’m not going to charge you anything, this is purely pro bono.” I wrote in that I was doing pregnancy pain removal for the duration of the procedure to turn the breech fetus, no charge, then I dated and signed it myself. “Do you want to look at it, or should we just get the procedure started?”

Mrs. Swane barely glanced at it before another contraction occurred. “Procedure. Now.”

The OB came to the bed and instructed Mrs. Swane to lie back. I guessed that they’d already told her that this procedure was not guaranteed to work. If it didn’t, she would be forced to undergo a C-section and anesthesia would be used.

I stood next to her and took her hand, drawing out the pain of contractions and that of the OB inserting his hands into her to turn the baby. To say it was uncomfortable would be an understatement, but Mrs. Swane was fine. Being a virgin, I’d never experienced pain like that experienced during childbirth. I wasn’t sure whether I was strong enough to ever choose to go natural, even with my high pain tolerance. It took about half an hour before the doctor declared that the fetus was in the proper position. I let go of Mrs. Swane’s hand and as I collapsed into a chair next to the bed I noticed that she flexed her hand a lot after I let it go. I think I’d been gripping it tightly as I fought to keep the pain off my face.

“How are her contractions?” I finally managed to ask.

The OB checked the monitor. “The contractions are right on schedule, but…Mrs. Swane, are you feeling the pain from them?”

“No…” she said slowly. Then she looked worried. “Am I okay? And the baby?”

“You’re fine.” Dr. Kent said. I’d finally seen the name on his lab coat. “You’re both fine.” He turned to me. “I suppose that while you were taking the pain away from the procedure you also somehow took her contraction pains away?”

“It looks that way.” I rubbed my abdomen. I’d never think of my period cramps as awful again—this was a hundred times worse. “I don’t suppose you want them back?” I asked Mrs. Swane, laughing a bit. I immediately regretted my words. I’d just broken my rule number one: the client must never know that I feel their aches and pains.

Luckily Mrs. Swane didn’t seem to notice my slip. She rubbed her stomach marveling as the machines told her she was experiencing a contraction, but she felt none of the pain. Dr. Kent looked at me, anxiously. Most of the doctors at this hospital know that I feel the pain. Dr. Nick Smith doesn’t because I don’t want the Brownies to know.

Natalie came over and took my arm, leading me out of the room and into an empty exam room. She gave me some pain medication and settled me on the table. “I’ll get you in a little bit. We shouldn’t need this room for awhile.”

I curled up into the fetal position waiting for the medicine to kick in. I finally fell asleep after laying there for a good half hour.

“Scarlet. Wake up.”

“Blargh?” I’m not exactly coherent when I wake up. I sat up and tried to figure out where I was. Oh, right. Baby.

“Come on. You should eat something.” Natalie was standing next to me as I slid off the table. We walked to the cafeteria. I checked my watch, it was only 1 o’clock. I got a hamburger and small salad while Natalie got a turkey sandwich. We found a table in the corner so that we could talk in peace.

“So, I know you’re still feeling terrible, but do you mind if we talk about what happened this morning…with Nick?” Natalie looked concerned.

“I’m fine, really. And what I could tell you about Nick would probably destroy your life.”

“Scarlet. I was suddenly viewing you as an enemy. Not just an enemy, but as a leech. That’s not me—not at all. If I wasn’t a woman of science, I would think that there was magic involved.”

I couldn’t stop myself. I narrowed my eyes at her, “and with that logic out in the open, exactly what do you think it is that I do?”

“Okay, okay. You’re right. I’ve been trying to convince myself that there is some scientific explanation for what it is that you do. But really? You want me to go as far as to call it magic?”

“Yup.” I took a bite of my burger.

“But if you do magic, then does that mean that magic made me go all hostile?”

“Yup.”

“But you wouldn’t make me hostile towards yourself. Who else has magic in this town?” she stared at her sandwich for a while. “No. No, it can’t be.” She leaned towards me. “The Browns?” she whispered.

I nodded.

“Damn,” though she actually sounded awed. “They’re using magic to turn people against you because you use magic? How is that even possible?”

“Not sure. I don’t know where magic comes from—I think that’s one of those philosophical questions, like whether there is a God. I’m more pragmatic—I know that they must have magic because that’s the only way they could do what they do, I’m not so much worried about the how.”

“So how do you combat it?”

“I have an ally who has given me some ideas—none are practical, but they’re ideas.”

“Well, let me know if you need any help. I don’t like the idea of mind control no matter how it’s done. I have free will, God damn it!”

We finished our lunch chatting about happier topics: a new TV show that we’d both fallen in love with.

We walked back to the hall with the patients rooms.

“Are you still going to stick around here?”

“Yeah. I don’t want to go home.”

“Still stressed about Nathan?”

“Yup.”

“Well, you can do some rounds visiting patients. I’m sure they’ll love your company.” Let me know if you need some pain medication. She left me at the nurse’s station.

I knocked gently on the door of the first patient’s room. Inside I found an elderly woman who looked bored.

“Hi. My name is Scarlet. I’m a volunteer and I’m just going around visiting patients. Do you care for some company?”

“Oh, hello dear. Yes, I’d like some company—nobody in my family has come to see me at all.”

“That’s awful. I don’t have a family, but if I did and any of them were sick, I’d visit them a lot.”

“Aren’t you a sweet-heart.” She patted my hand.

“So, what are you in for?” making it sound like she was in jail—over the years I’ve learned that most people actually enjoy sharing about their illnesses, even if they hate the building.

“I broke my hip!” She sounded indignant. “My son’s stupid dog got under my feet and tipped me over! I’ve been telling him for years that that dog was good for nothing. It’s one of those lap dogs that you carry around in a purse. My son! Carries a stupid dog around in a purse!”

“Well…that’s definitely different,” I said, trying not to laugh. “Maybe that’s why he hasn’t visited? He’s embarrassed?” I shifted my hand so that I had a finger on hers and started to remove some of the discomfort from her hip.

“Hell no. He hasn’t come because he can’t bring that stupid dog into the hospital. And his wife isn’t any better.”

We sat and chatted about the weather, the news, and books for almost forty-five minutes. We would have talked more, but her doctor came in and shooed me out. Next door to her was a little girl with pneumonia who wasn’t very excited to talk, but her mom was happy to have company. I took the girl’s cough and fever. I thanked my high tolerance and quick metabolism because I was already recovered by the time I left and she was feeling healthy enough to enjoy a tea party with her mother.

The next room held a man who was in the last stages of life.  His family was surrounding him, but he’d been given the final dose of morphine and was no longer coherent. I only murmured my condolences to his children before taking leave of the room.

There was a birthday party being held in the next room. The teenage boy in the bed was quite flirtatious when he offered me a piece of cake, holding my hand and telling me how beautiful I was. The cap on his head wasn’t able to hide the baldness associated with chemo treatment, so when I was finally able to extract my hand from Robert’s, taking with me stress and the beginning of a headache, I promised that I’d be back to visit after his procedure the next day. I paused outside his room to write down his name, room number and the time of his treatment into my appointment book. It would be a long day, with two chemo therapy patients, but I’d make it work. Robert wasn’t going to expect me, and probably wouldn’t want me, to show up as soon as it was over.

I went to the little nook the hospital had set aside for the EMS personnel to be able to grab a soda and rest while they completed paperwork between calls. The couches were comfortable and I laid on one to let my headache work through. I hadn’t stayed with Robert and his family long enough to be ready to go to another patient.