The Healing Season

by Ruth Axtell Morren

“Let me pray for you.”

  He glanced up at her from under his brows. “What? So God can heal me of this? Or so He’ll give me peace to leave this life gracefully?”

  “So that He may heal you,” she answered simply.

  He laughed sadly. “Oh, Althea, the day of miracles is over.”

  “Is it?”

  She had such a calm look in her eye that it made him feel a spark of hope. It was gone as quickly as it had come, his rational mind firmly in control.

  “I appreciate your wanting to help me, but I’m afraid I’ve seen too many others fall to this kind of cancerous growth to doubt my end.”

  “‘But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in His wings,’” she quoted softly.

  “Will some Scriptures change what is growing inside me?”

  “For ‘the Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword,’” she replied.

  “What about the little girl you were nursing? Didn’t she succumb to her malady?” he asked, referring to the private patient she had cared for the previous autumn.

  She looked down at her hands. “She did. It doesn’t change the fact that God is our healer and that His Son purchased our healing for us through the cross.”

  The words stirred him. He remembered the preacher who had preached a similar thing a few months back.

  “The Scriptures say Jesus bore our sins in His own body on the tree so that ‘we being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness, by whose stripes we were healed.’”

  He wanted to believe, but he didn’t dare. He knew his prognosis better than anyone.

  Instead of saying anything more, Althea stood and gently laid her hands on his head, covering his forehead with one and placing the other one atop his head. For a brief second, his thoughts went to Eleanor, remembering the touch of her hands.

  He squelched those thoughts. What was wrong with him? That blunder of his life was over. Soon, his whole life would be over.

  Gradually Althea’s words penetrated his understanding. The prayer was composed more of Scripture than of her own words, and he marveled at how well versed she was in God’s Word. Scripture after Scripture dealing with healing washed over him, and he felt revived. When she said the final “amen,” he was able to smile at her and say a heartfelt thank-you.

  “I will continue praying for you,” she replied, then pressed her lips together as if preparing to say more. He waited as she clasped her hands together. “I felt in my spirit as I prayed that God has healed you—”

  He couldn’t help the hope that arose in him.

  “But,” she continued, looking at him earnestly out of her grayish-green eyes—so different from the shade of gray of Eleanor’s, “now it’s a matter of walking in faith.”

  Faith. The word resounded in the stillness. Did he know what faith was? He’d been hearing the word for as long as he could remember. He’d grown up with the concept, heard his father and many an eminent preacher preach about it, but did he know what it was? “How do I do that?” he asked, feeling humbled at the prospect.

  Once again she quoted Scripture. “‘Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.’”

  “In other words, I must apply myself to hearing God’s Word?”

  She nodded. “Consider it an apprenticeship in faith.”

  “My experience with apprenticeships is that they are long and arduous.”

  “Patience is a virtue,” she replied.

  “I don’t know if I have been given the luxury of time.”

  “Then use what you have to the fullest.” She took his hands in both of her smaller ones. “No one can rob you of your life. Only God can take it when you have finished your course on this earth.”

  When he left her, he felt he had a new purpose. That night, he began to pore over the Scriptures, with his Cruden’s Concordance at his side, looking up every Scripture dealing with sickness and health. Those Scriptures led to others, and as gray began to tinge the skies, he had filled a sheaf of papers with notations.

  Eleanor stood with Edmund Kean and the line of lesser actors on the forestage and took the final bow. The pit went wild, standing and applauding them. Her eyes roamed the circle of boxes above the crowd. A more illustrious crowd sat in them, and they applauded more sedately, yet nevertheless enthusiastically.

  The show was a hit. She could feel it, sense it in the very marrow of her bones. With a slight sidelong glance at Kean beside her, she bent and curtsied once more, realizing much of the success of the show was due to his performance of the evil Sir Giles Overreach.

  He had been a preening, egotistical man to work with, but the result had been well worth it. This show had been a testing for her, and she knew she had passed.

  She could still scarcely believe she was standing on the same stage as the great Kean. The man might be half mad, and drunk the other half, but when he was onstage portraying a greedy, malevolent creature, he was brilliant. His deep-set dark eyes glared at the audience, his mobile face exuded malice, his voice rose and fell like an orchestral movement.

  Eleanor’s own role had not been a bad one, although she played the older woman. She glanced to her other side at the young actress who played the young heroine. Miss Stephens was only seventeen. She was a passable actress, Eleanor conceded grudgingly, but owed her presence upon the Drury Lane stage more to the fact that her father was a veteran actor than to any excessive talent.

  As she rose from her final curtsy, Eleanor swept the packed house one last time with her eyes, feeling the staggering absence of one individual whose presence would have made her success complete.

  She was being silly. Mr. Russell would have found nothing different in her role on this stage from the one at the Royal Circus. Both would have been degrading and lacking in common decency in his eyes, she reminded herself. This was her moment and she would let no thought ruin it for her.

  The actors exited by the two side doors at either end of the proscenium. Congratulating each other on a good performance, they separated to their dressing rooms.

  After she’d cleaned off her makeup and removed the seventeenth-century-style gown she wore, she dressed in her own dress and pelisse, wrapped herself in a warm, fur-lined cloak, and went to the side rear exit of the theater. Although much of the cast were going to a nearby tavern to celebrate their triumph, Eleanor felt no such desire. She was a veteran actress, and for the first time all she longed for was her quiet house and cozy room.

  Her house. Her heartbeat quickened at the thought of her new abode. A very tidy brick town house on Jermyn Street, in the heart of the fashionable world, only a short ride from Drury Lane, and a mere block from St. James’s and Piccadilly. D’Alvergny had chosen well.

  She descended the coach with a satisfied sigh, her earlier moment of melancholy having passed. Tonight was her peak and she would savor it. No one could take it away from her.

  “Good evening, madam,” her new housekeeper greeted her at the door. D’Alvergny had generously insisted on hiring a whole houseful of new servants for her. Mrs. Wilson had stayed at her old house with its new tenants. “How was everything?”

  “Wonderful, thank you,” she said, as the woman helped her off with the cloak. She handed over her bonnet and gloves, missing her old housekeeper. She hadn’t yet warmed up to this woman, who seemed severe and humorless in contrast.

  Eleanor turned away from the woman and gave a quick look in the mirror. Her color was high from the cold winter air, and her pupils were large, matching the rims of her irises and making her eyes look dark and frightened. She dismissed the silly notion and patted her locks.

  “The duke is here. I’ve put His Grace in the drawing room.”

  Eleanor met her housekeeper’s impassive gaze in the mirror. “The duke?” she repeated, feeling her windpipe constricting.

  “Yes, ma’am. I told him I didn’t expect you until late, but he said he was willing to wait. I took him a tray of hot water and scot
ch whiskey.”

  “Thank you. You did well.” She managed the words in a composed tone. “That will be all, Hanson. I’ll bid you go-good-night.”

  “Very well, madam, good night.”

  When the woman had disappeared down the darkened corridor, Eleanor looked at her reflection once again. She dampened her lips and pressed them together, then took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders.

  Time to pay the piper, it seemed. Why then was she so reluctant? She had known it was coming. She had made a bargain, and she certainly intended to keep it. Why this sudden dread?

  Was it because she’d been her own person, independent and comfortably well-off for so long? How could she now voluntarily cede her independence to a man she had no regard for? It was a business transaction, like signing a contract with a theater troupe, she insisted to her reflection.

  Or was it the memory of one searing kiss with a man who was pure and wholesome and everything she was not? She put her hand to her mouth, willing the thoughts to oblivion.

  She removed her hand and straightened her shoulders. Best to get it over with. She practiced a careless smile, a toss of her curls. She was an actress after all. Tonight had proved that.

  Each day Ian felt strengthened by God’s Word, but each day’s end brought defeat in some way, whether it was more blurred vision, a spasmodic jerk of a limb, or simply blanking out of something he’d just done or said. Each night, he doggedly got back into God’s Word, and felt like a man clinging to the only source of sanity he knew.

  “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.” Jesus had paid the price for Ian’s healing.

  Each week as he stood in the operating theater, he called upon God’s grace to get him through, to prevent him from blacking out, to steady his hands. He clung to the verse from his beloved Psalms, “I will guide thee with mine eye,” so that if his eyesight should fail, God would see him through.

  He stood at the operating table one wintry February morning, prepared to perform one of the operations he was renowned for, a lithotomy, otherwise known as “removing the stone.” The best surgeons could do it in less than thirty seconds. Ian averaged it in twenty-five seconds.

  He took the round-edged knife held out to him by his assistant and made the incision next to the patient’s os pubis and through the integuments. Quickly, he took the next knife and widened the wound. A third knife was handed to him, the one he called the “crooked knife,” which he used to cut through to the bladder wall. He slit downward, and a second later, the water that had been injected into it with a large syringe gushed out and with it the bladder stone that had caused the man so much pain.

  Ian straightened, glad the stone had been expelled so easily so that he wouldn’t have to use the gorget to dislodge it from the bladder wall.

  Just then one of Ian’s legs buckled under him. He managed to grab the chair behind him, falling away from the patient. His last view was of his young assistant’s pale face over him, shouting, “”Mr. Russell, are you all right?” and then everything went black.

  When Ian awoke, he felt that same torpor weighing down his limbs that he’d felt every time he’d lost consciousness.

  He was lying down. Looking toward his feet, he realized he was in one of the ward’s beds, but he wasn’t in one of the large wards, because he seemed to be by himself. He tried to move his head to get a better look at his surroundings.

  “Ah, you’ve come to.”

  Ian recognized his uncle’s voice and then saw him as the man moved into his field of vision and sat upon a chair beside the bed.

  “Where am I?”

  “In the room adjacent to the operating theater. They moved you here when you collapsed and sent for me immediately. I told them to keep you here for the time being. More private than one of the wards.”

  “The operation—” Memory was returning and with it the horror of what had happened.

  “It’s all right. Jensen was right there and he was able to take over. The patient is already in the ward.”

  What had he done? He’d almost killed a man. How could he have even thought of operating when the possibility of losing consciousness loomed over him? Ian felt himself suffocating with the enormity of what he’d done.

  “What happened, Ian?” His uncle’s voice came from far off.

  How could he reply to that? He was little better than a murderer.

  “One of your apprentices rushed to the garret telling me you’d keeled over right in the middle of an operation.”

  Ian pushed the hair off his forehead, his hand feeling like a leaded keel. “Everything went black. One of my legs felt numb and the next thing—nothing.”

  “Is this the first time you’ve experienced this?”

  He looked away from his uncle’s concerned face and shook his head.

  “How many times?”

  “A few.” He’d lost count.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want you to worry.” No, that wasn’t true. He hadn’t wanted to have his own diagnosis confirmed in the eyes of another medical man.

  His uncle made an impatient sound. “What else have you felt?”

  Ian looked up at the ceiling. “Headaches…blurring of vision in my left eye…clumsiness…”

  “How do you feel right now?”

  “Tired…as if I’d been swimming against the Thames.”

  His uncle was quiet a few moments and Ian stole a look at him. He appeared deep in thought, his head bent, his chin in his hand, the way he’d hunch over his worktable when he was contemplating the best remedy for a patient.

  “How long have you experienced these symptoms?”

  Ian let out a gust of breath. “Too long…several weeks…I don’t remember when the headaches first began, a few months ago probably. They’ve gotten worse.”

  “Everyone is most concerned. They want Harold to examine you when you come to. I told them I’d look you over first,” he said with a faint smile.

  “He’ll probably poke and prod me no end and then suggest trepanation,” Ian said of the hospital’s head surgeon.

  “I wish you’d told me sooner.”

  “Why? What could you have done? When I die, you and Stemple and Cridley and all the others can open me up and find out what is growing in my brain.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense.”

  “Why not? I’ve done enough dissections to know what ugly things can start growing inside a body.” He shoved off the blanket and attempted to sit up.

  “You stay put—”

  Ian succeeded in standing. “No, thank you. I’m not waiting for the entourage. If anyone needs me, they can find me at the dispensary.”

  “Ian, you can’t just take off after what happened.” Uncle Oliver looked frightened. Ian had never seen him like that.

  “Don’t fret. I’m merely going home. There’s nothing anyone here can do for me.”

  “What are you going to do?” his uncle asked, a bleak look appearing for the first time in his eyes.

  Ian gave him an uneven smile. “I’m going to pray. That’s all that’s left for me to do.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  In the quiet of his room, Ian’s head sank down on his desk.

  Oh, God, what am I to do? I read that You’re my healer, and yet I’m not getting better, only worse. He paused, not even sure how to pray anymore. What did he want?

  His desires had so long been subsumed to the greater notions of good, that he wasn’t even sure he could articulate them.

  God, I’ve never asked for healing for myself, only for others. He felt his own helplessness at having to ask. Was it pride…or fear? Fear of refusal. Had he been serving God all these years out of a need for approbation, and had never learned how to receive?

  God didn’t need his services. Had Ian been currying favor with God in order to mask his own lack of an experience with Him? For so
many years his medical training had taught him to accept nothing that couldn’t be seen, felt, touched, smelled. Is that why he stood like a rigid statue while others were weeping or shouting for joy at the services?

  Whatever the reasons, Ian knew there was only one source of help. He slid down from his desk chair and knelt beside it. I ask You now, Lord. Would You heal me? Even as he prayed the words, he realized his own lack of faith. He didn’t really believe in his heart that God could—or would—heal him of this…tumor. There, he’d said it. He whispered the ugly word in the silent room.

  He remembered the leper’s plea. “Lord, if thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean.” That was the crux of it, did he truly believe God was willing?

  Jesus had answered without hesitation: “I will: be thou clean.”

  Lord God, I need Your healing. I’m asking you the impossible. I know You’ve done the impossible. You healed the leper. You raised Lazarus from the dead. Tears wet his fingers as he sobbed the plea.

  He thought of the father of the son possessed by a demon spirit. He had come to Jesus seeking help for his son, and Jesus had answered him, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.”

  The father had cried out to him, “I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” Ian was in the same predicament. He needed God’s grace even to believe. Help thou mine unbelief, he prayed. Grant me the grace to believe, to believe with every fiber of my being.

  In the stillness he felt a quietness in his soul, as if Jesus Himself had said “Peace, be still” to the turbulence and fear raging within him.

  When he finally arose, his muscles felt stiff. Looking out the window, he saw it was dark already, although when he glanced at the clock, he saw it was only half-past six.

  Feeling a need of air, he went to his bedroom to change his shirt and wash his face. When he emerged into the corridor, his hat and greatcoat in his hands, he encountered his housekeeper.

  “Are—are you going out, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Should you—”

  Hearing the hesitation in her voice, he asked with a trace of impatience, “Should I what?”