Healer (The Healer Series) (4 page)

.

four

Present

When I open my eyes, I instantly try to figure out where I am. The last thing I remember is the sound of police sirens as I blacked out in the Quickie Mart, but now I lay in a bed with rails and the room is small. Jumbled voices talk outside the door, what sounds like a heart monitor beeps nearby, and phones ring in the distance.

I’m in a hospital.

Here I am in a hospital, the place a healer never wants to be. Try walking into a place that literally wants to suck the life out of you. I look to my left where my blonde wig sits on top of a bag, which appears to have my clothes in them.

“Great,
” I mutter under my breath. How the hell will I get out of here without having to talk to anyone?

I
peel the strips of medical tape off of my hand and jerk the IV out, wincing, realizing I have never had one before. After several attempts at lowering the bed rails, I give up and scoot to the end of the bed, and slowly slide my legs off the side. My bones ache with fatigue and I struggle to hold my nausea at bay. Using all of your energy to heal will do that. I feel very weak, but not too weak to get the hell out of here. I stand up and pull out my now blood-spattered jeans from the bag, and slide them on. Forget the underwear; going commando is okay in times of haste. I pull my sweatshirt on and assess the room. I didn’t have any identification on me last night so they wouldn’t know who I am. I never carry any. I decide to leave my other items as carrying a bag would make me stand out and slow me down.

I reach in my back pocket and realize my cash from the night before is gone.
Someone took two hundred dollars out of my pocket while I was unconscious?
I check the other pocket and find they left my coupon for thirty cents off gum,
so nice of them
.

I have to escape this hospital without anyone seeing me. I don’t want to get caught up in questioning with the police, plus I have no medical insurance.  I
creep to the doorway and peek out. A few nurses buzz around behind the desk in the middle of the hall, but none take notice of me.

I
bolt out of the room like a thief in the night, as fast as my legs will carry me. I make it to the elevators and push the button. In my current state, stairs might be too much for me. The doors open as slow as glacier’s ice melts.

“Miss
!”

I look briefly
in the direction from which the voice came. A nurse in pink scrubs stares at me as she closes the distance between us.

Shit!
The doors open enough for me to squeeze into the elevator, so I hop in and press the door close button a million times, which has absolutely no effect. In fact, I think it’s causing the doors to close more slowly. The nurse picks up her pace, but she’s a little husky, so she’s not trying too hard.

“Miss
, wait,” she calls again.

The doors finally close an eternity later, just as she reaches the elevator. I inhale deeply as the elevator moves. Three floors down, the doors open to the lobby
, and I make my way toward the exit where a security guard is stationed. I watch him for a brief moment to make sure he hasn’t been alerted to my escape, but he stands calm and relaxed, staring towards the exit.

I
have to touch him. This way, if someone alerts him of my escape and he tries to chase me, I can weaken him. I walk by him and fake a trip, bumping into him. Given my complete lack of coordination, it isn’t much of a stretch for me.

“I’m so sorry
, sir.” I smile and try to look embarrassed.

“No worries.” He smiles back
before his eyes drop to my blood stained clothing. I walk past him before he has a chance to speculate or ask questions.

I’m half
way to the door when I hear someone call over his radio. When I glance back, our eyes meet, and he moves towards me.
Time to trigger the pull
. His energy surges through me like I’ve been injected with adrenaline.  It only takes a minute, and he stops after jogging only a few feet, gasping for air.

As extreme luck would have it, a
n elderly couple is vacating a taxi when I exit.

They move away from
the cab, slower than molasses, and I grab the door, hopping in.

“Central and Bradford,
” I pipe as I glance back to see if the guard has managed to gain on me. From where I sit, I can’t see him. Maybe he went to get some help.

“My light wasn’t on,” the Middle Eastern man stammers through broken English.

“I’ll give you two hundred dollars if you step on it.” I look through the window to see if anyone else is coming, but there is no one.

“Deal.”
  He nods and we’re off.

On the ride, I
start ticking off a mental list of things I need to do next.  The first thing I need is to get money, but my safe deposit box is at Bank of Richmond on Central and Maine. I will have the cabbie drop me about three blocks away in case the hospital has cameras that got his plates. I hate what I’m going to do to this man. I can literally hear Lucy’s voice in my head, “
this isn’t the way you are meant to use your gift
.” Followed with, “
don’t roll your eyes at me, Aldo!”

Guilt rises within me, but I push it aside,
refusing to fall victim to it. He pulls up in front of a vacant office building with broken windows and spray painted tags on the door. I reach in my back pocket, like I’m pulling money out, and touch his shoulder with my other hand. I pull fast, a little too fast, because he passes out in under thirty seconds. His body slowly slouches, until his head meets the steering wheel with a thud.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper before climbing out.

I snake my way towards my bank, through alleys of empty buildings and streets riddled with potholes that smell of rotten trash. Wait. I have no identification.
Shit.

I reroute and start j
ogging towards my apartment, which is about four blocks away in the opposite direction, when the heavens open and it starts to rain.
Great.
I slow down when I get closer to my apartment, looking for anyone who might be watching it, or cars that are out of place, but I don’t see anything or anyone alarming. Well, there’s a lot alarming about my neighborhood, but nothing out of the ordinary. I run up the three flights of stairs towards my apartment and pull up the slab of wood that is my top stair where a spare key is taped to the bottom. My apartment is the entire top floor so it seemed like a safe place to hide it. I open the door and see everything is in place.

I run t
o my closet, strip off my soaked clothes, grab underwear and a bra out of the plastic tub that sits on my closet floor and slip them on. I throw on a gray jersey dress and a cardigan, a pair of long socks and my favorite red cowboy boots.

On my tip toes, I grab my shoe box
off of the top shelf, but the box slips from my hands as I pull it down, and crashes to the floor spilling its contents everywhere.
Calm down, Aldo
. No one knows who I am. I had no identification on me. Maybe I don’t have to run.

I fall onto my
air mattress. My family is safe and that is most important. Leaving and moving isn’t really necessary. I’m so close to finding Thomas, I can feel it. I try to relax and not let the previous night’s craziness plague my mind, but the vision of the woman, her coldness and complete lack of panic replays in my mind over and over. She had no energy; no pitches or vibrations. As I lay, tormenting myself with
what ifs
, I fall back into a deep sleep.

.

five

Past

I met Thomas at Casa Grande at five o’clock that
evening. I couldn’t believe he was actually there. I went trying to convince myself he wasn’t in my dream, but he must have been.

He waited for me in
front of the restaurant, leaning against the brick wall, wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, looking like a slice of heaven.

As I walked towards him
, I tried to ignore the way he examined me. I was fully clothed, but the way he stared at me made me feel as if he knew exactly what I looked like naked. I avoided looking him in the eyes, as this would surely render my feet useless, so my gaze fell to the unique tribal tattoo that trailed down his right arm.
Interesting
. The ink was black and lay perfectly over his muscular forearm. He was nothing less than gorgeous.

The image of him holding the baby
from my dream had plagued me all day, but I pushed it aside because I couldn’t make any sense out of it. I approached Thomas slowly, like a clay humanoid, praying for my feet not to fail me and send me face first into the pavement, when he smiled.
So much for controlling my heart beat.
My chest felt as if it would combust from the drum solo my heart rolled into. Thomas’s smile widened and my face turned a shade of red the devil would envy.

“You came?”

“You invited me,” I replied coolly, forcing my pulse to follow suit.

We were seated promptly and
our server brought us chips with salsa, and we both ordered water.

“So, that freaked you out last night, huh?” He leaned in towards me, dipping his chip into the salsa.

“Which part? The part where you tried to suck the life out of me—or where you invaded my dream?”

“Well, both.
” He twisted his mouth as if taken aback by my response.

“I was surprised to say the least.” I nodded.

“So you can get information out of people by touching them?” He lowered his voice.

“Wow. Right to the point, aren’t you?”

“I wasn’t aware there’s a proper accord to this type of situation,” he stated dryly.

I ignored him and answered his question. Lucy always told me, sometimes you have to give to get; another Lucy Lawson ode of wisdom. Maybe if I opened up, he would
, too.

“I can’t pick the information I get
. Usually it’s a bunch of random nonsense, and whatever I have obtained, I can’t find out until I sleep.”

“Fascinating.”
He nodded with a thoughtful expression.

When he didn’t offer anything
in return I worried maybe I gave
too
much.

“So
you thought you brought me there?”

I shifted in my seat, his question striking a nerve.
“Well, I’ll usually pick someone to help me organize thoughts or ideas, to figure out the information.”

“And you thought you picked me?”

I swallowed hard. It would have been unusual for me to use him in my dream, but I figured my subconscious was telling me I was attracted to him, not that I wanted him to know that.

“Well, you were the person from whom I drew information.” I tried to play it off, taking a sip of my water.

“Right.” He smiled, shifting his eyes to the side and back to me.

“What?”

“You like me,” he stated with confidence, shrugging one shoulder, lost in his ego.

“I don’t even know you,” I replied, appalled.

“I know, but it’s true.” His grin widened and his eyes shined. His smile captivated me and all of the air in my body escaped in one strong whoosh. I quickly slapped myself within and regained my composure.

“Wow, you have some g
all,” I snickered, trying to protect my pride.

“Come on, you think I’m cute.”

Cute?
Cute was for describing puppies and baby’s bellybuttons. Cute didn’t describe Thomas Watson. There weren’t enough synonyms to describe him, but dazzling, knockout, and exquisite, were a few that came to mind. I truly thought he was the most gorgeous person I had ever laid eyes on, but hell if I’d let him know that. “Oh, you got a little something on your shirt there.” I pointed to his chest.

“Where?”
He tugged his shirt down.

“Oh, my bad.
I thought I saw a bit of salsa on your shirt.” I shrugged, acting casual. “Must’ve just been your ego.”

He
did one of those nasal laughs as he rolled his eyes. “You do think I’m good looking though,” he teased back.

“Not as hot as your brother,
” I reciprocated.

“Ouch.” He laughed, placing his hand on his chest as if wounded. “So I’m hot, but not as hot as my brother?”

“You’re not the ugliest guy I’ve ever seen.” I rolled my eyes and forced a serious expression. We both looked at each
other in another one of those stare downs where we both refused to break first, but then we both busted with laughter simultaneously. 

“So, do you normally inva
de other people’s dreams?”

“I do when I want to find out information.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”
He quirked a brow.

“
Touché.” I realized he was quoting me from my dream the night before.

I needed
to be cautious with Thomas, but being with him felt easy and natural. I couldn’t fight the urge to open up to him, which I had never done with anyone outside of my family. “So, how did you learn to dream walk?”

“It’s kind of dumb
, really. My bother Lucas had taken this baseball I had autographed by Sammy Sosa.” He paused. My lack of a reaction must have told him I had no idea who that was because he added, “He’s a famous baseball player.”

“I gathered that, given it
was an autographed baseball.”

“Oh yeah,” h
e laughed. “He hid it and wouldn’t tell me where it was. This was my prized possession, ya know. We didn’t have much.” His expression shifted for a brief moment, as if those words reflected a memory he didn’t care for, but he continued. “So he was napping one day, and I thought
, If only I could get in his head
. So, I sat beside him, closed my eyes and concentrated really hard.

“
Suddenly, I was in a different world. Lucas was there, and he spoke to me like I belonged there. You see, I can show up in a dream, and it doesn’t send up flags. People don’t even realize what’s happening. They think I’m just part of the play their subconscious is performing. I asked him where the ball was, and he took me right to it in his dream. He hid it in my Dad’s snow boot in his closet.”

“Wow. That must have been crazy for you.” I smiled amazed.

“Yeah.” He took a sip of his water. “I had to learn how to exit a dream though. That was the tough part. When I enter another person’s dream, my mind locks with theirs. It’s like a special combination to unlock them.”

“Can you transform yourself in a person’s dream?”

“No. I’ve tried, but never could. It’s always what you see right here.” He shifted his hands.

“So i
t’s always a scary dream,” I jested.

T
he longer I spent with Thomas the more at home I felt with him. We talked about places we had been and how we had never met anyone outside of our families who could heal. He shared how his mother had also died giving birth to his brother Lucas and he never knew his father. It was unreal to meet someone who was dealing with the exact same thing I was. He told me he was raised by friends of his mother’s, who were also healers. These were the people he called Mom and Dad.

As he spoke, I memorized every freckle visible to me, the way the corner of his eyes slightly creased when he smiled, and the veins that ran down his exceedingly chiseled arms. I wished I could see the part of his tattoo hidden by the sleeve of his shirt.

“How old are you?” I interrupted him.

“Twenty-five,” he confessed. My jaw nearly hit the table.
He was eight years older than me?
I never would have thought he was that old. Lucy would have an aneurism when she found out. Good thing I could heal her if she did.
Calm down. You aren’t dating him. You just met.
I knew deep down when she found out about Thomas, she would want to move.

“How old are you?”  Thomas interrupted my train of thought.

I hesitated a moment. If he knew I was seventeen, he would never speak to me again.

Should I lie?

“I’m seventeen,” I answered with defeat. The truth was all I had.

He didn’t react as I thought he would. He made a thoughtful expression shifting his eyes, as if quickly assessing the risk, and then shrugged it off.

“Just a kid,” he smiled, leaning back seeming somewhat disappointed. My heart sank like the Titanic with his words.

“Is that what you see?” I looked him directly in the eyes.

The corners of his mouth curved slightly. “I see a lot of things.”

I didn
’t respond, hoping he would elaborate.

“When is your birthday
, Aldo?” he asked quietly as he leaned in, placing his forearms on the table.

“November eighth.”
Which was only a month away.

He nodded.
“Ah, to be so young.”

I didn’t respond. I felt like a dork. Obviously, he saw me
as some kid with a crush and probably wouldn’t see me again. My inner self keeled over at the thought.

He shifted awkwardly in his seat.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“Well, don’t get weird, but I can kind of sense emotions.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean strong emotions or sensations like happiness, anger, or desire.” He sat back and shifted his eyes, avoiding contact with mine.

I swallowed hard. “Okay, what does that have to do with anything?” I tried to look as clueless as possible.

“Well, I just thought I felt something off you.”

I could have crawled under the table and died. I had practically been licking his body in my mind, and he sensed every bit of it. I wanted to grab my inner self and sucker punch her in the face for her lack of control.
He knew what you were thinking, you twit!
I pulled my long hair to the side and sat back.

“How wonderful for you.”
I glared at him.

“Now
I’m sensing anger,” he teased. “I liked what I was getting off you before.”

“I have to go.” I slid to the end of the booth and stood, but he grabbed my arm.

“Wait. What’d I do?”

“So I find you attractive. Do you think embarrassing me is really necessary? That it’s funny to mess with the little girl?” I might have taken that too far, but I felt like a little girl about to throw a temper tantrum because I couldn’t have the shiny new toy I wanted.

His scent intoxicated me as I waited for his response. My inner self lifted her
face from her hands where she’d been sobbing after the beat down I had given her, to inhale his delicious scent. God he smelled good.

He smiled and
shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. I’m a man” He shrugged. “You’re a gorgeous, young girl who seems to like me, for some reason unbeknownst to me. I acted poorly.”

“That’s quite the confession,” I mocked.

“I speak the truth.” He shrugged.

“Liking you and finding you attractive
are
not the same thing, Thomas.”

“I was just being honest, Aldo. Should I have hidden it?” His hand remained on my arm, even though I wasn’t giving him much of a fight. Tiny vibrations pulsed from his hand. Was he controlling them
, or was it a natural reaction to our touching one another?

Truly, he could have grabbed me and tongue thrashed me at that moment and I would have loved it. However, I heard somewhere hard to get was what men like, so all I could do was pretend to be angry to hide my embarrassment. Of course, in my extremely limited experience, I didn’t know men hate drama. I looked away, trying to appear miffed.
Yeah, I was clueless.

“Don’t they say relationships need to start with honesty?” he asked, releasing his hold on my arm.

“Relationship?” My heart wrenched with hope.

He smiled slightly.
“Friendship.”

I liked the way relationship sounded better, but didn’t dare make that point. I also reminded myself to stop be
ing such a love sick teen. I just met this guy.

“I’d li
ke to see you again.” He smiled and his voice seemed sincere.