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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Inspirational
- Subject: Miracles / Wonders
- Published: 09/10/2019
The Healing Touch
Born 1947, M, from Oceanside, United StatesThe Healing Touch
He told me that I had been dead for more than an hour. NO WAY! I thought, looking at the doctor like he was crazy or something. But then he said, “Look around and see where you are.”
When I did, I realized he was right. Instead of being in the ER, I was lying on a cold, metal table in the morgue with a sheet pulled up to my chest and a tag looped around one of my toes. While still trying to come to grips with where I was, I heard the doctor—excuse me, the mortician—ask, “Do you remember what happened to you?” That was the crazy part. I remembered it all, especially what happened after I died.
I had been working my shift at the 7-Eleven when the skinny kid with the gun came in, and ordered me to give him all the money in the register. I hesitated. Not because I didn’t want to give him the cash, but because of the gun he was waving at me. It was some kind of huge revolver that was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. Actually, it was his hand that was doing all the shaking. That’s why I kept shifting my eyes from his sweat-stained face to the gun and back again. All the while my insides were coiling around like a snake on the end of a stick.
Finally, when I had all the money out of the register and piled on the counter, the kid lunged forward to scoop it up. That’s when his gun went off. I went down fast. I didn’t even have time to think or feel anything. One second I was standing; the next I was lying on the floor behind the counter, wondering how I had gotten there? While still trying to figure things out, my vision blurred and then went black. The next thing I knew, I was staring into a long dark tunnel with a lot of light at the other end.
Slowly, I began to move toward the light. I can’t tell you if I walked, or was pulled toward it, but as I got closer, the light became brighter; and yet, it didn’t hurt my eyes to look at it. In fact, it seemed to warm me, and give me a huge sense of peace and tranquility.
Once I got to the end of the tunnel, I found myself standing in . . . a place that was. . . light. I know that doesn’t make sense, but it’s the only way I can describe it. There was also someone standing in the light. I couldn’t make out his features—just his outline, but somehow, I knew it was Jesus. Yeah, that Jesus from the bible.
While I was trying to think of what to say to him, I heard his voice, a deep resonating voice, say to me, “Oscar, I want you to see something.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“This,” he replied, and then I saw a rapid series of images flash towards me. They started with my birth, and continued up until the present. I should have been fascinated, but instead, I found myself becoming more and more embarrassed. That’s because they showed everything I ever said or did, including stuff I did in private, and/or tried to do with girls. They also showed every drug I ever swallowed or smoked. I could feel my face (if I still had a face) getting warmer by the second.
“You had such great potential,” I heard him say, “but you squandered it for pleasurable pursuits.” Now I really felt embarrassed. “But not to worry, I’m giving you a second chance.”
“Thanks,” I said to him, and felt a little better.
“I’m sending you back,” he said to me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back, especially if it meant returning to my barely tolerable job and crappy little apartment, but he said, “You have a lot of healing to do.” I guess I do, I thought. “But first I’m giving you something to take with you.”
I couldn’t imagine what it could be, but then I saw what I thought were his arms reach forward and plunge themselves into my chest. Shocked, I froze, thinking I was going to feel a whole lot of pain. Instead, I felt a huge sense of warmth enter my body, and the next thing I knew, I was staring up into the startled eyes of the mortician. That’s when he explained to me that I had been dead for more than an hour, after which he asked, “How do you feel?”
“Great!” I told him. “In fact, I feel as if I’ve had the best sleep in years.”
“It’s a wonder you’re even alive.”
“Why?”
“Because they said you were shot in the head. And yet, there’s no bullet hole, plus you should have a lump the size of a baseball, yet there isn’t one.”
Curious, I reached up and rubbed my hand across my forehead. He was right. The only thing I felt was a small scratch in one spot. It didn’t even hurt or itch. That’s when I remembered my conversation with Jesus, if that’s who it was. It must have been, because how else could I have been shot in the head, and not have any holes or scars, and still be alive? Of course, I didn’t tell the mortician about my experience with Jesus or the tunnel. Instead, I just asked him, “So what happens now?”
He shook his head and said, “I think they’re gonna want to run some tests on you.”
After the tests, which had everybody scratching their heads, because they said I was healthier than an Olympic athlete, they gave me back my effects, plus someone else’s clothes (mine were ruined by the guy in the morgue), and then had me sign a bunch of papers, one of which included me swearing that I wouldn’t tell anyone about my miraculous recovery. I guess they didn’t want a stampede of reporters asking all kinds of questions. Actually, neither did I.
Next, they asked if I needed a ride somewhere. They said they could call me a cab, but I told them it wasn’t that far from the hospital to the 7-Eleven where I worked, and where I had left my car, so I told them I’d walk it instead. Besides, I wanted some time to think about what Jesus had said to me.
Twenty minutes later, when I walked into the 7-Eleven, Connie, my shift supervisor, almost fainted when she saw me. “What the hell are you doing here?” she asked her eyes as big as the doughnuts in our snack case. “They said you were dead; you’d been shot!”
I smiled. “Well, as you can see, I’m not dead.”
Suddenly, she was all business. “Does that mean you’re ready to resume your duties?”
“Yeah,” I told her.
“Okay then, I got Kevin in the back checking inventory. If you could come in around six tonight, that would be great.”
After I walked out of the store, I got in my car and drove home to my apartment. Then while lying on my broken down old couch, I kept thinking about what Jesus had said to me, especially the part about giving me something to take with me. I couldn’t imagine what it might be.
It didn’t take me very long to find out.
I had gone out the back door of our store to throw away a bag of trash, when I spotted a dead cat lying on the ground next to the dumpster. I could have left it there; the garbage guys would be coming in the morning to empty the dumpster. I knew they’d get rid of the carcass, but something made me want to pick it up.
Reaching down, I gingerly grabbed the tip of the cat’s tail, and that’s when it came alive. With a loud yowl, it began to squirm like a fish on a hook. Immediately, I dropped it then watched in utter amazement as it ran down the alleyway, and scampered out of sight around the corner.
“Holy Crap!” I said out loud to myself, as the realization of what had just happened began to sink in. Was that what Jesus had given me?
I kept thinking about it throughout the rest of my shift. Then once it was over, instead of driving home, I headed over to the hospital to talk with the morgue guy. I knew I’d have to tell him everything that had happened, but how else could I check to see if I was right?
He listened to my entire story then said to me, “Well, I can’t have you bring one of my bodies back to life, but I think I have something that might do.”
“So you believe me?” I asked him.
He nodded then said, “I have a friend who’s a psychic. She’s explained a lot to me over the years.” Then he turned toward a side counter and said, “I often collect organs to send over to the teaching college for the medical students. I think this heart will do.” Following him over to the counter, I saw that he had five small ice chests waiting to be picked up. He opened one and said, “Try this one.” When I looked inside, I saw a plastic bag sitting on some ice cubes, and containing what I assumed was a human heart. I wasn’t completely sure; I had never seen one in person, only in photographs and/or sketches. “Go ahead, touch it,” he said to me.
Tentatively, I began to move my index finger toward the plastic bag. With a quick jab of my finger, I poked at the bag. If it was a heart, it felt both hard and soft at the same time.
Nothing happened.
“Maybe you have to touch it a little longer,” he said.
So slowly, I brought my finger into contact with the plastic bag, and held it there a couple of seconds. Before I could take my finger away, I felt movement coming from inside the bag. “Holy crap, it’s moving!” I said, staring down at the now beating heart.
“It sure is!” I heard the mortician say, his voice as filled with excitement as my own. When I looked over at him, his eyes were as big as Connie’s when she first saw me enter the store.
“How long do you think it’s going to continue doing that?” I asked him.
Still staring down at the heart, he shrugged. “I have no idea, but I sure as hell can’t send it over to the school now.” That made me feel a little sad. Then he looked up at me, his eyebrows bunched together. “If you can bring the dead back to life, maybe you can also cure someone who is sick.”
Suddenly, I got a slight queasy feeling in my stomach. “Why, what did you have in mind?”
“Upstairs, we have the very sick daughter of a Russian diplomat. Probably only has a few days to live. If you could cure her, I know he’d be forever grateful.”
My stomach lurched a little and I said, “You’re not going to tell him, are you?”
He shook his head. I felt relieved for a moment, but then began to worry again. “Aren’t people going to ask questions if they see me go near her bed?”
He nodded. “You’re right. “We’ll have to disguise you.” Opening a cabinet behind him, he pulled out a physician’s white smock. “Here, put this on.” Then he reached into a drawer and pulled out a stethoscope. I let him drape it over the back of my neck. Next, he handed me a clipboard with some paperwork on it.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“It’s an autopsy report.” Once again, my stomach clenched a tiny bit. “Just keep looking at it as if you’re in deep thought. That ought to keep people from asking any questions.”
“I sure hope so!”
While taking the elevator to the top floor of the hospital, I kept trying to silently talk myself into staying calm. Besides worrying about someone stopping us, I kept wondering about my ability to cure this guy’s daughter. Just because I brought both a cat and a heart back to life, didn’t mean I could also cure someone who was on death’s doorstep. Suppose I failed? Then what?
After the elevator doors opened, we walked down a long hallway, at one point, passing the nurse’s station. He was right. By keeping my eyes focused on the paperwork in front of me, no one seemed even the slightest bit curious.
At the end of the hall, we entered a small room. There was only one bed in it. “She has her own room?” I asked, a little surprised.
“I told you her father was a diplomat. He can afford to rent out the entire floor if he wanted to.”
“Where is her father now?”
“He went home to change, but he should be back very soon.”
I looked at him. “How do you know so much if you’re always stuck in the morgue?”
He smiled. “I date one of the nurses on this floor.”
I couldn’t imagine any woman wanting to kiss or have sex with someone who spent all day dealing with dead bodies, but I didn’t say anything. Instead, I stepped over to the side of the bed. The girl really did look like she might have been on death’s doorstep. Besides her head being bald, her skin was so pale she looked as if someone had sprayed her with white paint. Even with all the wires and IV attached to her, she seemed to be asleep.
“How old is she?” I asked the mortician.
“Five,” was all he said. This made me cringe a little to think that such a young child could be so sick.
“So how should I do this?” I asked him.
He looked at me and shrugged. “I have no idea; you’re the one with all the powers.” He hesitated while he thought a moment. “Maybe if you hold her hand, it might work.”
Putting down the clipboard, I stepped over to the side of the bed where her arm was free from the IV. Then I reached down and gently picked up her hand, and cupped it in mine. Almost immediately, I could feel a surge of warmth spread from my hand into hers. After a moment, I heard her sigh, and a tiny smile formed on her lips. I gently lowered her hand back down to her side.
“Is that it?” he asked. “Did it work?”
“I think so.”
“Great! Now let’s get out of here before her father shows up.”
At this point, both of us made a beeline for the nearest stairwell. “I don’t want anyone putting two and two together if and when hey discover she’s cured.”
I had to agree with him, which was why I stayed close on his heels. More than once, I almost tripped, mainly because I continued to feel as if someone was chasing us. Of course, no one was, except maybe my own fear.
Once we got to the morgue, I gave him back all his stuff. “I have the number of where you work,” he said. “I’ll call you when and if I hear anything. In the mean time, try to live your life as normal as possible.”
Was he kidding! If I did just cure this little girl then my life would never be normal again, especially since an idea was already beginning to form in my head.
What initiated it was the arrival of her father at my place of work.
I didn’t see him, but I heard his deep accented voice when he asked Connie if I worked there? I looked up from where I had been putting sodas into the cooler, and saw a man who looked like he was in his fifties or sixties standing near the cash register. He had on a suit and tie, and his dark hair was speckled with a lot of grey. If I had not heard him speak, I might have thought he was the CEO of some local company.
Even before I saw him approach, my stomach started doing twists and turns. How the hell did he find out where I worked? It must have been Cal, the mortician, but he promised he wouldn’t tell!
“Mr. Carson,” he said without smiling. “We need to talk.”
“Okay,” I said, resolved to the fact that there was no way I was getting out of this. So I called over to Connie, “I’ll be right back. I’m going outside to take a smoke break.”
“But you don’t smoke,” she said.
Ignoring her, I headed for the front door with Mr. Russian following close behind. Once outside, I turned and walked over to the side of the building so we could talk in private.
Turning to him, I asked, “Okay, so what did you want to talk about?”
Still not smiling, he looked me straight in the eyes and said, “I have camera inside Teddy Bear in daughter’s room.” A nanny cam! My stomach twisted even more. “I saw and heard everything. What are the powers the doctor was talking about?”
I froze. I didn’t know what to say to him. I mean, how could I explain about Jesus and the tunnel? Then I thought of something. “How is your daughter doing?” I asked him. I was hoping I’d hear the answer I was waiting for.
He nodded. “Very well. In fact, they say she’s cured.” He reached over and grabbed my arm. His grip was really strong. “What did you do to her?”
At this point, our conversation could have gone several ways. But instead, in my mind I heard myself yell, “Let go of me!”
His hand jerked away as if he had been hit with an electric shock. I saw his eyes blink a few times, and then he stared, not directly at me, but at the space where I was standing. That’s when the idea struck me. Grabbing his hand, I said to him, “Forget about me and the doctor. Go be with your daughter and be thankful she’s alive.”
“I will,” he said, sounding a little strange. And then turning, he began to shamble off mechanical-like toward the front of the store, and got into what I assumed was his car.
After he drove away, I went back inside. “Who was that?” Connie asked me.
“Oh, just someone whose daughter was sick. I gave her a present and he was here to thank me.”
“Good. Now get back to work. Your next break isn’t until this afternoon.
I nodded, but what she didn’t know was that I wasn’t going to take my next break. In fact, I wasn’t even going to finish my shift. But Connie wasn’t going to remember that, or even remember me.
Once I walked out of the 7-Eleven, I went straight to the bank and took out five thousand from the twenty thousand I had inherited from my mother’s estate. Then after packing most of my clothes along with a few books, I hopped in my car and drove off.
It’s been six months since the Russian showed up at my place of work. Since then, I’ve been traveling around the country curing people, mostly young kids who are deathly sick. The only downside is I can’t let anyone remember what I have done, or even that I was there, which is one of the reasons I find it’s been kind of a lonely existence up until now. That’s why I decided I’m going to get me a female companion to accompany me on this crazy journey. I know it’s probably against the rules, but I can’t help thinking, even J.C. had Mary Magdalene to keep him company while he did his thing for those three years—so why not someone for me?
I mean, what could it hurt?
The Healing Touch(Tom Di Roma)
The Healing Touch
He told me that I had been dead for more than an hour. NO WAY! I thought, looking at the doctor like he was crazy or something. But then he said, “Look around and see where you are.”
When I did, I realized he was right. Instead of being in the ER, I was lying on a cold, metal table in the morgue with a sheet pulled up to my chest and a tag looped around one of my toes. While still trying to come to grips with where I was, I heard the doctor—excuse me, the mortician—ask, “Do you remember what happened to you?” That was the crazy part. I remembered it all, especially what happened after I died.
I had been working my shift at the 7-Eleven when the skinny kid with the gun came in, and ordered me to give him all the money in the register. I hesitated. Not because I didn’t want to give him the cash, but because of the gun he was waving at me. It was some kind of huge revolver that was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. Actually, it was his hand that was doing all the shaking. That’s why I kept shifting my eyes from his sweat-stained face to the gun and back again. All the while my insides were coiling around like a snake on the end of a stick.
Finally, when I had all the money out of the register and piled on the counter, the kid lunged forward to scoop it up. That’s when his gun went off. I went down fast. I didn’t even have time to think or feel anything. One second I was standing; the next I was lying on the floor behind the counter, wondering how I had gotten there? While still trying to figure things out, my vision blurred and then went black. The next thing I knew, I was staring into a long dark tunnel with a lot of light at the other end.
Slowly, I began to move toward the light. I can’t tell you if I walked, or was pulled toward it, but as I got closer, the light became brighter; and yet, it didn’t hurt my eyes to look at it. In fact, it seemed to warm me, and give me a huge sense of peace and tranquility.
Once I got to the end of the tunnel, I found myself standing in . . . a place that was. . . light. I know that doesn’t make sense, but it’s the only way I can describe it. There was also someone standing in the light. I couldn’t make out his features—just his outline, but somehow, I knew it was Jesus. Yeah, that Jesus from the bible.
While I was trying to think of what to say to him, I heard his voice, a deep resonating voice, say to me, “Oscar, I want you to see something.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“This,” he replied, and then I saw a rapid series of images flash towards me. They started with my birth, and continued up until the present. I should have been fascinated, but instead, I found myself becoming more and more embarrassed. That’s because they showed everything I ever said or did, including stuff I did in private, and/or tried to do with girls. They also showed every drug I ever swallowed or smoked. I could feel my face (if I still had a face) getting warmer by the second.
“You had such great potential,” I heard him say, “but you squandered it for pleasurable pursuits.” Now I really felt embarrassed. “But not to worry, I’m giving you a second chance.”
“Thanks,” I said to him, and felt a little better.
“I’m sending you back,” he said to me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back, especially if it meant returning to my barely tolerable job and crappy little apartment, but he said, “You have a lot of healing to do.” I guess I do, I thought. “But first I’m giving you something to take with you.”
I couldn’t imagine what it could be, but then I saw what I thought were his arms reach forward and plunge themselves into my chest. Shocked, I froze, thinking I was going to feel a whole lot of pain. Instead, I felt a huge sense of warmth enter my body, and the next thing I knew, I was staring up into the startled eyes of the mortician. That’s when he explained to me that I had been dead for more than an hour, after which he asked, “How do you feel?”
“Great!” I told him. “In fact, I feel as if I’ve had the best sleep in years.”
“It’s a wonder you’re even alive.”
“Why?”
“Because they said you were shot in the head. And yet, there’s no bullet hole, plus you should have a lump the size of a baseball, yet there isn’t one.”
Curious, I reached up and rubbed my hand across my forehead. He was right. The only thing I felt was a small scratch in one spot. It didn’t even hurt or itch. That’s when I remembered my conversation with Jesus, if that’s who it was. It must have been, because how else could I have been shot in the head, and not have any holes or scars, and still be alive? Of course, I didn’t tell the mortician about my experience with Jesus or the tunnel. Instead, I just asked him, “So what happens now?”
He shook his head and said, “I think they’re gonna want to run some tests on you.”
After the tests, which had everybody scratching their heads, because they said I was healthier than an Olympic athlete, they gave me back my effects, plus someone else’s clothes (mine were ruined by the guy in the morgue), and then had me sign a bunch of papers, one of which included me swearing that I wouldn’t tell anyone about my miraculous recovery. I guess they didn’t want a stampede of reporters asking all kinds of questions. Actually, neither did I.
Next, they asked if I needed a ride somewhere. They said they could call me a cab, but I told them it wasn’t that far from the hospital to the 7-Eleven where I worked, and where I had left my car, so I told them I’d walk it instead. Besides, I wanted some time to think about what Jesus had said to me.
Twenty minutes later, when I walked into the 7-Eleven, Connie, my shift supervisor, almost fainted when she saw me. “What the hell are you doing here?” she asked her eyes as big as the doughnuts in our snack case. “They said you were dead; you’d been shot!”
I smiled. “Well, as you can see, I’m not dead.”
Suddenly, she was all business. “Does that mean you’re ready to resume your duties?”
“Yeah,” I told her.
“Okay then, I got Kevin in the back checking inventory. If you could come in around six tonight, that would be great.”
After I walked out of the store, I got in my car and drove home to my apartment. Then while lying on my broken down old couch, I kept thinking about what Jesus had said to me, especially the part about giving me something to take with me. I couldn’t imagine what it might be.
It didn’t take me very long to find out.
I had gone out the back door of our store to throw away a bag of trash, when I spotted a dead cat lying on the ground next to the dumpster. I could have left it there; the garbage guys would be coming in the morning to empty the dumpster. I knew they’d get rid of the carcass, but something made me want to pick it up.
Reaching down, I gingerly grabbed the tip of the cat’s tail, and that’s when it came alive. With a loud yowl, it began to squirm like a fish on a hook. Immediately, I dropped it then watched in utter amazement as it ran down the alleyway, and scampered out of sight around the corner.
“Holy Crap!” I said out loud to myself, as the realization of what had just happened began to sink in. Was that what Jesus had given me?
I kept thinking about it throughout the rest of my shift. Then once it was over, instead of driving home, I headed over to the hospital to talk with the morgue guy. I knew I’d have to tell him everything that had happened, but how else could I check to see if I was right?
He listened to my entire story then said to me, “Well, I can’t have you bring one of my bodies back to life, but I think I have something that might do.”
“So you believe me?” I asked him.
He nodded then said, “I have a friend who’s a psychic. She’s explained a lot to me over the years.” Then he turned toward a side counter and said, “I often collect organs to send over to the teaching college for the medical students. I think this heart will do.” Following him over to the counter, I saw that he had five small ice chests waiting to be picked up. He opened one and said, “Try this one.” When I looked inside, I saw a plastic bag sitting on some ice cubes, and containing what I assumed was a human heart. I wasn’t completely sure; I had never seen one in person, only in photographs and/or sketches. “Go ahead, touch it,” he said to me.
Tentatively, I began to move my index finger toward the plastic bag. With a quick jab of my finger, I poked at the bag. If it was a heart, it felt both hard and soft at the same time.
Nothing happened.
“Maybe you have to touch it a little longer,” he said.
So slowly, I brought my finger into contact with the plastic bag, and held it there a couple of seconds. Before I could take my finger away, I felt movement coming from inside the bag. “Holy crap, it’s moving!” I said, staring down at the now beating heart.
“It sure is!” I heard the mortician say, his voice as filled with excitement as my own. When I looked over at him, his eyes were as big as Connie’s when she first saw me enter the store.
“How long do you think it’s going to continue doing that?” I asked him.
Still staring down at the heart, he shrugged. “I have no idea, but I sure as hell can’t send it over to the school now.” That made me feel a little sad. Then he looked up at me, his eyebrows bunched together. “If you can bring the dead back to life, maybe you can also cure someone who is sick.”
Suddenly, I got a slight queasy feeling in my stomach. “Why, what did you have in mind?”
“Upstairs, we have the very sick daughter of a Russian diplomat. Probably only has a few days to live. If you could cure her, I know he’d be forever grateful.”
My stomach lurched a little and I said, “You’re not going to tell him, are you?”
He shook his head. I felt relieved for a moment, but then began to worry again. “Aren’t people going to ask questions if they see me go near her bed?”
He nodded. “You’re right. “We’ll have to disguise you.” Opening a cabinet behind him, he pulled out a physician’s white smock. “Here, put this on.” Then he reached into a drawer and pulled out a stethoscope. I let him drape it over the back of my neck. Next, he handed me a clipboard with some paperwork on it.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“It’s an autopsy report.” Once again, my stomach clenched a tiny bit. “Just keep looking at it as if you’re in deep thought. That ought to keep people from asking any questions.”
“I sure hope so!”
While taking the elevator to the top floor of the hospital, I kept trying to silently talk myself into staying calm. Besides worrying about someone stopping us, I kept wondering about my ability to cure this guy’s daughter. Just because I brought both a cat and a heart back to life, didn’t mean I could also cure someone who was on death’s doorstep. Suppose I failed? Then what?
After the elevator doors opened, we walked down a long hallway, at one point, passing the nurse’s station. He was right. By keeping my eyes focused on the paperwork in front of me, no one seemed even the slightest bit curious.
At the end of the hall, we entered a small room. There was only one bed in it. “She has her own room?” I asked, a little surprised.
“I told you her father was a diplomat. He can afford to rent out the entire floor if he wanted to.”
“Where is her father now?”
“He went home to change, but he should be back very soon.”
I looked at him. “How do you know so much if you’re always stuck in the morgue?”
He smiled. “I date one of the nurses on this floor.”
I couldn’t imagine any woman wanting to kiss or have sex with someone who spent all day dealing with dead bodies, but I didn’t say anything. Instead, I stepped over to the side of the bed. The girl really did look like she might have been on death’s doorstep. Besides her head being bald, her skin was so pale she looked as if someone had sprayed her with white paint. Even with all the wires and IV attached to her, she seemed to be asleep.
“How old is she?” I asked the mortician.
“Five,” was all he said. This made me cringe a little to think that such a young child could be so sick.
“So how should I do this?” I asked him.
He looked at me and shrugged. “I have no idea; you’re the one with all the powers.” He hesitated while he thought a moment. “Maybe if you hold her hand, it might work.”
Putting down the clipboard, I stepped over to the side of the bed where her arm was free from the IV. Then I reached down and gently picked up her hand, and cupped it in mine. Almost immediately, I could feel a surge of warmth spread from my hand into hers. After a moment, I heard her sigh, and a tiny smile formed on her lips. I gently lowered her hand back down to her side.
“Is that it?” he asked. “Did it work?”
“I think so.”
“Great! Now let’s get out of here before her father shows up.”
At this point, both of us made a beeline for the nearest stairwell. “I don’t want anyone putting two and two together if and when hey discover she’s cured.”
I had to agree with him, which was why I stayed close on his heels. More than once, I almost tripped, mainly because I continued to feel as if someone was chasing us. Of course, no one was, except maybe my own fear.
Once we got to the morgue, I gave him back all his stuff. “I have the number of where you work,” he said. “I’ll call you when and if I hear anything. In the mean time, try to live your life as normal as possible.”
Was he kidding! If I did just cure this little girl then my life would never be normal again, especially since an idea was already beginning to form in my head.
What initiated it was the arrival of her father at my place of work.
I didn’t see him, but I heard his deep accented voice when he asked Connie if I worked there? I looked up from where I had been putting sodas into the cooler, and saw a man who looked like he was in his fifties or sixties standing near the cash register. He had on a suit and tie, and his dark hair was speckled with a lot of grey. If I had not heard him speak, I might have thought he was the CEO of some local company.
Even before I saw him approach, my stomach started doing twists and turns. How the hell did he find out where I worked? It must have been Cal, the mortician, but he promised he wouldn’t tell!
“Mr. Carson,” he said without smiling. “We need to talk.”
“Okay,” I said, resolved to the fact that there was no way I was getting out of this. So I called over to Connie, “I’ll be right back. I’m going outside to take a smoke break.”
“But you don’t smoke,” she said.
Ignoring her, I headed for the front door with Mr. Russian following close behind. Once outside, I turned and walked over to the side of the building so we could talk in private.
Turning to him, I asked, “Okay, so what did you want to talk about?”
Still not smiling, he looked me straight in the eyes and said, “I have camera inside Teddy Bear in daughter’s room.” A nanny cam! My stomach twisted even more. “I saw and heard everything. What are the powers the doctor was talking about?”
I froze. I didn’t know what to say to him. I mean, how could I explain about Jesus and the tunnel? Then I thought of something. “How is your daughter doing?” I asked him. I was hoping I’d hear the answer I was waiting for.
He nodded. “Very well. In fact, they say she’s cured.” He reached over and grabbed my arm. His grip was really strong. “What did you do to her?”
At this point, our conversation could have gone several ways. But instead, in my mind I heard myself yell, “Let go of me!”
His hand jerked away as if he had been hit with an electric shock. I saw his eyes blink a few times, and then he stared, not directly at me, but at the space where I was standing. That’s when the idea struck me. Grabbing his hand, I said to him, “Forget about me and the doctor. Go be with your daughter and be thankful she’s alive.”
“I will,” he said, sounding a little strange. And then turning, he began to shamble off mechanical-like toward the front of the store, and got into what I assumed was his car.
After he drove away, I went back inside. “Who was that?” Connie asked me.
“Oh, just someone whose daughter was sick. I gave her a present and he was here to thank me.”
“Good. Now get back to work. Your next break isn’t until this afternoon.
I nodded, but what she didn’t know was that I wasn’t going to take my next break. In fact, I wasn’t even going to finish my shift. But Connie wasn’t going to remember that, or even remember me.
Once I walked out of the 7-Eleven, I went straight to the bank and took out five thousand from the twenty thousand I had inherited from my mother’s estate. Then after packing most of my clothes along with a few books, I hopped in my car and drove off.
It’s been six months since the Russian showed up at my place of work. Since then, I’ve been traveling around the country curing people, mostly young kids who are deathly sick. The only downside is I can’t let anyone remember what I have done, or even that I was there, which is one of the reasons I find it’s been kind of a lonely existence up until now. That’s why I decided I’m going to get me a female companion to accompany me on this crazy journey. I know it’s probably against the rules, but I can’t help thinking, even J.C. had Mary Magdalene to keep him company while he did his thing for those three years—so why not someone for me?
I mean, what could it hurt?
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