by Anise Eden
Pete removed his cowboy hat.
I suddenly felt awkward. “I’m going to do what now?”
Asa clarified, “You’ve had the attunement, so now the healing energy is flowing through you. You don’t have to do anything to make it happen. You just have to open the communication, and the Reiki will do the rest.”
I thought I understood, even though it didn’t make any sense. “So I draw the symbols in the air, put my hands on Pete’s head, and then ask silently if there is anything he needs healed? And then it gets healed?”
“Right, you got it!” Asa clapped. “Oh, and his subconscious might talk to you. You might hear it in your mind like a conversation. You’ll know the healing is done when you feel his energy starting to pull away from you.”
“I’ll hear him talking in my head?”
“Maybe, maybe not. If you do, you can tell Pete what you heard afterwards, and he’ll either verify it for you or tell you it was all in your imagination.”
“Oh good.” I was grateful to hear that someone else was leaving open the possibility that this could all turn out to be completely imaginary.
“Okay,” Asa said, “go for it!”
I leaned forward slightly and murmured behind Pete’s ear. “Pete, are you ready for this?”
“I’m ready for anything.” I heard the smile in his voice.
“Okay, here goes!” I studied the doodle again for a minute then started to blush as I felt Asa and Ben looking at me. “Don’t watch, you guys. You’re making me nervous.” They muttered their apologies and obediently wandered off.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, then drew the doodles in the air over Pete’s head and placed my hands on his hair. I noticed that Pete had mean hat head. Remember what you’re supposed to be doing, I admonished myself. I figured I’d better give it an honest try so that I could have something to report back to Asa.
I did my best to think at Pete: Pete, this is Cate. Is there anything that I can help you heal today?
There was silence. I waited a few moments. I felt a bit silly, but I knew it would be bad form to give up right away.
Then out of nowhere, the middle of my chest filled with a screaming pain. I fought to catch my breath and wondered if I was having a heart attack. Then a quiet sense of recognition overcame me. I knew that feeling very well. It was grief, but it didn’t belong to me.
A wailing sound filled my head. Pete? Is that you?
Images flashed through my mind. A man who looked like an older version of Pete. A sweet-looking middle-aged woman. A bright-eyed girl of about sixteen.
Your family. You lost them?
Yes, I heard Pete think.
What happened? I tried to breathe through the pain.
They’re fine. They’re alive, he thought, but they don’t speak to me. I’m dead to them.
Why? I pleaded. Their faces looked so full of affection; I couldn’t understand.
Because I’m with Kai, he thought. The grief in my chest began to mix with other feelings: warmth, devotion, love.
Oh. I gasped as the meaning of what he was saying branded my heart. Pete, I’m so sorry.
I felt his energy pull away from me. The wailing sound grew softer, and the pain in my chest started to abate. Eventually, I removed my hands from his head and collapsed backward into my chair. Asa and Ben walked back in our direction as Pete turned his chair around to face me. He was smiling until he saw the stricken look on my face. “You okay?”
I threw my arms around Pete and squeezed him hard. “Oof,” he said, and I heard Asa and Ben’s footsteps quicken.
Tears started to fall from my eyes. “Oh, Pete, I’m so sorry!” I clung to his flannel shirt as Asa and Ben worriedly asked what was going on.
I felt Pete’s arms tentatively go around my shoulders. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said, “stall the waterworks! What are you sorry for?”
He gently pushed me away from him. Ben and Asa stood over us, waiting to hear my answer.
I recalled that according to Asa, I had been talking to Pete’s subconscious. He might not even have been aware of what he was feeling. Suddenly feeling very protective of Pete, I wondered whether I should share anything about what I’d seen and heard, particularly in front of Asa and Ben.
Pete seemed to understand my hesitation. “It’s all right, Cate. Go ahead and tell us what happened. This isn’t my first stint as guinea pig.”
Ben handed me a tissue. “Yeah,” he chimed in, “this is all part of your training. Besides, Pete volunteered.”
Well, he was asking, and it was supposed to be healing. Maybe it would actually help him. I did my best to dry my eyes, then took Pete’s hands between mine and looked up at him. “I’m so sorry, Pete. About your family.”
His blue eyes darkened. “Oh yeah. That.”
A lump formed in my throat. “Does it always feel that bad?”
He sighed, and I knew that he understood the question. “It’s always there, but probably more so today. It’s Lydia’s birthday.”
Lydia, his little sister. My muscles seemed to lose all their tone, and my torso fell forward until my head was resting on his shoulder. “Oh, Pete.”
He patted my hair. “It’s okay, Cate,” he said, but his voice was particularly raspy. “I’ve learned to live with it. It’s like everything else. Some days are harder than others.”
“Right.” I realized that I had better pull it together before I made Pete feel worse. I forced myself to sit back in my chair and tried to rub some life back into my face. I did my best to smile. “Thanks, Pete.”
“Thank you,” he said, and there was real gratitude in his eyes—for what, I didn’t know. I felt like all I had done was dredge up his pain. I could tell he was putting on a brave face. He put his hat back on, pulling the rim down a bit lower than usual. “Ben, you done with me? I got some stuff to do.”
“Sure,” Ben said. “Thanks, Pete.”
As Pete walked off and up the stairs, Asa sat in the chair facing me. His mouth was hanging slightly open. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. And to my surprise, it was the truth. Aside from feeling sympathy for Pete, I felt unexpectedly light. Pete’s grief and pain had left me completely the moment I removed my hands from his head. I tried to explain to Ben and Asa that when I submerged into clients, I always carried some of their pain back with me, but that hadn’t happened this time. Discovering that Reiki had no unpleasant side effects was a welcome revelation.
“Exactly!” Asa said. “This time, you weren’t doing the healing. The Reiki energy was doing it. With these techniques, you shouldn’t have any hangovers.”
“But I’m not really sure I did any healing,” I said. “I think I made him feel worse.”
Asa shook his head. “No, believe me, what you did was healing. You brought his grief out into the open where he can deal with it. Plus you shared his burden, and that’s always helpful.”
I smiled at Asa. I wasn’t sure I believed him, but I was touched by his optimism.
Ben couldn’t resist putting in his plug for the program. “This is why you’re here, Cate. You can learn how to use your gifts without hurting yourself.”
“Okay,” I said softly. “I’m starting to get it.”
Asa turned to Ben. “Do we have time to teach her another technique?”
“I don’t know.” Ben turned to me and murmured, “Do you feel up to another one?”
“Yes,” I said, not wanting to disappoint Asa. “Sure.”
“Oh good. You’ll love this one!” Asa started drawing another, more complex doodle. “You take a photo of the person you want to heal, or write their name on a piece of paper. Then you draw this symbol over it, hold the piece of paper in your hands, and send a healing intention out to them. It’s called Distance Healing.”
Ben shot Asa a warning look. “Wait a minute—”
What Asa was saying would have sounded totally crazy to me had it not been for what had happened with Pete. Like a hea
vy door slamming into place, my mind locked immediately onto one person: Elana. “You mean, you send them Reiki, and they receive it no matter where they are?”
“That’s right.”
“Since you’re doing it from a distance, is it psychokinesis, like empath healing?”
“No,” Asa explained, “because it’s not something you’re doing under your own power. Reiki is an independent energy source. You’re just channeling it.”
This time, Ben’s interruption sounded final. “Okay, slow down.” He placed a hand on Asa’s shoulder. “This isn’t a good technique for Cate right now. She can open portals, remember?”
“Oh right. I forgot.” Asa nodded. “Cate, when you use this technique, you could open a temporary portal to the person you’re trying to heal. It would only stay open while you were actually doing the Reiki, but depending on who you connect to—”
“It could still be too much for you to handle right now.” Ben retrieved my protective pendant from Asa’s desk where we had put it for safekeeping. “I think we should save that technique for later, when she has more of the basics down.”
Asa shrugged. “Sorry, I get ahead of myself sometimes.”
“No problem,” I said casually, trying to conceal my emerging larcenous intent.
I thought of Elana sitting in Washington Hill Hospital, trying to deal with all that Don had put her through. I couldn’t help feeling somewhat responsible. If I hadn’t been so broken that I’d had to take so much time off, or if I had been a better therapist to her in the first place, perhaps I could have helped her avoid the pain she was in.
And as things stood, chances were that I wouldn’t even get back to work in time to help support her when she got out of the hospital. Who knew what further damage Don had done when he had visited her? The thought made me vaguely ill.
From the way he reacted to Asa even bringing up the Distance Healing technique, however, it was clear that Ben would not support any attempt by me to use it. I decided to grab what might be my only chance to get a few moments alone with Asa’s notebook.
“That was amazing, Asa,” I cooed. “You’re a great teacher. Thank you so much!”
“I’m glad you liked it,” Asa said with a shy grin.
Ben fastened Kai’s pendant back around my neck. “Okay, Asa, go get some lunch. We’ll be right up.”
Asa started toward the stairs. “Awesome, today is Thai day. I can smell it from here!”
Ben’s hand fell to my elbow. He stared intently at me. “What you said about when you submerge into your clients, how you bring some of their pain back with you. Did that happen with me that night? Did you take on some of my pain?”
I pressed my lips together and tried to decide whether to tell him the truth.
“Tell me the truth,” he said.
That convinced me: Ben must be at least partially telepathic. “All right,” I said, resting my hand on his arm. “Yes, it happened with you that night. But it’s just part of the process. I knew exactly what to expect. Besides, it was my idea, remember? I asked you to let me do it for my own purposes.”
A deep indentation formed between his eyebrows. “Cate.” He sighed heavily. “I had no idea. If I had—”
“Don’t.” I squeezed his arm. “I was happy to take some of that burden from you. It meant a lot to me to be able to help.”
He ran a hand roughly through his hair. “I appreciate your willingness to do that. You helped me more than you know, and for that I’ll always be grateful. But no more empathic submergence, okay? Not until you’ve finished your training.” His voice became gruff. “And no more submerging into me, ever. I don’t want you taking on anything more of mine.”
I mentally kicked myself. I should never have said anything about the effect submerging had on me. I’d let my enthusiasm about Reiki get the better of me, and now Ben felt guilty. “Okay, understood.”
It only took a second for Ben to dial his emotions back down. “You need to be protecting yourself from negative emotions right now, not absorbing more.”
“I got it,” I said softly. “I am really encouraged by this Reiki stuff, though. I don’t feel any after-effects at all.”
Ben tried to smile, but couldn’t quite pull it off. “I’m glad to hear that.”
A break in the conversation: that was my moment. It was time for my secret mission. “Listen, go ahead without me. I’ll be up in a minute. I just need to use the ladies’ room.”
“I can wait here…”
I gave my best eye roll. “I know how to find my own way up the stairs, Ben.”
He managed a genuine smile. “All right. See you upstairs.”
I waved as I walked toward the bathroom. But as soon as I heard his feet hit the second floor, I crept back to Asa’s cubicle. I tore a blank piece of paper out of his notebook, wrote Elana’s name on it, and folded it in half. Then I carefully removed my necklace and placed it on Asa’s desk.
I took a deep breath and gathered my courage. I sat in the chair with the folded paper in my lap and put Asa’s notebook on the floor next to me, opened to his drawing of the Distance Healing symbol. Then I traced the symbol in the air over the folded paper and held it between my hands, closing my eyes.
“Elana Bruter,” I whispered as I tried to picture her in the hospital. “I am sending you Distance Healing.”
Before I could form another word, it was as though I had been swallowed by an icy tsunami. I felt my whole body turning to stone: my arms and legs, my head, my torso. My lungs were cold and unmoving; I couldn’t breathe. My stone heart stopped beating.
What’s going on? I thought desperately as I tried to pull air into my lungs. Nothing. As I struggled to make sense of what was happening, my limbs felt heavier and heavier. It was like I had been dropped into a deep, inky pool of water, but rather than swimming, I was falling, falling…
There was no pain when I hit the floor, only a jolt and a loud crashing sound. I heard voices and feet running down the stairs. I couldn’t open my eyes.
I’m dying. The realization washed over me in a cold wave. Ben…
I heard Ben’s voice shouting, “Cate, can you hear me?” Someone rolled me onto my back and straightened out my stone limbs. “She’s not breathing. Pete, get the defibrillator! Come on, let’s go, let’s go!” Something sharp pressed into my forehead, and I heard what sounded like Kai’s voice, chanting. I felt a light pressure on my feet.
My whole body lurched as something pounded into the stone of my chest. “One! Two!” I heard Ben count with each blow. As the seconds flowed by, the voices and sensations seemed to grow farther and farther away. No, please. No, no, no…Suddenly, a point of pure pain formed in my chest and opened like a flower.
“There’s a pulse!” I heard Pete shout. The pounding and Ben’s counting stopped, and I heard sounds that didn’t make sense: the whisper of scissors cutting cloth, a whining beep. “Clear!”
My icy self shattered as pain screamed along my limbs and life exploded back into my body. I gasped air violently into my lungs, and my heart lurched into an excruciating beat.
I wanted to cry out, but breathing was a more urgent need. I swallowed mouthfuls of air and reached out to hold onto something, anything. My hands found someone’s arms. I clutched at them and held on for dear life.
The sharp object was still pressing into my forehead close to where Kai was chanting. I became aware that there were hands on my shoulders and feet. After what seemed like an eternity, my breathing and heartbeat began to resemble their usual rhythm. I was able to open my eyes.
The first thing I saw was Ben. He was kneeling at my side, and it was his arms I was clutching. His face hovered above mine, cracked with heartbreak.
My heart hammered, and I knew in that moment that more than anything else, I never wanted to see such an expression on his face again. Tears formed in my eyes and rolled down the sides of my face. Barely able to find my voice, I whispered, “Sorry.”
Ben sat motionless for a few m
oments, staring at me as though seeking reassurance that I was really back. Once he was satisfied, he straightened up and rocked back onto his heels. I let go of his arms and my hands fell to my sides. Ben rested his hands on his thighs and closed his eyes.
“It’s okay, everybody. She’s okay,” he said, his voice hoarse.
Pete knelt on the other side of me and began poking and prodding. I tore my eyes away from Ben and looked around.
Kai was kneeling at my head with a red scarf wrapped around his neck. He stopped chanting and removed what turned out to be a crystal from where he had been pressing it against my forehead. Asa was sitting at my feet, which he was cradling in his hands. He looked stricken as he slid away from me. Eve was standing to one side of Ben, looking down at me with her mouth open in horror.
I slowly took in the rest of the scene. A chair had fallen over next to me, presumably the one I had been sitting in. I saw that I had knocked over the standing lamp that had been near Asa’s desk. The light bulb flickered erratically. Vani was over by the stage and appeared to be looking for something.
Ben ran a hand through his hair. Then he stood up and did a quick scan of the room. His expression darkened as he spotted my necklace on Asa’s desk. He pointed it out to Kai. Then he looked around at everyone but me. “All right, let’s give her some air.” As one, the others slowly pulled away, and I became aware that my shirt and bra had been cut down the center and were hanging open. Mortified, I grasped for the edges of the fabric and tried to cover my chest as a painful flush heated my cheeks.
Vani appeared at my side, wide-eyed and pale, and quickly draped a blanket over me. “Sorry about that,” she whispered.
I felt Kai’s fingers fumbling as they fastened my necklace back around my neck. “What happened?” he asked.
“Leave us,” Ben barked. Vani, Eve, and Asa melted away from me and up the stairs. Pete walked over to the stage and began packing his medical equipment into a bag. Kai stood up but lingered nearby.
