Healing Grace

by Lisa J. Lickel

  She went on in a rush to get the next part in without crying. “My parents were killed, my little boy, too, and then my husband got sick and died. I could do nothing—nothing—to stop any of that.” She bowed her head. “It was a wake-up call that has forever changed me.”

  Mrs. Vanden Heuvel’s mouth hung open. She put a hand over it, eyes wide.

  Grace hadn’t meant to shock anyone. “I’m not going to make this a dragged-out feel-sorry-for-Grace story, but I want to let you know that I’ve survived some pretty rough times because of the hope that I had to reach for. Just because God holds things out for us, like salvation, faith, and every good thing, doesn’t make it automatically ours. We actually have to take hold of it. And hope is like that, too. It’s the foundation of all that we want to happen to us after our time on earth is done. What else can we hope for but to see heaven?”

  She ignored Reverend Mattisse’s sour expression. He was automatically invited to all church functions where he gave the opening prayers and left soon afterward. Today he stayed, probably to see if he learned more about her and perhaps to find another reason to voice his disapproval of her. This was as close to teaching as a woman could come in his church—though it was only to other women. He didn’t join in the burst of applause that Shelby started.

  Mrs. Ten Boldt timidly approached when most of the others had gone home. “That was a wonderful message, Grace. I didn’t know some of those things about you, and let me tell you now how terribly sorry I am for your losses. And with…” Her voice trailed off, sympathy in her posture. “Well, with your work and life now, here with us, I want you to know that we are grateful to have you with us. Especially for all you do for the Marshall boys. We’re cousins, you know, on their mother’s side. I never thought about hope the way you talked about it before. We’ll all pray harder, I’m sure…harder for young Ted. Thank you.”

  Grace clasped her hand. “Thank you, too,” she whispered back.

  “How is he doing? He didn’t come to church last Sunday, I noticed.”

  “He’s in some pain. He works hard during harvest.”

  “Yes, yes, that’s right. All that business in the past…such a shame.”

  “You mean with his ex-wife?” Grace didn’t want to hide any more behind innuendo. “She’s been gone for years now. Surely it’s time to forgive and forget.”

  Mrs. Ten Boldt patted her shoulder. “That’s much easier said than done.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Near the end of July the lake breeze blew in a mixture of cold from the perpetually icy water and steam from the heated air. Grace worked evening hours at the clinic so Greg could take a couple of days off.

  Lost in the land of reporting near closing, the crash of the doors surprised her. Randy barreled in, half-carrying Jimmy whose ashen face and rolled-back eyes bore mute witness to the extent of his fear and pain. The boy’s left arm was cradled in beach towels and blankets. An acrid smell reached across the desk.

  “Idiots blowing off firecrackers at the beach,” Ted growled as he shuffled in after them. Grace motioned for Ted and Eddy to wait in the chairs in the darkened lobby area while she hustled the others down the hall into an examining cubicle and helped settle the young man on a gurney. Jimmy was nearly unconscious, but alert enough to fight her, and she didn’t want to hurt him any more than he already had been.

  She locked eyes with Randy, steel on steel. “I need to look.”

  Randy reached for the wrappings. “We’ll check that wound, now, son.”

  Jimmy passed right out at that point, and Grace bent to her task.

  Wooly fibers stuck into the mangled remains of the hand. She took in a breath and hoped her best professional voice was steady. “Randy, could you please go join Ted now? We have to keep it clean in here.” She was grateful when he obeyed without protest.

  When she had done a full examination and flushed the area in warm saline, she placed the boy’s hand on a sterile field while she placed a call to Greg on his cell and let him know of the situation.

  “Do you need me?” His detached voice echoed his obvious reluctance to come out of vacation mode.

  “It’s a bad one, Greg, but I’ll get it cleaned and dressed, then have Rutgers at Bay View take a look if it doesn’t look right tomorrow.”

  “Okay, Grace, keep me posted.” She hung up, pleased at the “I trust you,” in his voice.

  “Okay, Jimmy, let’s see what we can do for you.” He had regained consciousness and watched her with dark suspicious eyes, keeping his lips clamped tight. She straightened his clothing and eased his head and neck into a more comfortable position. She talked to him quietly and soothingly about what she was planning to do to treat his wound while she went about methodically gathering supplies.

  Unlike the last few months of routine care without that spark, she knew tonight was the night. Rushing in like dammed up waters through a breach, her gift charged almost painfully through her, begging to be used.

  Grace had worked with a few burns in Tennessee, mindful of the dreaded pain of the damaged nerve endings and internal hurt she experienced with the victims. She knew infection was a terrible, terrible threat to the healing. She kept her breathing steady and deep while she prepared herself, intuitively expecting this one would cause her as much pain as the patient.

  Dousing her bare hands with antiseptic, she scrubbed as if for surgery. Only later would she don protective gloves, as their protective shield would not serve either of them now.

  She prayed then checked that the curtains were pulled tight, and went to work. Jimmy did not struggle as he had earlier, and she kept careful watch for signs of shock. She leaned in under the light and began the task of setting and dressing. Several metacarpal bones were blasted out of alignment.

  “I hope you’re a righty, Jimmy Boy.” Jimmy gasped a little and turned his head away while she probed, making sure the wound needed no further debridement of dead tissue.

  “Remind me to tell people not to ever wrap up burns.” After picking out woolen fibers and terry towel fuzz with tweezers, she began to flush the area with more saline in an attempt to remove fine grains of gunpowder, paper, and sand that the force of the blast had driven deeply into the hand. Jimmy moaned, and Grace held her breath.

  “Okay, babe, here we go.” She leaned forward then, gently placing his damaged hand on top of her left palm, inwardly hissing with him.

  She began with the misaligned fingers, forcing them straight, wincing, and watched with never ceasing amazement as the miracle began. Past experience taught her that attempting to pre-dose herself with painkillers would not deaden the pain as it was drawn into her own body. The pain sharpened her and increased her compassion—as long as she could keep it compartmentalized.

  Before she began to work the ruined flesh, she felt the snap of bones going into place in his hand as if it were her own. She trembled, biting her lip. Jimmy’s legs moved restlessly but thankfully he kept his face turned.

  Her left hand began to redden and ooze beneath his, cracks appearing in the sites where Jimmy’s hurts were worse.

  “So then, wanna tell me what made you pull this crazy stunt,” Grace asked him, more as a distraction than actually wanting to know.

  “Ow! Man, that hurts.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Okay, I was, uh, you know… Well, Tanya came to the beach with us. We were just goofing around, playing music and stuff, and I wanted to, well…after last summer, she was hardly payin’ any notice… Then, she finally sees me. I only, you know, wanted to impress her.”

  “Yeah, well, I doubt she was highly impressed by this stunt. Okay, here’s the tough part, Jimmy. Hang on. I thank you, Lord,” Grace gasped out, “that you have made me wonderfully,” while she gently and firmly stroked along the damaged phalanges.

  Jimmy must have recalled the words from some distant memory of Sunday School and he began to recite with her. “I shall not want… He makes me…”

  Jimmy’s eyes grew wid
e when he finally looked down at what she had done with his hand. This, the reaction, she could not hide as she’d not hung a sterile drape.

  Ted’s voice outside of the curtain startled her. “Grace! Grace, how are things going? How is Jimmy?”

  She carefully twisted her back to the curtain and kept their hands out of view, an unwelcome adrenalin rush of fear making her shake. “Go tell Randy that Jimmy’s going to be fine. We’re—he’s—in a bit of pain now, but that’s to be expected. He’ll need time to heal completely. Maybe therapy.” Her voice cracked as she struggled to contain her pain. “He’ll have to see the burn doctor at Bay Bridge in a few days—to make sure things are going—well.”

  Ted opened the curtain and popped his head in.

  “No—Ted, we, ah, can’t risk any more infection! No people in here before I get him wrapped—you need to go. Now.”

  Ted withdrew with an apology but stayed by the curtain, leaning on his crutches. She sounded upset, and he wasn’t sure what to do. He trusted her, but hurt physically at the pain in her tone. He called softly, “Grace, is there anything you need? Someone else to call, or anything I can do?”

  “Pray now, okay? For us both. I need another half hour or so to wrap this right. It’s tricky with the bones of the fingers needing to be set, yet the flesh around them being too damaged to support… Jimmy will be fine. Please, Ted, could you just—go sit with the others? I’m sorry, but I have to concentrate here.”

  “Sure.” He turned painfully to manoeuvre himself back down the hallway. Something didn’t seem right. Not with her medical ability, but something else—something inside of her. Maybe her soul, if that was the right word. Pray, she told him, for both Jimmy and herself.

  What good was that? Prayer? He didn’t even know how. But Randy did.

  He shuffled back into the waiting room to find Eddy curled up against Randy, asleep over Randy’s lap. Randy stroked the boy’s hair, his face a craggy mask of sorrow. Ted stopped at the doorway, forcing his breathing to calm before entering the room.

  “You wonder if I’ll be able to care for your boy, when I can’t for my own,” Randy’s quiet voice met him.

  Ted stopped up short.

  “You’d be right, thinkin’ that.”

  “Grace says Jimmy will be fine. Sore, fingers maybe a little crooked, but will keep his hand fine.” But he couldn’t deny his brother’s sentiments about caring for Eddy.

  “Randy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “She also said to pray, for Jimmy and for her…um, I don’t know how…I don’t know the right things to say. What should we do?”

  Randy’s face was wet. Ted blinked. He’d never seen his big brother cry; at least, not since they were grown. He sat on the next chair, shaken. He bowed his head when he saw Randy lower his.

  “I’ll pray for all of us,” Randy said.

  Jimmy’s flesh did not instantly become smooth and pain-free again at Grace’s healing touch, but it did lose the angry look. Much of the pain of healing would not affect him now. His hand would be restored to the way it had been before, more quickly than normal and without scarring, if things went as usual.

  There was no reason to think anything wasn’t usual. She even welcomed the dragging through broken glass feeling ebbing through her veins as the gift worked through her.

  Grace casually flipped one of the sterile towels over her own hand to hide the strange effect. In a little while, she could tend to herself. Hang on, girl.

  “Okay, Jimmy. Let’s check the circulation, motion, and sensation in your fingers. Can you feel this?” She pressed the exposed tips of his fingers with the fingers of her right hand.

  He jerked at her touch. “Yeah, that hurts,” he hissed.

  “Now wiggle your fingers a little.”

  He moaned. “I can’t!”

  “Yes you can—a little. Hurting is a good sign, really. Now, how about something for the pain? I can give you a couple of samples.” She looked at the color of the skin, satisfied that it had pinked up nicely.

  “Let’s just shoot a little picture, here, for posterity sake. You’ll be famous.” Grace led him over to the X-ray machine, towel over her left hand like a waiter, and took a couple of images. It might be a little unusual to take the X-ray afterward, but it would mean less explanation about the rate of healing.

  “There, some reporting, instructions about keeping the wrapping clean, then you can take your dad home.”

  “Grace? Thanks—thanks a lot,” Jimmy told her. “I’m sorry I was so—um, you know.”

  She waited, knowing it would be good for him to get the words out.

  “Um, well, when I came in, I wasn’t so sure about things. But you were terrific, Grace, really cool and all.” His smile wavered.

  She gave him a tired one of her own, her strength sapped. Standing still was a chore. “Sure, Jimmy. Just don’t do it again, okay? You have a lot of other talents to impress us all.”

  She stopped him before they reached the waiting room. “Jimmy, your dad, well, it’s only that we all care about you.” She looked him in the eyes. “You’ve heard this before, but it’s true. The things you do now will be with you always. Please think about the kind of person you want to be, and the kind of people you hang out with.”

  Jimmy swallowed and slowly nodded. They walked to the entrance of the waiting room. She’d make an appointment for him at Bay Bridge for the next morning she told them while pretending to wipe her hands on the towel.

  “I’ll come back later and pick you up, okay?” Ted said.

  “No, don’t worry about that. But it’s sweet of you to offer. Just stay home once you get there.” She edged away from him, all but jumping out of her skin with the effects of deep exhaustion. “I have my car. I’ll get the paperwork done and then go home. Thank you. Good night.”

  It was no one’s business but hers what happened next. She certainly couldn’t allow anyone to see what her own hand looked like. It would remain broken and red for a few days until the marks slowly faded. The miracle didn’t happen every time, this transferring of her patient’s hurts. No one, not even Reverend Edwards, could explain why it happened one time and not another. She couldn’t tell when her sacrifice was required and when it was not. For Jimmy, tonight it was a small price to pay.

  She’d take a couple of days off when Greg got back. Just hide out until she was better and no one would be the wiser. Sinking to the stool in the darkened exam room, she allowed herself a few moments of pity, to moan and rock over her hand before wrapping it with her special aloe salve and clean gauze. She bit her lip and drove back to her house, cradling her hurt hand in her lap.

  Randy took Jimmy to a second follow-up visit. After the nurse was through, they waited for the specialist to take a look.

  “When did you say this happened, again?” Doctor Rutgers at Bay Bridge Hospital pinched his nose between his fingers. Frown lines furrowed either side of his mouth as he examined the health of the skin and bones. He continually switched between the images Grace had shot with the X-ray unit at the clinic and the boy’s hand, and shook his head. “I just saw this a couple of days ago, correct?”

  “It’s not right?” Randy tried to keep the fear from his voice. “Where else should we—”

  “Remarkable! You are one lucky young man to have this clean a hand after what you told me. It looks as if the incident happened weeks ago. There’s no sign of infection.”

  “So it’s going to be okay?” Randy asked. “She did everything right?”

  Jimmy looked at him, pursed his mouth, and rolled his eyes in the way he hated. “Da-ad, of course she did. Grace is good.”

  Rutgers continued to stare and twist Jimmy’s hand.

  Jimmy let them know he wasn’t thrilled. “Ouch, man, do you really gotta do that?”

  “Firecracker, you said?” Rutgers shook his head again. “On the beach? Sand and dirt. Remarkable. Excuse me, I have to make a phone call. Wait right here, please.”

  Greg accep
ted the call from Rutgers. On his first day back from the solitary vacation he’d taken in three years he was dizzy with catching up.

  “I want to talk to you about one of your cases,” Rutgers said.

  Greg sighed. Rutgers’s tone contained that little something in between professional courtesy and professional complaint. He was pretty sure he knew which case Rutgers meant.

  “Burn accident—teenager—came in to see your PA.”

  Just as he figured, and though he liked the thought of Grace being “his” he had to keep to the topic at hand. “Did my PA do anything inappropriate?”

  “Unless filing misleading paperwork is considered appropriate now at your clinic. That wound could not have taken place only four days ago.”

  “And what would my PA have to gain by filing misleading paperwork, Rutgers?” Greg picked up the file on his desk and began to page through it again. Arrogant SOB. He switched over to his computer monitor to check the images of the healing hand sent by Rutgers’s office, taken the day after and today.

  Rutgers had a point, but Greg would defend Grace if it meant his license. Good thing the complaint was Grace had done too good of a job rather than the other way around. He switched the intercom of the phone unit on, and swiveled in his chair, hands behind his head.

  “You tell me, Evans. I don’t know why anyone would do this—”

  “My PA has, ah, some special talents—in the medical field,” Greg broke into the tirade. “Matty even says she has a gift. There’s this salve she brought back from the hills of Tennessee where she was before—”

  “Mumbo-jumbo hillbilly stuff! Really! Did she do a dance, too? I’m afraid I’m going to have to report this.”

  Greg sat up straight and leaned into the telephone as if he were staring into his unhappy colleague’s eyes. “Doctor, with enough witnesses to report that the incident happened just the way they said it did, you don’t have much of a case. That would solve nothing and bring unwarranted and unwanted attention on both our clinics and the hospital. Do you really want that? Runyon did nothing wrong! In fact, she did more than right by her patient, as you attested to yourself.”