The Touch

Alan

It threatened to become a mob scene at first. The people in the parking lot recognized him immediately and surrounded his car, pressing so tightly against it that he couldn't get the door open. Finally, after he had leaned on the horn for a full minute, they backed off enough to let him out.

And then it was a sea of hands and faces pressing close, touching him, grabbing his hands and placing them on their heads, or upon the heads of the sick ones they had brought with them. Alan fought the panic that surged through him— he could barely breathe in the crush.

This bunch was noticeably different from previous crowds. These were the diehards, the most determined of the pilgrims, the ones who had stayed on despite news of the suspension of Alan's hospital privileges and rumors that he either had lost his power or had been proven a fake after all. As a group they were scruffier, dirtier than any others Alan could remember. All the women seemed to have ratty hair, all the men seemed to have a two-day growth of beard. They appeared much worse for the wear, much poorer for their illnesses. But most striking was the look of utter desperation in their eyes.

Alan shouted for them to let him through, but no one seemed to hear. They kept reaching, touching, calling his name…

He managed to crawl up on the roof of his car, where he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. Eventually they quieted down enough to hear him.

"You've got to back away and let me into the office," he told them. "I'll see you one at a time inside and do what I can for you. Those I don't see today, I'll see tomorrow, and so on. But all of you will be seen eventually. Don't fight, don't push and shove. I know you've all been waiting here a long time. Just be patient a little longer and I'll see you all. I promise."

They parted and let him through. Connie was already inside, having sneaked by while the crowd's attention was on him. She opened the door and quickly locked it behind him.

"I don't like this," she told him. "There's something ugly about this group."

"They've been waiting a long time. You'd be disheveled and short-fused too if you'd been living in a parking lot for two weeks."

She smiled uncertainly. "I guess so. Still…"

"If they make you nervous, here's what we'll do. We'll let them in two at a time. While I'm seeing one, you can be filling out a file on the next. That way we'll keep a good flow going."

Because I'm only going to have an hour or so to do what these people came for.

It began on a sour note, with a surge of pushing and shoving and scuffling to get in when Alan first opened the door. He had to shout and threaten to see no one unless there was order. They quieted. A middle-aged man and a mother with her child were admitted. Both man and child were limping.

Five minutes or so later, Connie brought the mother and child back to the examining room. As Alan stepped into the room, the mother—dressed in a stained housecoat, with dark blue socks piled around her ankles—tugged at the child's hair and it came off. A wig. She was completely bald. Alan noted her pallor and sunken cheeks. She looked to be no more than ten.

"Chemotherapy?''

The mother nodded. "She got leukemia. Least that's what the doctors tell us. Don't matter what they give her, Laurie keeps wastin' away."

The accent was definitely southern, but he couldn't place it. "Where are you from?"

"West Virginny."

"And you came all the way—?"

"Read aboutcha in The Light. Nothin' else's worked. Figure I got nothin' to lose."

Alan turned to the child. Her huge blue eyes shone brightly from deep in their sockets. "How are you feeling, Laurie?"

"Okay, I guess," she said in a small voice.

"She always says that!" the mother said. "But I hear her crying at night. She hurts every hour of the day, but she don't say nothin'. She's the bravest little thing you ever saw. Tell the man the truth, Laurie. Where does it hurt?"

Laurie shrugged. "Everywhere." She pressed her hands over her painfully thin thighs. " 'Specially in my bones. They hurt somethin' awful."

Bone pain, Alan thought. Typical of leukemia. He noticed the scars on her scalp where she had been given intrathecal chemotherapy. She'd been the route, that was for sure.

"Let's take a look at you, Laurie."

He placed a hand on either side of her head and willed all those rotten little malignant centers in her bone marrow to shrivel up and die.

Nothing happened. Alan felt nothing, and neither, apparently, did Laurie.

Alan experienced an instant of panic. Had he miscalculated again?

"Excuse me," he said to the mother, and stepped into his adjoining office. He checked his figures. All the calculations seemed right. The Hour of Power should have started at 4:00 p.m. and here it was 4:05 already. Where had he gone wrong? Or had he? He had never been able to chart the power to the exact minute. It had never failed to appear, but his calculations had been off by as much as fifteen minutes in the past. Hoping the failure a moment ago was due to the quirky margin of error in his charts, he returned to the examining room. Again he placed his hands on Laurie's head.

The charge of ecstasy came, and with it, Laurie's cry of surprise.

"What's the matter, Honeybunch?" the mother said, at her child's side in a flash, pulling her away from Alan.

"Nothin', Ma. Just felt a shock is all. And…" She ran her hands over her legs. "And my bones don't hurt no more!"

"Is that true?" The mother's eyes were wide. "Is that true?

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!" She turned to Alan. "But is her leukemia cured? How can we tell?"

"Take her back to her hematologist and get a blood count. That will tell you for sure."

Laurie was looking at him with wonder in her eyes. "It doesn't hurt anymore!"

"But how—?" the mother began.

With a quick wave, Alan ducked out and crossed the hall to the next room. He felt exultant, strong, good. It was working! It was still there. The Hour of Power was not perfectly predictable—at least not by him—but he still had it, and he had no time to waste with explanations.

There was work to be done.

Time to quit.

Alan had just effected one of his most satisfying cures. A forty-five-year-old man with a long history of ankylosing spondylitis had come in with the typically rigid spine curved almost to a right angle at the upper back and neck so that his chin was pushed down against his chest.

Sobbing his thanks, the man walked out with his spine straight and his head high.

"That man!" Connie said as she came to the rear. "He was all bent over when he came in!"

Alan nodded. "I know."

"Then it's really true?" Her eyes widened steadily in her round face.

Alan nodded again.

Connie stood before him, gaping. It was making him uncomfortable.

"Is the next patient ready?" he said finally.

She shook herself. "No. You told me to stop bringing them in as of five. It's ten after now."

Five-ten. The Hour of Power was over.

"Then tell them that's it for today. We start again at five tomorrow."

"They're not going to like that," she said and bustled away toward the front.

Alan stretched. It had been a satisfying hour… but he wasn't really practicing medicine. It took no skill, no special knowledge, to lay his hands on someone. The Dat-tay-vao was doing the work; he was merely the carrier, the vessel, the instrument.

With a start he realized that he had become a tool.

The thought disturbed him. The whole situation was bittersweet—emotionally satisfying but intellectually stultifying. He didn't have to get to know the patient or build a relationship. All he had to do was touch them at a certain time of day and wham!—all better. Not his kind of medicine. There was the high of seeing the relief and joy and wonder in their faces, but he was not using any of his training.

Then again, none of his training had anything to do with what he had accomplished today. His fellow doctors would find ways to write off most of the results as "placebo effect" and "spontaneous remission." And why not? In their position he'd do the same. He'd been taught not to believe in miracles.

Miracles—how easily he'd come to accept them after witnessing a few. After causing them. If only he could find a way to get Sylvia to let him try the Touch on Jeffy. She seemed afraid of it and he couldn't understand why. Even if the Touch were useless against Jeffy's autism, he couldn't see how it would hurt to try.

If he could make little Jeffy normal, it would make all the trials he had been through because of the Touch worthwhile. If only Sylvia would give him—

He heard shouting from up front and went to investigate. A number of people from the parking lot had pushed their way into the waiting room. When they saw him they started shouting, pleading, begging for him to see them.

Alan raised a hand in the air and held it there, saying nothing until they finally quieted down.

"I'll say this once and once only. I know you're all sick and hurting. I promise I will see every one of you and do everything I can for you, but my power lasts only one hour a day, no more. I have no control over that. Just one hour a day. Understand? That hour is over and done for today. I'll be back tomorrow for another hour at five p.m."

There was some rumbling from the rear.

"That's all I have to say. I'll be back tomorrow, I promise."

"That's what you said two weeks ago and we never saw you again until today!" a voice called out. "Don't play games with us!"

"Maybe we'll just stay in here until you do come back!" said another.

"If you're going to threaten me, I won't be back at all."

There was sudden silence.

"I'll see you here tomorrow at five."

He watched as they reluctantly shuffled out. Connie leaned her plump frame against the door after she locked it and sighed with relief.

"I don't like this bunch, Doctor. I tell you, there's something mean and ugly about them. They frighten me."

"They're all right one on one."

"Maybe, but not all together. As each cured patient walked out, the rest got meaner and meaner, the bigger and stronger ones pushing the smaller and weaker ones out of the way."

"A lot of them have waited a long time, and they're sick of being sick. They're tired of hurting. When relief is in sight, another night can seem like a year."

Connie shook her head. "I guess you're right. Oh, Dr. Bulmer," she said as he turned to go, "my mother suffers something terrible from arthritis in her hips. I was wondering if…"

"Of course," he said. "Bring her with you tomorrow."

They closed up and Alan walked her out to her car and made sure she was on her way before he got into his own. The crowd had gathered at a decent distance and stood there staring at him like a starving horde watching the owner of a fully stocked supermarket.

But their hunger was of a different sort, and he knew he would have nothing in his cupboard for them until tomorrow.

He drove away feeling tense and uneasy. He wondered if they had believed him.