Vengeance is Mine

Chapter 6: The Exchange

Julianna

I had to remind myself over and over to be patient.  If the answers were simple and easy, the police would have solved my sister’s murder themselves.  I just… didn’t know exactly what I was looking for, and every night it was a game of chance, who would be on duty, which ambulances would have emergency calls, and then there was the constant distraction of the patients.  I pushed my cleaning cart up the bathroom and slipped on a fresh pair of gloves. 

As I bent to retrieve the toilet caddy, I caught a glimpse of the patient in the room across the hall.  She was just a baby, she couldn’t have been more than two years old.  Her cheeks were flushed with fever, and she was crying listlessly, like she didn’t even have the energy to complain properly.  I knew I needed to ignore it, I needed to stay away from the patients… but I couldn’t help but eaves drop as the nurses came in and started their assessment of the tiny toddler.

Oh God, they’ve got it all wrong.  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to ignore the baby, but she spotted me.  The very young, and the very old, they can feel me, they recognize me.  And the baby was crying for me, not it words but in images and feelings and overwhelming discomfort.  The nurses were drawing blood, and preparing a flu swab.. but I could see what they could not.  It was as though I could see inside the baby’s body, I could see the infection and the inflammation, feel the pain and the burning.  Two nurses were trying to coax her into opening her mouth so they could examine her throat, but the problem was a raging UTI.

I swallowed and tried to focus on task at hand – clean the toilet Julianna.  Disinfect the sink.  Take out the trash.  Mop the floor.  It might take time, but sooner or later the nurses or the doctor would find the real problem.

The pleading washed over my psyche like a wave. Please, please please help me.  Not in words, but in feelings.  I sighed and removed my gloves, and squirted my hands with the sanitizing hand rub.  It would be so, so easy to take away this child’s pain.  I looked up and down the hallway, nurses were bustling about, a few lounging at the nurse’s station updating charts or scrolling through their phones.  But I was just the cleaning lady.  I couldn’t just waltz into a patient’s room for no reason.

I linked my mind to the baby’s, I showed her in images what I wanted her to do.  Her mom had left a cup of coffee on the bedside table.  I needed the baby to dump the coffee.  I moved on, out of sight of the room, and started wiping down the wash station, and waited.

After a moment, I heard the slosh and splash, and the mother exclaiming, “Haley! What did you do that for?  You made a mess!”  And a minute later, a nurse came over the radio, calling housekeeping to mop up a spill in room 6.

I came, as usual silent and mute.  I knocked on the door, pointed to myself and then gestured to the spill on the floor.  The mother got the idea and nodded, “Oh yeah, sure, you can come clean it up.  I’m so sorry to add you extra work.”  She was too embarrassed to tell me that her sick little munchkin had just knocked her paper cup of coffee off the table on purpose, and for no apparent reason.  I smiled and tried to tell her “Its okay” with my expression, and then I went to work mopping up the coffee.  I smiled and winked at the little girl, and showed her what I needed her to do.

I removed the glove from my left hand, praying that no one would notice, and then I took a rag from my cart.  I held on to the bed rail, as if to steady myself as I bent and pretended to clean some coffee splatter off the bottom of the stretcher.  While my hand was on the railing, the baby put her hot, chubby little paw over mine, providing the skin-to-skin connection I needed to make the exchange.

I can’t tell you how, or why I can do what I do.  All the women in my family are born with this affliction.  Ignorant people might call it a “gift”, but its not a gift.  It’s a curse that makes life miserable.  I would give anything if I could just send it back wherever it came from.  But I was here, and the baby was here, and now that I’d made the connection with the little girl, I couldn’t NOT do it. 

The baby touched my hand, and I let my energy pour into her.  And as I filled her with my healthy, vibrant, healing energy, I took her sickness into my body.  It was a sort of trade.  I exchanged my wellness, for her sickness.  I felt the burning in my bladder, the sudden, uncomfortable urge to pee, I felt the chill of a fever snake over me. 

The mother suddenly realized that the baby was touching me.  “Oh Haley, don’t bother the lady, she’s trying to clean up your accident.” I felt her move the baby away, out of reach, but it was okay.  Ten seconds was enough time to complete the transfer.  I made one more half hearted swipe at the bottom of the stretcher, and then stood, feeling a little dizzy, and a little weak.  I nodded and smiled at the mother as I retreated from the room.  I went across the hall to the bathroom I had just cleaned, and locked myself inside.  I sat on the toilet and leaned down, letting my head hang between my knees.  I just needed a moment to focus, to concentrate. With my eyes closed, I could see the infection inside myself in my minds eye.  I imagined that sickness growing smaller and smaller, I squeezed it and condensed it, and imagined a capsule around it, until it floated around my body, a little tiny seed of pain that could no longer hurt anyone.

I could almost hear Melayia scolding me.  “You can’t do it like that, Julianna, you have to get it out of your body.” But I didn’t know any other way to do it.  All of us had our own unique way of expressing our abilities, and our abilities were not the same.  Melayia always said, “What goes in, has to come out eventually, or it will kill you.”  I stood up slowly, and splashed some cold water on my flushed face.  It hadn’t killed me yet, and at least the baby had been spared hours of suffering while the nurses and doctors bumbled through their tests… and there would be no more need for needles and drugs and antibiotics.  I had fulfilled my obligation, now I needed to go back to work, both literally, and figuratively.  I wasn’t here to be the patron saint of the Emergency Department… I was here to find my sister’s killer.

As I let myself out of the bathroom, I  plowed straight into Keith Lobello