by Lori Beery
She sat forward in her seat, taking stock of her senses. A big smile burst onto her face as the lack of pain registered. Looking into my eyes, her face beaming, she said, “I feel great. The pain is gone!”
“I am glad to hear it,” I responded with a smile.
“How long will it last?” she questioned.
“Simone, I did not give you any medication. I stopped the pain receptors around the tumors from being able to send their messages to your brain. It will not wear off.” I explained. “Are you willing to allow me to deep scan you to see what must be done to remove your cancer?”
“I am too old to have any surgery,” she said in a rush shaking her head. Fear rose from her like a dark cloud. It was clear she believed undergoing surgery would mean her death. Settling she continued, “With the pain gone, I will be able to cope.”
“Simone, I do not intend to do surgery,” I replied gently. “I want to see how we will need to proceed to remove your cancer. Then, you won’t have to just cope,” I added mildly.
Surprised she responded, “My son told me you thought you could heal me! How is that possible?” she asked suspiciously.
“As I told your son, I am a Healer. I can program lymphocytes to be produced that will attack the cancer cells and leave the healthy cells alone. I will need to monitor you to be sure all goes as it should. But before I do anything more I will need to do a deep scan. The scan will let me know how I will need to manage the process to prevent draining your energy too much,” I explained.
“What is needed for you to do the scan?” she inquired nervously.
“Your permission, your patience, and your time,” I replied with a smile.
“No money?” she asked skeptically.
“I have already told your son that money would not be required to pay me,” I stated.
“If I go through with all of this, are you okay with whatever he requires?” she questioned her son.
“Yes,” he said without any doubt.
“Very well, you may scan me,” she replied firmly.
“Okay, please lean back in the chair and make yourself comfortable,” I directed. She sat back and settled herself. “Very good,” I added as I moved beside her. “Concentrate on your breathing again. Draw a slow breath in. – Good. Now, slowly let it out. Breathe in slowly, deeply. Exhale slowly. That’s it. Keep doing that,” I continued instructing. Again, she relaxed as she slowly breathed in and out. I carefully reached mentally for her sleep center and pushed her into a deep sleep. Her body relaxed even more and her breathing deepened.
I straightened beside her and turned to her son. “I am about to do the scan,” I told him. “It will take about sixty deci to complete. Are you ready?” I asked him.
He looked up at me surprised. “Why would I not be?” he asked.
“Waiting is very difficult, especially when nothing is visible,” I replied.
“I am ready,” he affirmed.
With a nod to him, I turned back to Simone. I centered myself and then reached out mentally toward her. I started at the top of her head and moved slowly down over her body to her toes. I made two supplementary scans over her torso concentrating on her chest and abdomen. These regions were where the tumors were concentrated. I spent some time checking out her long bones to be certain they were cancer free. Once satisfied, I withdrew from her body.
Allowing an image of Simone’s internal systems to float above her, I turned to Phillip. “Here are the tumors,” I said as I highlighted them in white. They were quite numerous and spread throughout her body. The heaviest concentration of them was located along her colon and into the surrounding tissue including her lymph nodes. There were three other sites more distal: two in her lungs and one in her brain. “As you can see, they are quite widespread,” I added quietly.
“Can you still heal her?” he asked with fear etched on his face.
“I can,” I answered. “It will take several days to do it. Provided of course, that she is willing to permit me to heal her.”
“What dangers are there?” he questioned concerned.
“For Simone, severe exhaustion accompanied by high fever,” I replied. “A condition I will seek to minimize.”
“What will you do to heal her?” he asked.
“Before I answer let me awaken her so she will be in the know as well,” I said. He nodded his acquiescence. I let the image of her deep scan fade out of sight. Then, I gently awakened Simone.
Blinking and looking around she asked, “Did you get your scan already?”
“I did indeed,” I responded. “Let me show you the result.” She nervously licked her lips and nodded. I brought the image back into view so that it was positioned for her to easily look upon it. “I was showing this to your son. The white growths are the tumors.”
“Oh my Lord! They are all over,” she exclaimed, fear resurfacing in her.
“Yes, they are widespread,” I commented gently. “Even so, I can still heal you if you are willing. It will take several days to accomplish the task with lots of eating and resting on your part. Are you willing?”
“How are you going to do it?” Simone blurted.
“I am going to tag the cancer cells with a foreign marker,” I explained manipulating the image as I spoke. “Doing that will trigger your white blood cells to attack the cancer. At the same time, I am going to help your body build antibodies that will specifically target the foreign marker. Sadly, Simone, you will feel very sick. You will be running a high fever as your body fights the cancer. I will do what I can to keep your fever from spiking too high. Are you willing to undergo this treatment?”
“The doctors told me I would only have two to three more years of life with increasing pain and sick days. How many days would you give me without undergoing this treatment?” She asked curiously and fear subsiding.
“Simone,” I began gently. “You may not reach Patros.”
“That falls within the time limit I was given,” she commented. “How about after the treatment?” she asked hopefully.
“Possibly five to ten more cycles,” I answered. “I could be more accurate after the treatment.”
Hope burst from her. “Really?” she exclaimed.
“As far as I can tell – yes,” I replied.
“Then – when can we start?” she asked excitedly.
“Give me until tomorrow morning,” I said. Continuing, I explained, “There are a few details I wish to work out.”
“What is one more day?” she murmured. “We will return tomorrow,” she added as she and her son rose to their feet.
Escorting them to the door, I bid them farewell, “Until tomorrow morning. Let us make it the thirteenth turn and 135th deci,” I added remembering the vagueness of morning.
“Agreed,” they both chorused just before the door slid open to permit their egress. The door slid shut as I shifted my attention to my Hexacle. I sent the ‘please return’ message I had promised to give when the interview ended. They returned to the common room.
Chapter 8
“Has she agreed to let you heal her?” asked Marleah.
“She has,” I replied. “She will be here for her healing tomorrow morning at the thirteenth turn, 135 deci. In light of that, I want to change our afternoon practice session. I want to simulate some ideas I have for her healing. To try them, I will need all of your aid.”
“We get to help?” Lucera burst out. “What do you need?” she continued. The others made similar requests.
“Let us move over to the settee where there is more room,” I replied, fitting action to my statement. Once there, I directed my Hexacle to spread out into an oval around empty space. I, then, brought Simone’s scan into view. “The white highlighted forms are her cancer.” Magnifying a tumor cell and a healthy cell to gigantic proportions above the total body scan, I indicated the exterior binding sites of each cell. “If we compare the sites on the cells, we can see that this section of this binding site is unique to the cancer cell,” I ex
plained highlighting the specific area in blue. “To this section, I want to attach this fibrous protein,” I said bringing the protein into view. “When this is done, the addition will trigger the immune response.”
“And her body will start fighting the cancer?” asked Marleah.
“Yes,” I responded. “This particular protein is not one the human body uses in any way. So, it should be an easily recognized antigen.”
“How are you going to make the attachment?” asked Beltrain perplexed.
“Lucera’s going to ‘image’ it,” I said.
“I’m what?” she exploded.
“You are going to ‘image’ it,” I repeated gently. “We have seen that when an image is general like a glass on a shelf, making-it-real places a glass on all shelves. This molecule,” I indicated the blue, highlighted part, “is the shelf, and the protein is the glass.”
“That… sounds reasonable,” Lucera replied uncertainly. “Can we practice?” she asked.
“Of course,” I responded easily. I released the magnified images of the cells. Then I turned all the unique sites blue in the body scan. Next, I generated the image. I carefully portrayed the entire binding site with the specific blue portion connected to the fibrous protein. “Okay,” I said. “I would like you to take the image from me.”
“Okay,” she replied. She took the image from me and held it in her mind.
“Please draw power from the crystal after I have activated it,” I instructed. I nudged the crystal’s bonds as it lay on the table across the room. It started glowing. I felt Lucera draw power in a fine thread using it to fuel the ‘make-it-real’ process. Again, the actual process escaped me, but the evidence was visible in the body scan. There was a fibrous protein attached to the blue portion of the binding site.
“Excellent!” I exclaimed. “How do you feel?” I asked Lucera.
“I feel tired,” she confessed. “I used the crystal. Did I do it wrong?” she asked confused.
“No, you did it right,” I assured her. “However,” I murmured, realizing the extent of her feat, “You just populated several million shelves. That would make anybody tired.” Seeing her sway I stood to steady her, saying, “Let’s get you a chair.” She sagged against me as we moved to the closest dining table chair. I eased her into it and knelt before her. “Lucera,” I called.
“I don’t feel so good,” she whispered eyes fluttering.
“Stay with me. Don’t sleep yet,” I told her.
“Beltrain, get her a ‘healer special’ right away,” I instructed.
“One ‘healer special’ coming right up,” he assured me. As soon as it materialized, he handed me the drink.
Holding it for Lucera, I said, “Drink this down.” She drank, weakly at first, then more strongly. “Good, that’s it,” I encouraged her. When she had finished it all, I told her, “Now, you can sleep.” She slumped against the back of the chair, very much asleep.
“She doesn’t look very comfortable,” stated Beltrain from right beside me.
“No she doesn’t,” I agreed. “Let’s move her to her bed.” Carefully, I picked her up like a child with her head against my right shoulder and her knees draped over my left arm. With Beltrain leading the way, I carried her to her quarters and laid her on her bed. Before leaving the room, I conducted a scan. She was exhausted. Having her add the fibrous protein to all those cancer cells drained her to near threshold levels. She just needed sleep and lots of calories. I needed to treat her by waking her every couple hours and feeding her a ‘healer special’. I covered her sleeping form with a light-weight blanket and left the room.
Walking with Beltrain back to the common room, I said, “She is sleeping comfortably.”
“What happened?” they all chorused.
“She did exactly what I asked her to do,” I answered gently. “Unfortunately, I did not appreciate the magnitude of the task I set for her. So, she is near threshold energy levels because of my miscalculation. Thankfully, she will recover with sufficient sleep.”
There were relieved murmurs. Then Jacarr spoke up with, “Erm, look what happened to the crystal.” He held it in his hands. The crystal was dark! All the light energy had been drained from it.
“Jacarr, bring it to me,” I said puzzled. I took it from his hands inspecting it. It seemed to be intact, but it had none of its inactivated sparkle. Experimentally, I nudged at one of the bonds. The bond felt – brittle. Not wanting to crack the crystal, I didn’t push it any further. Instead I returned it to Jacarr saying, “Please put it on a ‘shelf’ under the light over there. We’ll see what happens.” Jacarr took the crystal where I had directed in front of the view screen. There he constructed a shelf right below the overhead illumination device and laid the crystal on it.
“So, Lucera drained the crystal and herself?” asked Marleah.
“So it would seem,” I replied. “I did not expect the power drain to have been so severe. In fact, I thought the crystal would have retained some of its light energy when she had completed her task.” I stepped up to the body scan and invited my Hexacle to join me. “Help me figure out where I miscalculated.” We searched for any of the blue binding sites outside of the cancer tumors. We found none. We looked for any binding site anomalies, anything that didn’t look like the image I gave to Lucera. Again we found nothing. We only found blue binding sites bound to fibrous protein. There were a lot of those. Several million was not an exaggeration. “Comments anyone?” I asked hopefully.
“We found evidence that Lucera successfully ‘imaged’ the protein into place,” stated Marleah firmly. “We also discovered that this task is on a much larger scale than we have ever dealt with before.”
“That’s true,” I agreed. “Perhaps the energy drain is not dependent on the mass of the items in the image but on the number of ‘make-it-real’ events. Had I triggered each reaction to bind the protein in place the energy needed would have left the crystal glowing. However, it would have taken me forever to accomplish. Provided Lucera will still be willing to use her gift, how do we keep her safe?”
“Is it possible to target a small portion of the cancer at a time?” asked Dulain. “That would limit the number of events Lucera would be dealing with.”
“That’s a good idea,” I responded. “We could start with the tumor in the brain. It is the smallest.”
“Could we divide up the tumors using different colors?” questioned KwinJai.
“We could use blue for the brain tumor,” suggested Jacarr. “Yellow for the lung. Or, to keep the areas small, we could use yellow for the one in the upper lobe and orange for the other one.”
“Yes, that would work,” I responded. “We will need to divide up the abdominal tumors into about eight different sections.”
“We will need another crystal,” said Dulain.
“Yes, we will,” I told him. “I have two others we can use. I would like someone to be on hand tomorrow to get Lucera in a chair and drinking a ‘healer special’ right after she has ‘imaged’.”
“I can do that,” Beltrain volunteered.
“Erm… what is a ‘healer special’?” asked Jacarr with a crease in his brow.
“It’s a chocolate-caramel milkshake,” responded Beltrain. “He needed several when he was tutoring me at the Hexator Complex,” he added with a gesture toward me.
“Indeed I did,” I agreed with a smile. “Please, remember I had just come from the Healer’s Guild to the Complex to tutor you,” I added. He shrugged and gave me a grin. Turning back to Simone’s body scan I said, “Okay, we will color code the tumors into smaller sections. We will support Lucera with food and rest. We will have two crystals available to prevent threshold power drain. I still need two people to monitor Simone. One will monitor her vitals and the other will monitor her temperature. We will need to keep her temperature below forty degrees C.”
“I’ll monitor vitals,” responded Marleah.
“I’ll take temperature,” replied Dulain.
“You can take turns monitoring everyone working on Simone, whoever comes with Simone, and the crystal. I think Phillip will be the only one in attendance. But I don’t know for sure,” I answered.
“In short, anything we can do to be helpful,” said KwinJai reluctantly.
“Yes, and to do that you will need to learn each task. That way you can take over for them if something unexpected comes up,” I told them.
“Cool!” they chorused.
I really loved it when everyone was excited about participating. I showed each of them how to monitor another person. They caught on very quickly.
While they were practicing on each other, I took Lucera a ‘healer special’. Setting the drink on the nightstand, I gently awakened her. She tried hard to wake up. I sat on the edge of her bed and encouraged her with, “Yes, that’s right. Open your eyes.” She got them open.
“What happened?” she asked, alarm rising.
“I will tell you as you drink this,” I told her. She drank as I helped her with the glass. “Your Hexator messed up. I miscalculated how much energy you would be using to ‘image’ the protein onto the binding sites. So the energy used drained the crystal totally and you to near-dangerous levels. I put you in danger and I am sorry for that,” I finished looking into her eyes.
She lowered her gaze to the glass. Taking it from me, she downed the rest of the drink. She brought her gaze back to mine as she licked the beverage remains from her upper lip. Setting the glass back on the nightstand, she said, “The drink is delicious. What is it?”
“It is a ‘healer special’ – a drink very high in calories. This one is my favorite. It’s a chocolate-caramel milkshake,” I answered.
“I like it!” she exclaimed. “Hexator Nickoli,” she continued gravely. “I forgive you. Before I became part of your Hexacle, I belonged nowhere. My family didn’t want me because I didn’t know how to use my gifts and they were afraid of me. I am sure they believed I started the fire that killed my parents. With you and the others, I have a place and people who care about me. If you didn’t, you would not be here checking on me. I –we are learning how to use the imager gift. I accept that there will be problems. I trust that you will do your best to protect me, or fix me, whichever,” she ended with a shrug.
