Healing
The plague had already killed more than a billion worldwide in a year when Stephen took the call from Brother Frank.
“Morning, Stephen!” the ebullient monk hailed on screen, wearing a T-shirt and face drenched in sweat.
“Jesus, Frank — you don’t have …”
“No, professor — we just finished a pickup basketball game here. And toss a dollar in the potty-mouth jar.”
“Apologies,” said Stephen. “So … you haven’t been afflicted?”
“No. That’s why I’m calling. We think we found something. Well, Brother Olaf did before he passed. A manuscript. It’s in 11th Century English[JG1] , which is your discipline. With Olaf gone, we’re all just Latin and Greek guys here.”
“Did Olaf …?”
“No — he was simply 94. No sickness. He made a few notes before he died …” Frank held up a sheet of yellow ruled paper from Olaf’s desk that read, “Heal = Whole” repeatedly. “We know it’s something medical, maybe mindful, but we’ve reached our limit of comprehension.”
“Well,” Stephen pondered aloud, “our modern words for heal, health and whole all come from the same root word. Send the document over.”
“Stephen,” Frank began. “Are you …?”
Stephen held up his pale forearms, showing his friend the growing blue blotches beginning to cover them.
“Stephen, this is important. Have you forgiven Anura? Have you released your resentments?”
The scholar looked down, unable to answer.
“I’ll email our scans of this document. I’m pretty sure you’ll understand then why I ask.”
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A day later, Stephen Brighton, tenured scholar of Old English, had translated the cure. Two days later, he applied it to himself. On the third day, he knew he had to call his ex-wife.
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He was a pasty bloke from rural England with a facility for languages but no facility for making money. She was from a wealthy family in Mumbai, cultured and the smartest person he had ever met. He was fascinated with the history of medicine, whatever the culture. She was inspired by the future of medicine and wanted to make her mark in research. They came from opposite ends of Oxford and met in the middle. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. For a while.
They simply couldn’t survive when baby Monique, born premature and struggling, died before their eyes. There was no blame, but each parent found plenty in the other.
The split widened to silence. The silence had hardened over the past four years. He dove into ancient texts. She dove into scientific tests.
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On the day he received the manuscript, the epiphany that a writer speaking across 1,000 years, described the current pandemic exactly and how it had cured him, his wife and his son.
On the next day, Stephen followed the thousand-year-old compound formula to the word. He procured some of the ingredients from the village apothecary, the rest from a local gardener, made a tea and swallowed it as prescribed. The thought occurred to him he ought to document his blotches with “before” photos, in case there was an after.
Stephen realized Brother Frank’s hint he must be wholehearted to be relieved of all his maladies, all his emotional cancers, of letting go absolutely, or the cure would fail. Even though he didn’t feel like it at all, he immersed himself in asking for health, peace and joy for Anura.
On the third day, he awakened peacefully. He examined his arms, then sped to the bathroom mirror. The blotches had faded to a barely noticeable pale blue. He felt great.
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His fears about Anura’s reaction, however, were vindicated by her ever-efficient administrative assistant at the UK Health Security Agency, Wanda. “She has instructed me, for years, that she doesn’t want to talk you — ever,” Wanda told him crisply, her perfectly shaped eyebrows arching.
“Tell her I have the bloody cure!”
“Yeah, right. An English professor has to the cure to a worldwide pandemic!”
He held up printed photos of his blemished arms with his now spotless limbs. “This was me three days ago,” he conveyed calmly, “and this is me today.”
“Wanda,” Anura’s voice entered from offscreen. “I’ll talk to him.”
After two minutes, his ex cut him off.
“We can duplicate the chemicals easily,” she said, “but you can’t expect me to believe the rest of this … Wholeness. It’s mysticism, or some kind of new-age psychosomatic hokum. It’s not science, and I am a person of science.”
“And I’m not a person of science,” Stephen said gently. “I had no idea whether that tea I drank was cure or poison. But I had to believe it would work. I had to want it to work. Anura … science alone is not enough.”
“It wasn’t before, either,” she said, a tear forming as she gritted her teeth. “Do you know how angry I am about that? I can’t let it go! And now this!” she thrust her blue-blotched palm onto the computer screen.
He held his own palm up, touched hers, trying to reduce the hundred miles to nothing.
“Please want it,” he asked her. “And if you can’t, believe that I want it for you.”
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Anura had not used the word “forgive” in her text to him the next day but hadn’t needed to. He knew.
Two years later, the plague exhausted its supply of victims. In the end, only one out of every 25 people could accept, want and apply Wholeness. That left about 340 million — the pre-plague population of the United States — around the globe.
Stephen figured they, and Anura, simply had been healed. He let it all go. So, he was surprised when Anura’s new husband, Randall, called him one afternoon.
“This is awkward, but …” Randall started, haltingly. “I know Anura will always love Monique, and I always want her to, but she’s … I just wanted to let you know we’re pregnant. I want to thank you for her life, and for my son.”
