F. Paul Wilson - The Touch

Why go to the office ? he thought. Here was someone who really needed healing and wasn't clamoring for it. Someone who had been tearing at his heart for years.

"Miss!" he said as he hopped over a puddle onto the curb. "Can I speak to you a minute?"

She whirled, startled. Her eyes were wide and fearful. "What? I ain't got no money!"

"I know that," Alan said, approaching more cautiously. "I just want to help you."

"Get away. Don't want no help!"

She turned and started to hobble away.

"Miss! I just—"

She hobbled faster, her body jerking left and right like a trip-hammer.

Alan could feel the rain soaking through his shirt, plastering down his hair. But he couldn't let her go. He trotted after her.

"Wait!"

She glanced over her shoulder, her eyes full of fear. His heart broke for her. How many times throughout her life had people made fun of her, picked on her, teased her, tormented her, pushed her around, tripped her, just because of that foot?

"I'm not going to harm you!"

And then she tripped. She was looking at him and not at the sidewalk; her foot caught a raised section of walk and she went down in a muddy puddle.

She was crying when Alan reached her.

"Don't hurt me! I ain't got no money!"

"I don't want anything from you. I just want to do this ." He grabbed her malformed left foot and ankle and twisted them toward the normal physiologic position. He felt the tingle, the rush, heard her cry out, and then it was over. He took both her hands.

"Stand up."

She looked at him with a puzzled, still-fearful expression, but accepted his help. Her eyes nearly bulged from their sockets when she regained her feet and felt her left sole lie flat against the ground for the first time in her life. She gasped, tested it, then walked in a slow circle, her mouth gaping, utterly speechless. Alan picked up her umbrella and shopping bag and put them back into her hands.

"Take these and get home and get out of those wet clothes."

"Who… who are you?"

"Just someone who wishes he could have been here for you forty or fifty years ago."

He walked back to the car in a cloud of jubilant euphoria. Oh, that had felt good!

Ginny and Tony were staring out the side windows of the car.

Tony's eyes kept darting between Alan and the woman, now walking back and forth on the sidewalk on her normal left foot. "Holy shit, Alan!" he kept saying. "Holy shit !"

Ginny said nothing. She simply stared at him, her face a tight, unreadable mask.

Alan opened the door on her side. "Would you mind driving home, honey? I'm a bit shaky after that."

Actually, he had suddenly realized that he didn't know the way home. But it didn't bother him. He felt too damn good !

Wordlessly, Ginny slid over and put the car in gear.

"Now you know," Alan said as they waved good-bye to Tony from their front steps.

Ginny turned and went into the house.

"I still can't believe it," she said. "I saw it, but…"

"So you can see why I can't come out and say that the stories aren't true."

Ginny dropped onto the couch and sat staring at the far corner of the room.

"God, Alan."

"You can see that, can't you?"

He desperately wanted to hear her agree. She had been so quiet and pensive since his little demonstration at Central and Howe. He hadn't a clue as to what was going on in her mind.

She shook her head. "No," she said. "I can't see that at all. Not only have you got to deny it—you've got to stop using it."

He was stunned. " What ?"

"I mean it, Alan." She rose and began to circle the couch, head down, her arms folded in front of her. "It's ruining our life!"

"You mean forget I have it? Ignore it? Pretend it doesn't exist?"

Finally she looked at him, face to face, eyes blazing. "Yes!"

Alan stared at her. "You really mean it, don't you?"

"Of course I do! Look what it's done to you! You can't practice medicine anymore—the hospital won't let you admit patients and you can't get into your office without being mobbed by all the kooks hanging around outside it. Can you imagine what would happen if you publicly admitted that you can cure people? They'd tear you to pieces!"

Alan was numb. Deny the power exists? Not use the Hour of Power when it comes ?

"So…" Ginny hesitated, took a deep breath, then began again. "So, I want a decision, Alan. I want a promise. I want you to hold some sort of news conference, or put out a press release, or whatever it is people do in a case like this, and tell the world that it's all a pack of lies. I want you to go back to being a regular doctor and me back to being your regular wife. I can't deal with what's been happening here!"

There were tears in her eyes.

"Oh, Ginny," he said, stepping toward her and taking her hands, "I know it's been tough on you." He didn't know what else to say.

"You haven't answered me, Alan."

He thought of a future full of sick and miserable people with no hope passing through his office, looking for help, and he saw himself letting them pass by as he stood mute and still with his hands in his pockets.

"Don't ask this of me, Ginny."

"Alan, I want things as they were!"

"Tell me: Could you stand on a dock and hide a life preserver behind your back while a drowning man cries for help ten feet away?"

"Never mind the hypothetical stuff! This is real life— our life! And we've lost control of it! I want our old life back!"

Regret and resignation suddenly flooded through him. This was it. This was the end.

"That life is gone, Ginny. Things will never be the same again. I can't stop."

She jerked away from him. "You mean, you won't stop!"

"I won't stop."

"I knew it!" she said, her features hardening into an angry mask. "I knew you wouldn't do this for me, for us, but I made myself ask. You didn't disappoint me! If nothing else, you're consistent! I've never come first with you—never! So why should I have expected any special consideration this time?" She whirled and headed for the stairs. "Excuse me. I've got a plane to catch."

Alan stood and watched her go, unable to refute her. Was she right? Had he really put her and their marriage second all along? He had never really thought about it before. He had taken it for granted that they were both leading the kind of lives each of them wanted. But maybe that was the problem: the taking for granted and the living of separate lives. The bonds that had united them early on had long since dissolved and they had formed no new ones.

And then the Touch had come along.

Alan shook his head and walked to the window to watch the rain. The Touch—it would test the strongest marriage. It was exploding his.

But I can't give it up! I can't!

He didn't know how long he stood there, brooding, mulling the past and the future, watching the rain sheet the screen, wondering how long Ginny would stay in Florida to "think things over." But he wasn't giving up yet. He would use the time they'd have together in the car during the trip down to JFK to try to convince her to change her mind. He'd—

A taxi pulled into the driveway and honked.

Ginny was suddenly on her way down the stairs, somehow managing all three suitcases at once.

"I'm driving you, Ginny," he said, angry that she thought he'd let her go off to the airport by herself.

She pulled on her raincoat. "No, you're not!"

"Don't be ridiculous. Of course I—"

"No, Alan! I'm leaving here to get off by myself. I don't want to be with you, Alan. Can I make it any clearer than that?"

That hurt. He hadn't realized things had got to this point. He shook his head and swallowed.

"I guess not."

He picked up the two biggest bags and carried them out into the downpour to the taxi. Ginny got in the back seat and closed the door while he and the cabbie loaded the trunk.