Healing Grace

by Lisa J. Lickel

  “Bless you!” Her laugh came out as a bit of an hysterical croak.

  Now for the hard part. She had to convince Ted to agree to go with her. They had to go to Woodside. That was the only thing she knew for sure she could do for him when she rang Ted’s doorbell.

  At the Woodside cemetery, Grace squatted near the weathered stone, hunched against the wind and mist of the place. She was not afraid, but trembled nonetheless. She traced the dull lettering cut into the stone. “No greater love…” She grabbed its lichened edges and rested her forehead against the coldness.

  She was not greatly surprised when they found her here. She knew they would come, sooner or later. She left Ted at the hotel after a slow and painful journey from Michigan to Woodside. She forced him to eat some beef broth and bread when they stopped, but since yesterday she had taken nothing for herself. He had slipped into the immobility that would soon affect his ability to breathe on his own.

  Now she was here, she began to doubt whether she was doing the right thing.

  “Jonathan’s life on earth had come to an end,” Elizabeth said clearly through the rising breeze. “There was nothing you could do and we recognized that. I’m sorry you felt so guilty about it. He understood, you know, dear. He never blamed you or anyone else. It’s right that you come back. You need us as much as we have always needed you. You were forgiven long ago. Now it’s time to accept that, and to allow yourself to be healed.”

  A deeper voice spoke next, less gentle and understanding than Elizabeth.

  “You do not hold sway over God, Grace.” Reverend Jeremiah Edwards, the town’s governmental and spiritual leader, spoke. “You cannot bend God to your will.”

  He knew her heart then, the secret she thought she had hidden. He peeled her away from her grandmother’s gravestone and tugged her upright.

  Gentle fingers traced her palm. “No sign of the scars that once marked your gift,” Jeremiah said. “No trace of the stigmata you received as a child in His presence. Your grandmother used her gifts as God wanted, even when it meant her own life. Grace Runyon, you are facing the ultimate test. How much do you love God? He is a jealous God, demanding that you love him before all others. Have you given your love to another? Have you perverted that love by worshipping his gift and not the Giver?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Little prickles spurted at her hairline. Drops rolled across her cheeks and into her eyes. Red. Her palms ached. She heard them pray as if at a distance. “We hold your daughter in your loving care. We commend her soul and her gift of healing unto you. It’s time, now, Grace. Lena and the others helped to prepare.”

  “Yes, I know. Grandmother loved them, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, Grace,” Reverend Edwards said. “She loved them. Come.” He used his handkerchief to wipe her face. They walked together, across the cemetery yard, bent against the rising wind, dead leaves blowing across their path.

  Ted lay on a padded gurney at the church, unclad but, for modesty, with wrapped linen cloth around his loins. He could no longer move, but he felt strangely calm. The peace of this place permeated his soul. If he died here, he was grateful to be surrounded by so much love, even if it came from strangers. Lena, Grace’s friend, and two others who identified themselves as care workers, fetched him that afternoon from the hotel. He had not been surprised at their presence or their destination.

  He had nothing to do but think while he lay here. Grace had tried to explain to him what she wanted, why they had to come here to Woodside. He agreed to try because he loved and trusted her. This was different than Beardslee’s experiments.

  He still was unsure of many things. One thing he knew was that, if he was to die, he would rather go to heaven than hell. Grace’s example of trust and faith taught him that. That much he believed. Was it enough?

  Eddy was too young to understand all that was about to happen, and though he missed the child, he had said good bye in a way that hopefully did not frighten him.

  The car ride had been hard. The thing that helped him get through it was Grace’s story. As they exited Interstate 75 north of Knoxville and drove deep into the center of the state, she told him what her childhood had been like.

  “We are a gift and an enigma, one of the oldest communities to settle here. We were a village that rose up together and came to the New World after the elders determined there was nothing left to be gained in Scotland. Eighteen families came to make a fresh start. They called their new home Woodside. They were devoutly faithful to Christ and the true and literal teachings of the Word of God. At some point, one of our priests began to speak of the Holy Spirit and the gifts given to everyone in the church. He told us that the Spirit wanted us to use these gifts in service to Him and each other, and he would show us how to recognize and develop them.”

  “When was this?” he asked.

  “Two hundred years ago. Ever since then, families have shown certain special abilities. Mostly, outsiders would never be able to tell that people had gifts above what was normal. My in-laws have the gift of hospitality, for instance. They run the hotel and other vacation properties. People who stay with them keep the memories of the most pleasant stay they can ever recall, though they can’t put their finger on exactly why. My parents were teachers.”

  “And your gift isn’t so easy to hide. You can heal people—not just by practicing medicine.”

  “Yes. At one time the Holy Spirit worked healing through me.”

  “Those at the clinic in East Bay, who thought you were so gentle and professional, they noticed their hurts healed faster. People said so. Is that true? But why didn’t it work every time? Sometimes, though, after you began working there I could tell that you were more tired than I ever was. It’s more than making people better with your touch, isn’t it? You feel it, somehow.”

  Ted concentrated on the slow rise and fall of his chest as he lay warm in the church. Others were here; he sensed the presence of more members of the village quietly moving into the dark recesses of the old church. He was not as freaked out as he thought he should have been. Although he trusted Grace, he did not know the rest of these people and the scene smacked of a horror story of human sacrifice. The tension mounted while they waited. Ted tried to wiggle his hands and toes. He was not tied to the bed or restrained in any way, but he knew he was losing the battle of mobility quickly.

  Once he understood what Grace’s gift would do to her, he tried to make her stop. If he could, he would get up and leave. Even if she believed she could help him, there was no way he would be the instrument of her pain. It no longer mattered what happened to him in this earthly life. Now that he finally understood death was only the beginning, he longed for something better.

  Grace had explained more about her gift on the drive. “It’s not magic. Although I think after a while I treated it that way myself. Jonathan tried to study the phenomenon at school. He went to the philosophy department and then the experimental psychology people. Poor Jonathan. How do you convince people that something so strange is real, without being able to offer proof? He watched it happen constantly. He researched any shred of evidence of reports that certain people, never clinically studied or proved, of course—only rumors—had the ability to transfer hurts and certain diseases through themselves away from a patient so that they both recovered. He called it empathy—not the imaginative form, but an empirical form.”

  He let her talk on, trying to picture her as a child and as a young woman. Had she always had to try to explain herself? And what had been the gift of her husband, if he couldn’t do the same thing, yet was a doctor?

  “We went to school together, you know,” she said. “I earned my degree as a Physician’s Assistant while he got his MD. It somehow gave a sense of reality to what I could do, at least to Jonathan. He could accept my gift a little better. But it never changed the fact it was—is—a miracle. There is nothing that will change that. And I didn’t regret the learning of course. The knowledge of why God made our bodies w
ork the way they do didn’t lessen the awe.”

  Grace pulled off the road into a turn-around to a view of a great wildlife refuge. She stopped the engine and went on with her tale. “My grandmother had the gift. It started when she was young. But it really came out during World War Two. Captured Japanese were brought into the POW camp set up for Germans right outside town. The army doctor was somewhat reluctant to treat the prisoners who killed his only sister at Pearl Harbor. There were too few medics to help and no one cared much about how the prisoners were treated. Members of the Town Council, Grandmother included, went to visit to see if anything could be done for the men there. Once she saw that medical treatment was, oh—less than satisfactory, she stepped in.” Grace shoved her hair back and opened the window. The air was damp.

  “One and one-half years since you came into my life,” Ted mused. “I never understood you and I’m sorry. It pains me to know that only now I am learning these things about your life. I shouldn’t believe your story, but I love you and can’t picture this as anything less than truth. I’ve been so selfish.”

  “These are things I didn’t want anyone to know,” she reminded him, taking his hand, laying it against her cheek. His breathing calmed.

  “Grandmother touched the prisoners. Their wounds went away. Twenty years later she healed a little girl with leukemia. Grandmother died. But I lived. Afterward I went to church with my parents to offer thanks and while praying, I bled from my hands and feet” —she touched his forehead— “and here, where the crown of thorns lay on his head.” She touched his ribcage under his heart. “And where he was speared in the side. It was the sign of my gift—my gift of healing. I never questioned it. I was proud. Maybe too proud. Maybe I began to wonder who was worthy to receive the results of this gift.”

  “The wounds don’t just go away,” Ted said. “Something happens to you, like when you helped Jimmy.”

  “Not always, but yes, it does.”

  “And when someone is so sick, has something so wrong, like when you had leukemia, you could die if you touch him?”

  “Yes. Jonathan was in so much pain,” she whispered.

  Ted could hardly lift his arms but forced himself to tug her shoulder, to pull her against his chest. He awkwardly soothed her hair with a hand gone numb. “Grace, you tried. I can’t believe that Jonathan wanted you to risk yourself like that, or that he would have blamed you.”

  “Maybe I didn’t want to badly enough.”

  “I don’t accept that! And you don’t, either.”

  “When I first saw you, I knew that it must be…that it must be—right—for me to be here. I thought that I just had to touch you and I would be forgiven.”

  She sat up. “But I was resentful for a long time that God would want that of me—to try to heal you when I couldn’t help Jonathan. I didn’t know you, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to help you, or that it would be worth it for me to try. You got better, and I thought I wouldn’t need to, need to…”

  She looked up at him, tears rolling down her cheeks. “It had been so long since I’d felt anything like love, even for Jonathan at the end. I felt sorry for him and especially for myself. After I got to know you, I couldn’t help it. I fell in love with you. I felt more guilty for not being able to remember the kind of love that Jonathan and I had.” She looked down at her fingers. “That should not have happened. I don’t know if I can help you. God seems to have deserted me, took the gift away. What if I can’t help you? I don’t know that I could go on…if anything, if it didn’t…if God didn’t let me go with you.”

  Go with him? But she was taking him to her home.

  He knew then that she did not mean Woodside. He tried to tell her to turn around. She had not listened, of course.

  And now he was here in her home church, in some insane ritual that should have frightened him much more than it did. Where was she, anyway?

  So be it. He blinked. There she was, at last.

  Ted looked up at her, focused on the halo of the hair that escaped her pins. When he saw the blood in her hair, he began to struggle.

  Grace leaned over him. “Shh, Ted, peace. Be still. It’s all right. I’m here. I’m all right.”

  She watched him close his eyes. “This isn’t as much for you as it is necessary for me,” she said to quiet him further. “I love you,” she whispered. And she knew everything would be all right, that love was really what Paul had said to his church in Corinth, “the greatest” of the three foundations of faith. Not only love for this man. It was the love that Christ showed; this love that he asked his followers to pass on.

  Jonathan never really believed in miracles, even if he did accept salvation. That was why he studied the gift at school, trying to explain and rationalize it, when all he needed was faith and hope. But Ted did have that kind of faith.

  Grace looked at Reverend Edwards and Lena. The Reverend nodded. Lena’s eyes filled with tears.

  “This is for always,” she whispered to Ted. His chest heaved. She continued, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God…”

  Pushing back her sleeves above her elbows, she leaned over Ted’s still, washed-out form. She eased down to his left side, she touched her chest to his, forehead to forehead, nose to nose and lips to lips. After a moment she saw blinking stars in a black background as she realized she no longer had breath. She collapsed fully against him.

  Ted’s chest began to lift and fall in a terrible slow rhythm again and Grace eventually heaved a breath of her own, shaking. The murmuring prayers from the gathering church flowed softly over her and she could sit upright again. She stood and took his hands in her own, so cold, yet oddly large and strong, the tendons and muscles still firm. She prayed, “When I consider the work of your fingers…”

  Gradually, color returned to Ted’s hands and wrists. She took them and placed the palms on her collarbones above her breasts and his fingers around her neck, turning into him to do so. She leaned one hip against the gurney to reach above his wrists to his elbows and shoulders.

  Grace shuddered as wave upon wave of tingly pain coursed along each nerve ending. She gasped for air. Her hands could not entirely encircle his biceps and she bent forward to feel all around his arms and shoulders while leaning her torso back to keep the contact of his hands on her own shoulders. It was so cold, yet great drops of sweat wandered down her temples. Ted’s skin began to take on a healthy definition.

  She struggled to keep going. Her fingertips felt on fire.

  Reaching for his head, feeling his scalp with her fingers, she convulsed as the pain of his hurt traced across her own skull. Her skin tore; she felt it open and something rolled down the side, tickling her cheek on its way into her ear and then her eye. With a groan she tipped forward onto Ted’s bare chest.

  She couldn’t move. What was wrong? Something was wrong. The pain was blinding, suffocating, and she breathed shallowly, trying not to vomit.

  Ted opened and shut his eyes rapidly. He saw Lena clearly. What was so heavy on his chest? Grace? She was so still. Please…

  He reached up and took her shoulders, surprised he had feeling, that the strength had come back to his shoulders and hands. There. Had she fallen and hurt her head? Rusty-colored patches of blood flaked from her hair.

  No. She must have touched him. This wound on his head was an old, old hurt. Why was she feeling it now? Something must be wrong. He clutched her again, determined to break contact, to push her away and end her suffering. He wouldn’t let her be hurt any worse.

  Lena appeared. Why would they let this happen? Did they hate her, after all?

  Grace writhed. She resisted his grip and pulled back. He felt her fingers on his cheeks. She shuddered deeply and moved on down his throat, the back of his neck. His skin was so warm it hurt where her touch lingered.

  A noise like dried corn shocks in the field whispered from the dark.

  “We are gathered in this place
,” singing voices echoed along the high ceilings and walls.

  He could turn his head. He looked at the altar and saw people kneeling. Tears streamed into his ears and hair as he lay helpless, yet accepting Grace’s gift. He moved his right forefinger to touch her jaw and prayed with all the strength and spirit that he knew.

  At his touch, mildly shocking prickles tingled down his palm. She seemed to draw strength from him and moved on down his body, feeling along his spine as she reached underneath him in a mortal hold. Ted’s hands slipped from her shoulders to grip the side of the bed. Lena, Joshua, and Mark were ready to catch her.

  The four of them completed the task, each of the other three accepting some of the damage the lesions had made on his nerves, the wasted muscles, into themselves, helping Grace bear it.

  Music, but not music, shimmied along the rafters. “Sorrow and love flow mingled down.”

  Ted recognized the quiet hymn from the dark womb of the church. An Easter song, he thought, but so appropriate here and now, where the love of Christ was being acted upon in the most intimate way he could have never imagined before. This was worship, but nothing like he knew back home.

  Then he was alone and cold. What had happened?

  They took her away. She looked so still and white. He panicked and swung his feet over the edge of the makeshift bed. Someone gripped his arm.

  “No! Don’t keep me from her now!”

  “Hush!” The big man, Jeremiah Edwards, commanded. “No one is trying to stop you, son.”

  Jeremiah’s look of deep sorrow and pain frightened Ted into trembling again. He willed himself to look over at the huddled forms on the floor of the sanctuary outside the circle of the spotlight. The congregation was quiet as death.

  Jeremiah helped him to his feet and draped a sheet around him.

  He stumbled crazily, not yet fully in command of the long-unused muscles. Plush carpet squished through his bare toes. Coolness rushed against his legs as he left the warmth of the gurney to drop heavily on the step to the altar next to her.