Walking Through Walls

by Philip Smith

  Just as my father predicted, Mrs. Cortez was released and sent home two days later. Her recovery was slow. For the longest time, it appeared that she would never regain her health—a fact that Christina was quickly accepting. But after two months, Mrs. Cortez was up, moving around, and able to sit outside to take the fresh air for about an hour a day. She gradually began to eat normal food instead of baby food, and her spirits grew stronger. Daily, my father monitored her progress and sent her healing energy. About four months after the operations, Mrs. Cortez was back eating moros, sofrito, vaca frita, and other staples of Cuban cuisine. In short, she was her old self again.

  It was around this time that a man and woman walked into my father’s office late one afternoon looking for beaded draperies for their bedroom. They discussed the particular look they were after, and my father began making suggestions. Suddenly my father turned to the man and asked, “What do you do? Are you a doctor?”

  The man said, “Yes, a radiologist.”

  My father loved having doctors as clients because he could pick their brains and learn firsthand about medicine. “Doctor, if you don’t mind, I have a question. Can you tell if someone has cancer from an X-ray?”

  “No, not really. What you can see is a shadow on the X-ray, and that might indicate cancer, but no, you cannot see cancer on an X-ray.”

  “So, if someone had an X-ray that showed a shadow in their colon area, a doctor might think that they had colon cancer?”

  “Probably yes. But that does not mean that they have cancer.”

  “Do you have a card? I like to keep the business cards of my clients.”

  “Sure.” The doctor took out his business card and handed it to my father.

  After studying the card, my father said, “Oh, I see you work at St. Francis.”

  “That’s right, I’m the staff radiologist there.”

  “By any chance, would you be familiar with Mrs. Sonia Cortez? She was recently operated on in your hospital.”

  “Oh, yes, I know the case well. I reviewed the X-rays.”

  “So, you looked at the X-rays and determined that she had cancer?”

  “Well, like I said, she had a shadow, and it was determined that she was at risk, and the best option was to perform a procedure.”

  “But couldn’t that shadow have also been an impacted colon?”

  “Yes, it could have been, and if I remember—it was a while ago—I think that was in fact what she had.”

  “So the surgery was unnecessary, and if she had been given an enema or a laxative, she would not have needed surgery?”

  The doctor began to shift in his seat. He had clearly said too much already. “No, surgery was absolutely necessary because we wouldn’t have known otherwise. We needed to take precautions.”

  “Precautions?”

  “Yes, if the surgery had not been done, then the cancer could have spread.”

  “But she didn’t have cancer.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Then how could it have spread?”

  “Mr. Smith, I was not the surgeon on the case. I only read the X-ray.”

  “But it was based on your recommendations that the surgery was performed.”

  “Why are you so interested in this case? What has this got to do with you?” The doctor was becoming aggressive.

  “Let’s just say I’m an interested bystander. I knew that Mrs. Cortez didn’t have cancer, and I tried to stop them from operating when they didn’t have to. As a result, she ended up having three operations that almost killed her and nearly destroyed her life.”

  “Well, I don’t think they had any choice. If they had simply ignored the shadow, and it was cancer, she would have died. Even though there were difficulties, she’s alive. The doctors did a good job.”

  “But they didn’t have to operate.”

  The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “How did you know that Mrs. Cortez didn’t have cancer? Sounds like you are guessing after the fact.”

  “Speak with Dr. Siegel. I’m sure he’ll remember me as the man who tried to stop him from operating, but he went ahead anyway after I told him not to.”

  “But how did you know?”

  “I’m psychic. Not all of the time, but much of the time.”

  “What do you mean, psychic? I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

  “I can look into people’s bodies, give them a diagnosis, and heal their illness without surgery or medication.”

  The doctor started laughing. “You mean like science fiction?” He continued to laugh and slapped his knee good-naturedly. “You can look inside someone’s body—that’s a good one.”

  “Well, at the moment, I can tell you that you have been plagued by a bad back for the last seven years. You’ve tried medication, and there was some minor surgery, but that didn’t work. This condition affects your ability to stand at work.”

  The doctor just looked at my father. He didn’t say a word.

  My father continued, “If you want, I can get rid of your backache right now, and you’ll never have a problem again.” The doctor continued to just stare at my father. Without waiting for him to respond, my father suggested, “Okay. Let’s try something. I believe that you are in some discomfort at the moment. Right now it feels like a cross between a pinch and a needle sticking you. Give me a minute, and I will remove that pain. Do you think that is possible?”

  “No,” replied the doctor. He gave my father a look of annoyance. Now his wife was staring at my father as well. She gave her husband a look that said, “Let’s get out of here; the hell with the beaded curtains.”

  My father said reassuringly, “You don’t have to do a thing. Just sit there. Please relax and let the healing take place.” With that, my father stood up and walked behind the doctor’s chair. He took three deep, noisy breaths, closed his eyes, and held his hands straight out in front of him. Starting at the doctor’s head, my father moved his hands slowly up and down the back of the chair. He paused briefly at the doctor’s lower back. When he was finished, my father walked around the desk and sat back down in his chair. He looked at the doctor and said, “Stand up and tell me if the pain is still there.”

  Slowly the doctor got up, stretched, and walked around the room. Next he bent down and quickly touched his toes. He didn’t say a word until he sat down, then he marveled, “This is the first time in years that I could move without pain. How’d you do that?”

  “You’re not really interested in how I did it. Let’s just say that this is what I do.”

  The doctor’s wife suddenly chimed in, “Maybe you can help me. I’ve had arthritis in my left hand for the past year, and nothing is making it go away. I can hardly hold my golf club. In fact, it’s only getting worse, even with all the injections they are giving me.”

  “Of course, just relax. You hand will be good as new in just a minute or two.”

  She placed her hand on the desk and pointed to the knuckle at the base of her thumb. “Here is where it hurts the most, right at this joint.”

  My father closed his eyes and placed his open hand above hers. He let it hover there for about a minute and then started rotating it clockwise. After he took his hand away, he opened his eyes and said, “That’s it, the pain should be gone. You won’t have any more problems with that hand.”

  The woman flexed her hand a few times, flicked her thumb back and forth, and slowly said, “Yes…yes, I think the pain is gone.” She let out a little laugh and looked over at her husband. Without saying a word, they both stood up and walked out of the office and never returned.

  ten

  In Shock

  “That’s correct. It’s the left eye. Yes, it’s a bit cloudy.”

  I thought I overheard my father talking to someone on the phone and didn’t want to interrupt. When I walked by his study, I noticed that he was at his desk, holding the pendulum in his right hand over an anatomy chart. “How long?” he asked. “Three days? Complete remission? Yes, it already
seems a bit clearer. Okay, thank you, Dr. Han.” No one else was in the room, and the phone was on the hook. My father was talking to himself.

  I poked my head in. “Hi, Pop. I wanted to ask you—”

  “Just a minute.” Holding up his left hand, he signaled me to stop talking. He then turned his attention back to the chart. “Okay, yes, I’ll look for that. Could you please check with me in three days? Thank you again for your help.”

  “Who were you talking to?” I was certain that my father had lost his mind since I last saw him an hour earlier.

  “Who? Oh, that was Dr. Han. He dropped by to check on my eye. It’s been hurting, and I couldn’t see so well.”

  “Who’s Dr. Han?”

  “My eye surgeon.”

  “Oh.”

  Over the last year, my father had been busy making tons of new friends—invisible friends. His relationship with the spirit Crystal had just been the start of his social networking with the invisible souls. All of a sudden he was on the A-list party circuit for the deceased. Doctors, physicians, Indian chiefs, and Tibetan monks were constantly dropping by to say hi. Each one would introduce my father to a buddy who specialized in a particular technique that he needed in his healing practice. One guy was a virologist, another an orthopedic surgeon, another was an enlightened master willing to instill cosmic consciousness in my father. At any given moment, Pop would be having a yakfest with someone on the other side who would be diagnosing one of his patients or training him in some new form of healing. Thank God that long distance to the dead was free, or he would have had some monster phone bill. As my father became more acquainted with their personalities, the dead became like relatives of an ever-expanding family. Sometimes they made him laugh, or they would annoy him with their constant prodding or their impatience over his inability to learn a new healing method. He interacted with them no differently than he did with anyone alive. To him there was no separation between the living and the dead.

  Daily, various spirits would check in with my father and dictate long, detailed messages on everything from new forms of advanced healing, to other medical issues, to personal matters of finance and love. Over the years, my father accumulated thousands of these messages from ethereal beings. Everyone including Sir William Osler, William James, and Dr. Edward Bach would drop in for a chat. Usually Pop would wake up around four in the morning to begin receiving his daily dictation. He would sit with a pen in one hand and his pendulum in the other. Slowly he would write down the words in a spiral notebook as they were being dictated or implanted in his mind by the communicating spirit. However, whenever there was an emergency, no matter what time of day, the spirits made their presence known and provided immediate diagnostic information. Each spirit had his or her own individual calling card—a specific signal to alert my father that he or she was present. Some tickled him on the back of his neck or tapped at the corner of his eye.

  While surrounded by spirits at home, I spent my days surrounded by normal high school kids whose concerns were limited to going steady and getting a new car. At their houses, they had to deal only with family members that they could actually see. They had no knowledge of the distant galaxies my father traveled to or the strange universe that I inhabited once I left school and went home.

  At the time, many of the girls in my high school class were getting nose jobs. They all went from those nice, thick, real-looking noses to those ridiculous noses that taper into a little ski jump on the end. I don’t know what they were thinking, but they all went to the same doctor one after another, especially around Christmastime. While they were busy changing their appearance, I wanted a complete brain job that would remake my life free of the supernatural influence. I was hoping that there was some sort of magic pill that could suddenly turn me into a normal kid, something I simply did not know how to be. As much as I tried to mimic my classmates in their speech, dress, and interests, it never quite worked. The strangeness of my daily home life prevented me from ever being one of them. How do you talk to another kid at recess and ask, “So, what spirits is your father talking to?” Or, “Yeah, last night after dinner, my dad dissolved a lung carcinoma; what is your dad’s success rate?” Unlike the other kids, I had no road map or guidance for growing up, such as joining the football team, dating a cheerleader, acing the SATs, or getting into law school. I needed a bit of help, and I didn’t want it to come from a dead person.

  Not knowing what else to do, I thought it might be a good idea to see a psychiatrist in the hope that he could cure me from my haunted life. Perhaps someone could make sense of everything for me and point me in the right direction. While I had no idea what I thought a psychiatrist might actually do for me, the thought of seeing somebody who supposedly had the tools to create normalcy provided a certain amount of relief—something along the lines of a lobotomy, but without all the cutting and drilling.

  I remembered a girl at school, Betty, telling me that her father was a psychiatrist. Everyone made fun of her. She was dumpy and ugly and seemed in deeper psychological trouble than I would ever be. But it was my only lead. I gave her father a call, explained who I was, and made an appointment. One day after school, I rode my bike over to his office with about six months’ of pocket money to pay for the session. His air conditioner was broken, so he suggested we meet in the garden. Only in Miami can you do analysis and get a tan at the same time.

  The good doctor leaned forward and with a warm smile said, “So what brought you here?”

  All my determination and nerve instantly vanished. I was terrified to tell him about what really went on at home, for fear that he might have both my father and me committed. No one, especially a psychiatrist, was going to believe stories about instantaneous healings, talking spirits, and alien communication. The previous night’s séance at the house had involved my father talking to a spirit who advised him on how to clear up kidney infections using boiled leaves from the backyard. I knew it was suicide to tell the shrink about this. I started to sweat. Coming here was not a good idea. In a panic, I mentioned the first thing that came to mind.

  “Um, I have this girlfriend, and I’m having a lot of sex, like, all the time…”

  “Well, that sounds normal. I assume you are using protection.”

  “Um, yeah. But then I sleep with other people too.”

  “And how does she feel about that?”

  “She thinks it’s funny.”

  “Funny?”

  “Yeah. She loves to hear about it.”

  “That’s interesting. What does she say when you tell her about your other activities?”

  “She laughs.”

  “I would think most girls would be upset if their boyfriend was dating other girls.”

  “Well, this is kind of different.” I knew we were getting way off track from my original intention. This type of questioning was all new to me, so I just followed his lead.

  “How so?”

  “Well, it’s not always other girls. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. It depends.”

  “I don’t understand. So if it isn’t other girls…Please don’t tell me you are having sex with animals.”

  “How do you have sex with animals?”

  “Could you please answer the question?” I could see that the doctor was getting upset.

  “I thought I did. I still don’t understand how you can have sex with animals.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “Sorry, so what are you asking?”

  “Who are you having sex with besides other girls?”

  “Well, see, sometimes I’m at these parties, and there are a lot of other hippies, and there might be three or four people having sex together, so it can be a couple girls with a guy or a few guys—kinda mix ’n’ match. So, if I’m at these parties, sometimes I join in if I like the people, and sometimes I don’t.”

  His face grew red, and his jaw tightened. “You are having sex with another man?”

  “Well, kinda all together.
Not really just with a man, but, like, a bunch of us fooling around.” This didn’t seem so unusual to me, having grown up around my father’s interior decorator colleagues, who were always sleeping with anybody and anything. I had developed a very open approach to sexuality, especially as part of my hippie free-love ethos, but I could tell that the doctor thought I had violated the most basic laws of humanity.

  His voice grew firm. “Let me tell you something, young man”—and here he stood up and began to scream at me—“A penis is meant for a vagina. Anything else is dangerous and abnormal. You are in crisis and in need of emergency care!”

  For a few more moments, the doctor stood there, snorting deep, hard breaths. The veins in his forehead were throbbing. After a long silence, during which he just glowered at me, he fell back into his chair. He gripped its arms, and his eyes nervously looked around the garden. He refused to look at me, as if I were some kind of leper. His reaction terrified me.

  I figured that since he was the doctor, he knew more than I did. “I must be really sick,” I thought. “He’ll probably put me on something like Nembutal, Miltown, or Thorazine, and maybe I’ll be institutionalized for a bit.” Part of my perverse teenage-rebellion phase was that I would rather take the advice of a medical doctor, no matter how outrageous or ill-founded, than that of my intuitive, powers-by-God father.

  I had never considered that what I was doing was immoral, unethical, or against nature. I hadn’t realized that having sex with a woman and a man was bad. In fact, I thought it was normal; it seemed very open and loving. But after listening to this psychiatrist’s warning, I was terrified that I had done irreversible damage to my karma. And, boy, was I going to catch hell in the next life.

  As he regained his composure, he said with a forced calm, “Fortunately, I have someone who treats people like you. It is urgent that you see him at least three times a week. He’s very busy, but I will get you in on an emergency basis.”