by Allison Rios
“It’s heal, honey. That’s what I did. That’s what AJ does. We heal.”
“I don’t … I don’t understand. You heal? Or you did. What do you heal?”
“A little bit of everything. Cancer. Flu. Depression. Lots of things, really.”
Addie thought for a moment. She thought of her mother; she thought of Robert leaving.
“So if you heal people, if there are these people like you walking around everywhere, then why are people still sick or hurt?”
Gram gathered Addie’s hands back up into hers again. It wasn’t an easy concept to understand, the rules that came with such a gift. It took Healers years of practice to understand everything that was a part of what they did, and Gram found herself needing to – for the first time ever – explain it in a manner that was as easy and fast as possible.
“Because not everyone can be healed,” she said softly. “We see things; the future of people’s lives. What we see shows us if we are allowed to heal someone.”
Addie listened intently, trying to process the thousands of thoughts swimming through her mind at the moment.
“We are governed by rules. To disobey means we offset the balance of the planet and of human life. It has a ripple effect that can touch generation upon generation, altering the future in a way it shouldn’t. We cannot heal everyone because we aren’t allowed to.”
Addie’s mind suddenly shot to AJ. The bruises and cuts he had disappearing. And then to Isabelle.
“Isabelle?” she asked, her lip quivering. She did not see it possible that Isabelle hadn’t deserved to live, hadn’t deserved to be saved by these people.
These people, she thought. AJ. Gram. The term disgusted her, as these were people she loved.
“It’s not easy to have to walk away. To let someone as precious as Isabelle go. I can say from experience, I’m sure every part of AJ ached to make her better and killed him to let her die. It is not our choice; the plans are laid out for us and we merely carry them out. He told me he saw her parents doing great things, helping many, many children. That’s why Isabelle had to go – so that her parents could take the fire that burned in their souls and use it to change the world. They will change the lives of thousands of children down the road.”
“It just doesn’t seem fair,” Addie said incredulous. She couldn’t let go of the idea that there are people out there choosing their fate, that every event isn't random or an act of God.
“And Robert? My mother? Grandpa?”
“Sometimes,” Gram replied, “People are just people. Like Robert. Maybe he just couldn’t be fixed, or maybe no one was around to fix him.”
Addie looked down, sniffling. The tears were starting again.
“What happened to you?” she inquired of Gram, looking back up. “What happened to your … I don’t even know what to call them. Super powers?”
“We call them a gift, honey,” Gram replied softly. “I gave mine up. I gave them all up for your grandfather.”
“You did? Why did you have to give them up?”
“If you love someone and you dedicate your life to them, you can no longer possess the gift. You cannot heal a person that you love without losing your gift because you cannot see the situation clearly. If that person is not meant to continue on this earth you could disregard that, costing future generations a great deal of pain or despair through your decision to change the path laid out from the beginning of time. So if you choose to give someone your heart, you choose to let go of your gift and live out your life as a mortal. I did that for Grandpa George. By the time he got sick, I couldn’t save him. I wouldn’t give up the time we had for anything. I don’t know if a Healer ever saw him. Those aren’t questions I will ever know the answer to, so I stopped asking them a long time ago. I still wouldn’t have changed any of the decisions I made. It brought me to him, and to you.”
Addie looked into her grandmother’s eyes. Gram knew her question without words. Why not AJ?
“AJ isn’t ready, Addie. From everything I’ve seen of that boy, he loves you. He is completely and totally in love with you. However, to choose to give his life to you would mean letting go of his gift. If he’d done that weeks ago, when you wanted him to, he wouldn’t have been there to save Rose. I’m sure that’s what he’s thinking, right now. It’s all too real to him as well – if he gives up his gift, he cannot protect both of you. He’d rather live a lonely life than let you or Rose be hurt. If that isn’t love and sacrifice, I don’t know what is.”
The thought shot through her heart.
“Do you understand?”
Addie nodded, the reality of his situation sinking in.
“Sometimes in life, it’s not need or want. It’s not that he doesn’t need you, because he does. He needs a friend. Being a Healer is a very lonely life sometimes. And it isn’t that he doesn’t want you, because you know that he does. You’ve felt it when you touch. It’s because of what he’d have to let go of, and what he’d have to live with. This is why he chooses to remain the Healer he is.”
She paused before adding to the sentiment.
“Plus, you don’t want to force him to choose you over his gift. If something does happen down the road to you or Rose, he will resent having had to make the choice. You don’t want that burden.”
Gram knew there would be no burden soon, as AJ’s gift would be taken. He would then be free to be with Addie if he chose. She didn’t want to relay that part of the story, however, in the event AJ had other plans with his life. No sense in getting Addie’s hopes up.
Addie’s heart sank. She had clung to hope, a tiny sliver of it in her heart that AJ was merely shy or needed to work things out. She figured after that he would come rushing to get her. That he would be her knight in white armor, saving her from the torment she had let her life become. And now she understood his distance, his solitude, his constant shunning of her advances. He would never be able to love her the way she wanted him to.
“What he did tonight is a good thing, Addie,” she whispered, patting her granddaughter’s knee. “What he did was save Rose’s life. He broke the rules to do it and he will suffer a punishment for it; for doing it in front of you. Yet he did it regardless. I know your heart is heavy. Carry that last thought with you, because that boy loves you enough to reap the repercussions of broken laws to ensure your heart stays intact and your baby is safe.”
Addie leaned back into the couch. The tears were stinging her eyes as she fought to hold them back. She wanted to scream, to cry. Rose was safe, and she would never be more thankful for anything in her life. She had lost so much, including her belief that she was in control.
“Why the photo albums, Gram?” she asked, wiping the tears from underneath her eyes. Her chest hurt from the crying and she hadn’t felt this tired in years.
“I think it’s time we talk about something else.”
“Oh dear God, what is it? I don’t know if I can take anymore tonight, quite honestly. I went from a world of normalcy to a world where wizards and warlocks might as well exist. I don’t understand all of this.”
“You never will, so get used to that feeling,” Gram replied, turning the cover of one of the dusty, old albums. “I used to be a Healer and I still don’t understand the way the world works. It’s not for you or me to understand, only to accept.”
She turned to look at Addie, her face growing serious. “You can’t talk about it, or tell anyone what AJ can do because it would put the order of the world at risk.”
She had no friends to share it with anyway, she thought. The world would think she was crazy, and Addie knew it.
“I won’t,” she whispered back quietly.
Gram pointed to a picture of Addie when she was a little girl, standing in front of her mother’s legs. The graceful, long fingers of the woman who gave birth to her Addie resting on her shoulders in an ancient memory. Both had grins as big as the sun, and Addie wore a grin across her face. The pictures were nice snapshots, although ones she didn�
�t remember. Her memories were of her mother in an asylum, mumbling to herself and not wanting to be touched. Addie recalled that hurting the worst – her mother not even wanting a hug from her.
“Your mother was a beautiful woman,” Gram said, smiling at the faces in the picture.
“Was,” Addie replied, a hint of disdain in her voice.
“Do you know why she was sick?”
Addie shook her head. She had never asked. She didn’t want to know what type of crazy. She figured when it genetically hit her, she didn’t want to know what was coming.
“She wasn’t crazy, Addie. When Healers like me give up their gift, it doesn’t mean we lose our genetics. We can still pass that on. Your mama got the gene. She had been a Healer, too. It was too much for her. She was a nurse, a smart one too. Had her degree at nineteen and went to work at the big hospital down the road. She didn’t discover she had the gift until she was twenty-one, in the midst of working in the pediatric ward. Her heart was so big and seeing children sick non-stop at work was hard enough. Add to that the ability to heal – yet only some of them – and you have a recipe for a broken woman. She was torn between healing one little sweetheart she shouldn’t and losing her gift, rendering herself never being able to heal anymore, or watching some suffer and die because she wasn’t allowed to touch them. It broke her heart and dealing with depression, she quit her job. She met your daddy and for awhile she was better. She gave it all up for him. When you came along, she started to worry again that she couldn’t save you if anything happened to you. As parents, we want to protect our children from anything harmful that might come their way; when you throw extras into the equation, the emotion becomes that much more powerful. We lost her for good, or at least her mind. Your daddy couldn’t handle it and skipped town. She wanted you to be normal, to have a better life, and so she turned herself into the asylum and left you with me.”
Addie looked at the pictures. It was a lot to take in. She had just spent most of her life hating her mother and it was all in vain. Her mother had loved her and had been a good person. The years and tears Addie had wasted on hate were disgusting to her now. She traced over the pictures with her finger, wishing that somehow the memories they portrayed would resurface in her mind so that she could hold onto them instead of push them away as she had done for so many years.
Then another thought occurred to her.
“Do I have this?” She reached for the back of her neck, feeling nothing at the base of her skull.
“No,” Gram smiled. “It skipped you. The powers-that-be probably decided you had enough to deal with in your life without having to add on another level of difficulty. Plus, you would have figured it out already. If it doesn’t surface by your early twenties, it’s not surfacing.”
Addie breathed a sigh of relief. While she hadn’t expected it, she did not want to be one of them. The responsibility and rules were a bit more than she imagined she could handle in life. She considered herself more of a free spirit.
“What am I supposed to do?” she asked quietly, hoping Gram had the words of wisdom to heal her heart, mind and soul simultaneously.
“Live. And love. Be a friend, be a mother. Be a good person. Do all those things and the rest will fall into place, exactly as it should.”
She turned her body back towards Addie, closing the album and placing it on the table.
“I meant it when I said you cannot speak of this to anyone. Not even Rose,” Gram said sternly now. “You not only put yourself at risk. You put AJ and the rest of the Healers at risk as well. Do you understand?”
Addie nodded her head. She didn’t understand and was still half-convinced she was trapped in a terrible dream she couldn’t awake from. The intensity of Gram’s voice brought her back to reality.
“What do I do about AJ?” Addie whispered, her gaze dropping to the floor.
“Just be his friend,” Gram replied. “He’ll need one of those. Especially you. Especially now. He’s probably worried out of his mind that he’ll lose you and Rose permanently; that you’ll be frightened by him and not want to see him.”
Addie didn’t feel that way; confused, yes, although no longer scared. She stood up, stretching her body out, hearing her bones creek and feeling the stiffness from the excitement of the evening. She walked towards the window, peeling back the curtain enough to peer out.
15 LOOK BUT DON’T TOUCH
She saw AJ from the window, sitting on a rocking chair on the front porch of the B&B, obviously exhausted and lost. Max came back out from inside, a glass in his hand. He handed it to his friend and crouched down next to him. It was apparent AJ didn’t want to move, or was not able to. Max stood up and looked around, hands on his hips. He placed a hand on AJ’s shoulder and Addie could see his mouth moving. AJ looked up at him, and then Max proceeded back into the house.
She closed the curtain and turned back to Gram.
“What do I do?” Addie felt so insecure, insignificant now in the grand scheme of how she was finding out life worked.
“Honey, there is a plan laid out for each one of us. The joy is that in that plan, we still have free will. We can deviate our own plans; the laws of the universe simply state that someone else can not deviate them for us. I can’t tell you what to do. What I can tell you though, from looking at that boy,” she said, pausing and peeking out the same curtain, “is that he could probably use a friend.”
Addie looked at Gram and then back to the window. She chewed nervously on her nail, the other hand wrapped around her own waist as if she needed to feel support. It was her “tell,” what she did when she was thinking.
She took a few steps towards the door, and then took a few steps back. She tried again, shaking her hands as if to shake all the nervousness out of her. With one hand on the door knob and a deep breath, she opened the door and closed it softly behind her.
Her clothes were still covered in blood, the night unfolding so quickly that she hadn’t even given thought to changing. She took careful and methodical steps; slowly down the front stairs and across the cool grass. She hesitated several times, taking a few steps towards the B&B and then turning back. Her limbs were shaking from the veracity of what had occurred such a short time ago still echoing in her mind. She felt terrified and intrigued as much as she felt confused.
If AJ saw her coming, there was no indication. She was no longer scared of him and of his abilities. She didn’t understand them and wasn’t sure she wanted to. Her heart and her mind both agreed on the simple fact that she couldn’t abandon him now after all he had done for her.
The first step up onto the porch creaked and AJ opened his eyes, his head resting on the rocking chair. She looked at him and froze. He felt as though she were scared he would hurt her.
“I can’t zap you,” he said, with a smile. Maybe lightening the mood would help. “I can’t set you on fire or anything either.”
She smiled. “I know.” Sliding her hand up the railing, she made her way slowly to the porch railing across from him. “Gram told me.”
“She told you?” AJ was a little shocked Gram would have revealed everything to her. “About me, I mean?”
“About her, too. She said she used to be like you.”
AJ nodded lightly.
“She said you do good things for people. You save lives.”
They only stared at each other, very little movement taking place. Their voices were soft and quiet, as if being any louder might hurt someone.
“Sometimes,” he replied.
“You saved Rose.”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice weak. “I couldn’t let..." he whispered, stopping himself. His voice was cracking. “I couldn’t let anything happen to her. To you.”
“Thank you AJ,” Addie whispered back, kneeling down next to him and putting his hand in hers. “Thank you for giving my baby back to me.”
AJ smiled and if for the rest of his life he was never able to heal another person, he’d relish in the fact that he had saved
Rose.
He always found it interesting how in the face of change or death, people became different. They transformed into these altered versions of themselves, as if they saw everything a little more clearly. Just as they were each like individual snowflakes, so different and making a journey to a new place on their own amongst an entire group of others, once they got to where they were supposed to be they bonded together to create something bigger, something more beautiful. And when their time in that place was up and they had to turn into something else to continue the circle of their lives, they began the process of making new steps in the same journey to do it all over again.
That was how he felt about his life; mostly the same steps, just a little different each time. He and Addie had spent a lot of time arguing about things in the past. Tonight began the peaceful and relaxing part of their journey.
“You don’t ever have to thank me,” he said. “I want to protect you.”
“I know,” she said, her thumb stroking the back of his hand. He wasn’t holding hers back, though it wasn’t because he didn’t want to. He didn’t have the energy to flex any of his muscles.
“Can I tell you something?” he asked. He had decided, sprawled out on the floor in the barn, that he wanted her to know how he felt about her and why he couldn’t be with her. Even if they had to spend their entire lives apart, only as friends, he wanted her to know it wasn’t because he didn’t want her or need her. He didn’t want her to feel rejected. And after what she’d just seen, he figured he just didn’t have that much to lose anymore. He was already facing the loss of his gift.
“Of course,” she replied, sitting back on her heels as she watched him carefully. “Although I can’t believe there’s more. I’m still reeling from finding out the world is…essentially round and not flat might be a good comparison.”
His body twitched as he struggled to sit up as much as he could. Using the strength he had left, he picked his head up so he could really look at her. She was striking. She had been beautiful from the moment he first set eyes on her on that country road on the outskirts of town. She wasn’t afraid of the woman she was, and she wouldn’t apologize for it. She was nearly fearless and had the notion to speak her mind given the opportunity. All of that added to how amazing she had come to be in his eyes.
