Revelations

For Mom, who showed me what it means to be a strong woman.

Chapter One

Eighteen years after my birth, I walked into my father’s hospital room with the intent to save his life. This one single act took away three years of mine. I whispered my name into his ear, hoping for recognition I did not get. I had no idea that one week later I would slip into the coma which consumed me for over three years. My father never knew of my existence until after I’d brought him back from the brink. He had no idea he had a daughter. In the depths of his mind, he remembered my mother and that was enough for me. My mother is dead, but what does it matter. His remembrance of her beautiful face was enough for me to know my father would love me. That’s why I saved him. I would have saved him even if I knew then what happened seven days afterwards.

“You can find me at the motel down the road,” I told him. “The one with the blue rose on the sign. Get the key for room 102 from the guy at the desk. I’ll make sure he knows you’ll be coming. Just tell him Christiana sent you. I’ll explain everything.”

His glazed dying eyes met mine at this moment. He didn’t make the connection between my name and his own. Up until then it seemed to me he stared right through my body. When his eyes locked on mine, I saw they were the same emerald green color as my own. My breath faltered in my chest which caused a sound something like a sob to release from my throat. He didn’t seem to notice the exactness of our eyes or the gasp from my lips. Instead, he only closed his eyes and took another laboured breath with his cancer-damaged lungs.

I do not claim to work miracles. I only know what I do is because of what was done to me, which will be explained. With my free hand resting on his shoulder, I put one of my hands over his and bent my head. As my eyelids slid closed, my mind went to work. In the recesses of my brain, I could see the blackness killing him. My mind is as reliable–actually more so, but I don’t like to brag–as the best body scanners and the experts’ interpretations of x-rays. Broken bones are as easy for me to see as any negative slide. I could see the cancer eating away his lungs.

The disease that would kill him less than two hours later had I not stepped in I took into myself. I felt the disease leave him, felt his lungs begin to work with ease again, as in the years before he started smoking. I cannot express the joy overwhelming me when I opened my eyes. My task now completed, I saw his eyes staring back at mine with a new light.

“Are you an angel?” he asked. His voice still sounded like a conditioned whisper.

I shook my head, seeing bright spots of light dancing on the edges of my vision. “I’m not an angel,” I said, my own voice low. “Perhaps the farthest from it.” I rose on unsteady legs. “Come to the motel.” Those were my last words before I staggered out of the room.

I don’t remember getting to the motel or checking into my room, getting into the bed, removing my shoes, or my jacket. If I locked the door I have no recollection of doing so. What I do recall is waking up to find a man dressed in blue jeans and a black T-shirt seated in a chair at the foot of the bed. He had his booted feet up on the bed. He leaned back so the front feet of the chair hovered inches off the ground. His hands were behind his head, his green eyes on the ceiling. His expression, what I could see of it, was one of serenity, and one of confusion.

I heard the front two legs of the wooden chair hit the floor with a clack as I sat up slowly in the bed. His feet came down next, and he sat on the edge of his seat, his hands suddenly clasped before him. I put a hand to my head, reeling from the effort of curing this man. This man did not know his connection to me. I could instantly pull that much from his mind. He did not know. I was too dizzy to discover more.

His first words to me were ones of concern. “Are you okay?”

I swallowed, feeling somewhat seasick while on dry land. “I’m not sure,” I said quietly.

His next words were the words I first expected. “Who are you? What did you do to me?”

I managed a very small laugh. “My name is Christiana,” I said.

Even my name, so close to his own, gave him no recognition as to who sat before him. “That doesn’t answer my questions,” he said.

I swallowed the nausea building in my stomach long enough to pull my legs up to my chest. I set my chin on my knees, drew a breath, and examined him briefly. “Christian,” I said. “I believe you knew my mother.”

The brow over his right eye rose only slightly. He wasn’t picking up what little I was putting down. I knew I had to help.

“Her name was Marie,” I began. “You met her at a bar called The Gull in San Diego the day before you shipped out. Almost nineteen years ago. She served cocktails. You sang her a song. ‘Her name was Marie from the banks of the Lee.’ You don’t remember?”

Christian Fletcher shook his head.

I smiled. “She was about twenty-four with big, brown eyes. You took her back to a hotel, one she couldn’t remember the name of. After your one night stand you shipped out the next morning. You never knew her last name.”

My father’s eyes suddenly grew large with recognition. “Oh,” he said, letting the word draw out. He grinned sheepishly, his eyes lowering. “I remember her.”

“I knew you did,” I said. Now came the moment to drop my bomb, and I did it with gusto. “I’m the product of your one night stand.”

Silence followed my statement. Christian’s eyes stared at my face, his mouth slightly open. His chest rose and fell with the deep breaths he took, deep breaths he had not been able to make since his cancer diagnosis. When he ran his hands through his hair, I could easily feel his confusion and uncertainty…and his pain.

After a few minutes of silence between us, I felt a need to speak. “My mother named me Christiana, after you. She never forgot you, or what you gave to her. She gave you no phone number or address. You gave her no way to reach you. You shipped out and didn’t tell her where you went. She raised me on her own.”

Christian stumbled over his next words. “Where is she?”

“She’s dead,” I said. “She died when I was about six. At least, I think I was six.” I smiled, laughing quietly, mostly to myself. “I don’t know my birthday. She never told me, so I’m only guessing at my age.”

“This is unreal,” Christian said.

“Don’t get me started on unreal,” I muttered.

“What?” he asked.

“You forgot the other half of your question.”

He continued to stare at me, open-mouthed.

“What did I do to you?” I said, reminding him. When again silence fell between us, I gave the briefest of explanations. “I cured you.” Yeah, that was about as brief as I could get.

His next word was an outburst, which in my opinion, is better than silence…I think. “What?!”

I knew I would need to make a more, shall we say...detailed explanation. “Don’t interrupt me,” I said gently. “Just let me get it all out there before you ask questions.”

He did not move.

“My grandparents were the product of government experimentation on human beings.”

Instantly, he opened his mouth to speak. I held up a hand, and Christian Fletcher fell silent again.

“The gov, that’s what I call them at least, has been attempting to make a superior breed of human being. It certainly didn’t start with my grandparents. This has been going on for a very long time. Anyway, my grandfather could read minds. My grandmother was a mild telekinetic. I can read minds but I can’t lift stuff with my mind.” I took a breath to steady my shaky nerves. Some things are hard to speak about. “After my mom died, I lived in an orphanage. A man claiming to be my uncle came to me one day. He said he wanted to take me with him on weekends. He wasn’t my uncle, yet I was intrigued.

“I went with him because I could read his thoughts. I went with him because he could read mine. He didn’t scare me, and it took me years to realize I could remember little of our visits. And my powers began to increase. Then a little boy fell out of a tree in the yard of the orphanage. I would have been about ten or eleven. Maybe a little older? When I put my hands on him, I began to figure out what was being done to me during those weekend trips. He used me, experimented on me. The man who claimed to be my uncle was quite inadvertently making me into a very powerful human being. So I placed my hands on the boy and fixed his broken arm. The boy never spoke about it. And I continued to go with my fake uncle on weekends. During those weekend visits, he made me what I am.”

I stopped my narrative, unsure of how to continue. There was plenty more to say, though Christian suddenly gave me no reason to say it. Just to show it. “I don’t believe you,” he said firmly.

I nodded, chewing on my lower lip in what I call “my nervous habit.” Still slightly unsteady but unwavering, I went to my bag, a small duffle. It had only a couple changes of clothes in it, all I took from my former home, and I rummaged around until my hands closed around what I sought. It was my pocket knife, a Swiss Army blade with all kinds of little gadgets built into it, though all I wanted was the knife.

“Don’t be afraid,” I said. I walked back to the bed, feeling more and more confident on my feet. I flipped out the blade with a deft flick of my wrist, something requiring a loosening of a couple tiny screws on the blade’s casing and a few modifications of my own. Good thing I’m handy with tools. It clicked and locked into position and quickly, before I could change my mind, I slashed open my left wrist.

Christian’s voice rose to panic pitch, and he leapt to his feet. “Holy crap! What are you doing?”

I stepped away from him as he rose, keeping myself a good distance from him. Blade in hand, I held it out in front of me in a threatening way. Christian stopped before the threat, even though it came from a ninety pound girl who stood no more than five foot four if that, brandishing a four-inch pocket knife.

“It’s okay,” I said, trying to make my voice as reassuring as possible. I kept my palm facing him, as if doing so would help matters. I doubt I succeeded. What did succeed was what I did next.

I kept my eyes on Christian’s face as I used the powers given to me by some insane scientist pretending to be my uncle and sealed up the bleeding gash in my wrist. My skin knit new and perfect. The blood seeping out returned into my veins. A few droplets fell from my arm onto the carpeted floor and disappeared perfectly into the riotous pattern. I went to the bathroom sink, ran cold water over my wrist to clean it up, dried it off, and returned to face Christian.

“That wasn’t real,” he said, his voice catching in his throat.

“Yes,” I said, showing him my cleanly healed wrist. “It was. You’re standing here instead of lying in a casket because of this.”

“I was going to be cremated,” he breathed.

“Fine,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You’re here instead of ashes because of it.”

“How?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t really know. But whatever done to me by my so-called uncle, Arturo Holt, made me capable of healing with a touch. Broken bones. Cuts. Bruises. Disease. Cancer. I can cure it all.”

Christian took a step away from me. “I don’t understand.”

I ran my hand through my hair and tucked it behind my ears. “I’m not sure I really understand either,” I said. “I’m guessing Holt will be looking for me. I ran off without telling him where I was going. I’m guessing he won’t be too happy either.”

Christian wasn’t listening to my words. “Are you really my daughter?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m willing to do a DNA test, if you want to.”

My father nodded, still in something resembling shock. “That might make me feel better about all this.”

“It’s a lot to take in,” I said. “Trust me, I know.”

“Are you staying here?”

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“I mean, do you want to come back to my home? I have a spare bedroom, if you want to stay.”

Relief swept over me and chills ran down my spine. He barely believed what he had seen, what I had told him. Yet he asked me to go home with him, was willing to let me into his life. “Sure.” It was all I could manage to say.

The local bus took us back to his small house in Columbus, Ohio, not far from the hospital where he recently lay dying.