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Arthur and Lee had been awake for half an hour and Arthur, again in a murky mood, had been doing what he could to avoid saying anything he'd regret; there was a knock on the kitchen door.
"Come in," Lee called.
Two years ago Lee had done most of Arthur's personal care, including his bowel routine. Last year she had rented a house of her own and Arthur had lived near-by, first a block away with Lucia and Shell, and then six blocks away on Mabel Street with Lucia, Shell, Tame and Uncle Dave, two more exiles from Godwin. Lee had savored her freedom from care-taking responsibilities and Arthur's housemates had cared for him until, in the spring, he had discovered that Medicare would pay for Public Health to help out. Jackie was a Public Health nurse. She was in her late twenties, devoutly Christian, blonde, wide-mouthed, softly pretty, married, and the mother of a 2-year-old boy on whom she doted, and she was fascinated by Arthur and his friends, particularly Lucia and the alternative medicine she studied.
"It's me," Jackie called from the kitchen. She put down her things and wandered into the bedroom.
"Oh good," said Lee, happy to see her.
She grinned at Lee but when she looked at Arthur sensed his mood.
"Are you okay?" she said. She loved him fiercely. “Oh,” she said, acknowledging he wasn't going to respond; he laughed in appreciation of her tact.
Lee got up and dressed and Jackie got started with shit chores, as Arthur and his friends commonly called his every-other-day bowel routine. Like his hands and legs, Arthur's bladder and bowels were paralyzed, and as Lee heated water for tea Jackie donned a non-sterile surgical glove, unwrapped a Bisacodyl suppository, coated its end with KY Jelly, and pressed it as high in his rectum as the length of her longest finger allowed. As the Bisacodyl melted it would stimulate peristalsis, the bowel contractions that move stool through the intestines and into the rectal cavity. Some days he would expel some without further aid, but sooner or later it was always necessary to scoop out what remained; the scooping (as well as any eating and drinking he did) further stimulated peristalsis. Forty minutes after using the suppository Jackie had finished Arthur's bed bath and done the first bowel check. She would digitally check him every five or ten minutes, and he would usually be done two to two-and-a-half hours after the suppository had been used. In ten years would chores take an hour longer? In three months would he no longer be incontinent? While Jackie worked and waited, they talked.
"What do you think happened at the séance?" she said.
"I assume spirit talked to me," he said, "but only because it seems pointless to assume otherwise. I have no lie-spotting habit, tend to believe whoever’s talking to me, and besides, debunking spiritualism just seems lazy. If Daniel’s a conscious fraud, he is, but I think there are genuine channelers, whatever it is that they channel and whether Daniel’s one or not."
"You have no faith, do you?"
"I don't believe in my disbelief, either."
"I have faith. I know."
"Lucia does too. And my sister Ruth does, but she knows what you and Lucia know is nonsense."
"Miracles happen though."
"Oh, I believe in miracles. I just don't predict them."
Jackie and Lee were gone and Arthur, naked except for a towel in his lap, was sitting in the morning sun in the courtyard where Sandra had massaged him yesterday. He looked at his left great toe and flexed it. It didn’t move but, as though a spark had jumped a synapse, he felt a tiny electrical connection. He sat several seconds idly watching his motionless toe and then flexed it again and again felt a spark and saw no movement--until, after a few seconds, his toe slowly lifted, remained raised for a second, and settled back. He smiled. "You mock," he said, and tried a third time intentionally to flex; this time he neither saw movement nor felt a spark, but feeling spread through the whole toe and then through his foot and up his leg; he felt like this sometimes; it was nothing new.
He shifted his attention from his left foot to his left hand. He concentrated on his left thumb because it was the most sensitive of his digits, the only one with nearly normal sensation; if he could move it without using wrist muscles it would be a significant development arguably traceable to spirit's ministrations. It didn't move, but he realized he had been trying to will it to move, forgetting that he wasn't trying to bend a spoon or move a straw but to use a muscle. He focused on using the muscle--tried, relaxed, tried, relaxed. He didn’t care when his thumb didn’t move because, after all, it didn't. He would like to fly, but being earthbound didn't depress him. He tried occasionally to move his toe and thumb and, occasionally, to fly.
Hardly overexerting myself, he thought, sitting in the sun. The sky was blue. The word blue, he thought (a few days later, at the typewriter), was his favorite word to write. The sun was hot, the sky was blue. It amused him to work with his other-worldly guides in whose existence he did not believe.
“It’s how I am, guys,” he explained.
He thought it would be unreasonable to shut his would-be healers and their allies out, sought to be open to them should they be there. He had no fear of evil forces, though at times he had mentioned to himself that his lack of fear was both ignorant and arrogant. He prayed to his unimagined protector to be protected if he needed protection and it was available for the asking. In the cool of the morning the sun was delicious. He tried to contract all ten of his toes and watched them not-move. He thought about Jackie's faith. She believed in Jesus and His power as she believed in cheese.
Night. Arthur rarely lay on his stomach. The only lying-down position in which he was comfortable very long was on his back, but he could lie on either side and on his stomach for brief periods. Lee straddled his lower back, warming olive oil in her hands. She loved Arthur's neck and back and body. She imagined a 5-pointed star of light above her head and drew it down until its healing power entered the crown of her head; she placed her hands at the top of Arthur's spinal column and as she began to massage him felt light filling her body and visualized it flowing from her fingertips into Arthur's spine. She felt the pace of the current in his spine quicken. There was no doubt in her mind that he was cured and that only a little time remained before he walked. She had her moments of doubt, but this was not one of them. She was unaware of her lover, still parked in the parking lot a few hundred feet away. She would soon go to him, but now he might not have existed. In the universe there was only healing energy and love and her and Arthur; the current flowing into and through her to her fingers and from them into his spine.
He felt her fingers on his neck and then on his upper back, and he opened his heart to the healing spirit; his sense of her touch disappeared as she descended lower down his spine. Both their hearts were open, but it was only she who felt the spirit. It was as though his spirit sensors were as paralyzed and unfeeling as his legs and torso, the ulnar side of his arms and his armpits. Again he wondered in spite of himself how it was that Lee could so believe that what she wished to be true was and would be true. He knew his whininess poisonous, but there it was. He imagined himself holding tight to bitterness and anger he had not even known was there. He imagined himself so attached to his world view, in spite of himself, that he actually created a block in his astral body as real as the block in his spinal cord. He tried to let go. He let go, but the letting go was intermittent. He believed life an intermittent affair, full of swift and unpredicted shifts.
The next night it was Carol who straddled his naked back and visualized the healing light flowing into and through her into his spine.
"It feels good, Carol," he said.
"Good," she said.
"Imagine if it works," he said.
"Yeah, I know," she said.
He was relieved she hadn't said, "It will," but he hadn't expected her to.
"I don't know," Arthur said, "how I'm going to react when come March 2 there's no change. When I first hurt myself I expected a depression eventually, and it never came. Now I have the same foreboding, not of being depressed but of being mean."
"I hope whatever does or doesn't happen doesn't hurt you," Carol said.
"I hope I don't sullenly punish anyone who dared believe there’d be a miracle," he said.
_____
To go to the next part of THE HEALING click here.
To go to the THE HEALING & LOVE NOTE DISCUSSION FORUM click here. I want to hear almost anything you are willing to say, including whether you have had similar or contradictory experiences. Criticism of my behavior and beliefs is also solicited and will be (more or less!) welcome.
This post has been edited by Coach: 09 March 2006 - 07:52 PM
