Chapter 8

I stood up and silently paced my room, brooding. The confusion of the moment combined with the incredible weight on my soul left me with very little sense of direction or purpose. But aside from my mental state, I felt great. In fact, I felt better than I ever had before. My body was brimming with energy and it wanted to move. I had wished for the ability to heal, and now my body was in perfect health.

My physique hadn't changed, but there is an amazing amount of effort that a human body expends on maintaining itself and fighting off illness. My guess was that, since both of those needs were now being met by my wish, all of that excess energy suddenly had no outlet. But then again, maybe I was just restless. I walked over to the lamp and picked it up. It was nothing more than an empty husk. I placed it reverently back on my desk and sat down with a sigh.

There were other things that needed to be taken care of. I had to make sure all of my loose ends were cleaned up. My family wasn't expecting me to be home until much later that evening, so suddenly walking downstairs when they hadn't even known I was home probably wouldn't be the smartest thing I could do. And there was the girl I had taken to the hospital. I considered her to be my responsibility. If I hadn't waited so long, she would never have been injured.

My course of action decided, I teleported to the hospital entrance and walked inside to the reception desk. I threw a few casual nudges at the woman behind the counter to get her to be more helpful.

"Hello." She said, smiling at me. Her name badge read Janet.

"Hello Janet." I replied, thinking about how to word my request. I always was a good liar. "I came in with my girlfriend a few minutes ago. Her friend was hurt earlier and we were stopping by to see her. But I had to use the restroom and when I came out she was gone. I think she went ahead to her friend without me. Could you point me in the right direction?"

"Do you know the friend's name?" Janet asked.

"No, but I know she came in shortly after five thirty, with a head injury." It was barely ten minutes past six, so it was rather unbelievable that we had arrived this quickly. Another nudge made her ignore that small detail.

She checked the records on her computer, and smiled as she found what I was looking for. "We have one person that checked in at five thirty-five." She said, but her smiled slid off her face as she continued to read. "It looks like she was admitted to the ICU." She paused and looked up at me, questioningly. "They don't allow visitors into intensive care." She told me. "So I don't know where your girlfriend could have gone."

She looked like she was about to call security so I quickly turned and walked away, erasing her memory of our conversation. Thankfully the hospital had a very well designed sign system, and it was easy to follow the arrows that led to the ICU wing. I passed through a pair of double doors and started looking into the rooms. Two security guards at the opposite end of the hall started walking towards me with serious intent. I ignored them, too focused on my search to care about a couple of toughs.

I found her five rooms into the wing. I stepped inside, shutting the door behind me. She was lying on a hospital bed, wearing one of those silly gowns that the hospital gives everyone. There was a blanket over her, draped across her shoulders and tucked under her feet. Her left arm was hanging out, and several intravenous liquids were being delivered just below her elbow. Her head was turned to the side, as if looking at the door; her black hair fell in a beautiful mane about her pale face. The calmness of her expression made her look as if she were only sleeping.

I walked to her bed and brushed the hair from her face. She looked very peaceful. I pulled the clipboard out of the slot on the bed and looked at it. There was a bunch of medical jargon written across it, detailing what medicines she was being given. But it gave me one useful bit of information; it told me that her name was Lauren. I flipped through a couple of the pages and found the original diagnosis. She was in an unresponsive coma with severe cerebral swelling, and a dislocated vertebra. They also suspected a brain hemorrhage but the tests had not been done yet. She was scheduled to have an MRI done in under an hour.

With more concern than before I put the clipboard back into the slot and took her hand in mine, willing my power to heal her. At first there was no change, but all at once I felt a sudden rush and saw her chest swell as she took a deep breath. She exhaled and her eyes fluttered open, focusing on me with their green intensity. I let go of her hand, but she was holding on to mine now, and our fingers stayed locked. "Hello." I said, a boyish grin spreading over my face without my intention.

She stared at me for what seemed like an eternity. Finally she spoke. "Thank you." She said in a weak voice. "Thank you for saving me."

How did she know? She had been unconscious at the time, hadn't she? But then I realized that she must have seen me before her attacker had. She must have remembered my face from before she was knocked out, and was just assuming that I had saved her. I sighed, still grinning. "You'll be okay now." I told her, squeezing her hand reassuringly.

A nurse came rushing into the room. "You're awake!" The nurse said, staring at her with a mixture of awe and wonder. "How is this possible?" Then she noticed me. "Who are you and how did you get in here!?" She demanded.

"My name is Jason, and I've done what I came to do, so I'll be leaving now."

"Like hell you will." She told me, and then shouted as loudly as she could. "Security!"

I only sighed and reached out, grabbing a cluster of time and twisting it, wrenching the universe around me. When the fabric of reality settled, I held time in place and walked outside of the room. The door was open once again, but the nurse had vanished, and Lauren was once again unconscious on her bed. I bent light around me in a bubble that made me invisible and restarted time. Down the hall I saw my earlier self enter the wing and begin searching.

I turned around and watched the security guards start their march down the hall, and started walking towards them. The door closed on room five as my earlier self walked in, and I reached out to the guards with a compulsion. I nudged at them to forget that I had been there. For a few moments they looked around dumbly, realizing that something was wrong but not understanding what it was. Finally they shook their heads and went back to the other end of the hall.

I walked back down the wing, heading for the exit, still draped in my invisibility. Just as I was leaving the wing, I saw the nurse at the station get up and run towards room five. I smiled invisibly, and kept walking.

Unfortunately, however well the signs were for getting someone to one of the wards, they were terribly confusing to use when you were only looking for the exit. I turned the corner and followed the hall down to the next intersection. I realized that I was lost, but it didn't really concern me, because I could always teleport away if I needed to. I decided to walk straight through the intersection and continue down the hall. As I was walking, I casually I looked through the glass panel on the door to my left, and saw something that stopped me dead in my tracks. My wandering had brought me to the children's ward.

I tentatively pressed my hand against the door, and it swung in. With a shiver running down my spine, I stepped through the opening and pushed the door shut behind me, leaning against it as I looked around. There were at least two dozen rooms branching off of the main ward, which was a long and open room in the center. There was a single nurse sitting at a desk in the corner of the larger room. He glanced up at me for a moment when I first entered, but since I was still invisible he merely shook his head and went back to his work. I stepped forward with slow steps, my feet feeling heavier and heavier as I walked.

I came up to one of the smaller rooms, and peeked inside. There was a little boy lying on the bed while watching a muted television. He couldn't have been older than seven, and he was absently flipping through the channels. I moved over to stand beside him, taking in his bloodshot eyes and his patchy hair. "Hello." I said softly.

He looked up suddenly, his eyes darting around the room. "Who's there?" He asked, his voice shaking slightly.

"It's okay. I'm sorry I scared you. I didn't mean to." I said, brushing the back of my hand across his forehead. He brought his hand up to grasp mine, but my much larger hand easily enclosed his. He was cold to the touch.

"Are you really here?" He asked.

"I'm here." I told him, popping the bubble of light and revealing myself to him.

"Wow!" He said excitedly. "Who are you? How did you do that?"

"I have magical powers." I replied. "And my name is Jason. So what are you doing here?"

"Scott." He filled in. "I've been really sick for the last six months." He told me, and then paused to glance around the room. Once he was sure that no one else was listening, he leaned towards me and whispered conspiratorially. "I have cancer. Everyone keeps saying that I'll get better, but they're lying." He told me with a sigh. "I'll be sick like this forever."

"No you won't." I told him, gripping his hand in mine.

He gave me a funny look. "You aren't lying." He informed me. "Does that mean I'm really going to get better?" He asked.

"I'll make sure of it." I promised. He started coughing and couldn't seem to stop for half a minute, but settled back down after that. I watched him carefully.

"Are you an angel?" He asked. "My mom says my angels are watching over me."

I laughed at his unexpected outburst, and had to nudge the nurse not to notice. I started healing him as I spoke. "I guess I am an angel, but only for tonight." The healing was finished before my sentence, and the change was astounding. His pale skin flushed with blood and his patchy scalp filled in within a few moments. His eyes went wide and he stared at me in silence. I put a finger to my lips and told him that he had to stay quiet.

He held himself and rocked back and forth a few times, trying to calm down. He looked up at me and I saw his tears and his smile and I embraced him in a comforting hug. I roughed up his hair and gave him a kiss on the forehead before letting him go. All of the excitement had left him exhausted and ready for a nap. He was sleeping peacefully before I laid him on the bed.

I wrapped another bubble of light around myself and visited the other nineteen children in the ward, healing each of them in turn. The most dramatic recovery was a twelve year old girl that had been burned badly over most of her body. She had also been the most difficult to reach, since both of her parents were with her. In order to get close enough to touch her I had to put both of her parents to sleep. While doing this, I saw that her father also had burns on his hands and arms, where he had evidently pulled her out of the fire, and I decided to heal his injuries while I was there.

When I had finished with the last child, I made to leave the ward. As I walked past, I saw that there was a flurry of activity and excitement inside Scott's room. Four doctors and several nurses were busy examining the miraculous recovery. "God has given us a miracle!" A nurse exclaimed, bowing her head in prayer.

"It wasn't god." Scott told them. "It was Jason." He said knowingly. The reaction of the nurse who had claimed divine intervention nearly had me bursting out in laughter, but I managed to hold it in, just barely. Without another moment of hesitation, I teleported home.

Al'Karab seated himself at a small table on the balcony of the restaurant. He was near the edge, affording him a view of the lighted streets below and the clear night sky above. The stars twinkled as if to laugh at him, but he smiled all the same. The seat across from him was suddenly filled by his old friend.

"Milan has not changed much." Al'Karab commented.

Barbaro gave him a cold look, a warning that something was amiss.

"I called the others like you asked." He didn't seem happy about it.

"Will they come?" Al'Karab asked.

"Who knows? Since you were imprisoned, many of us abandoned the cause. You were our leader, and no one else had the courage to step forward when the old god passed his judgment against you."