He looked down in the hospital bed at little Charee Norris. Charee had been just eight years old when she was diagnosed with juvenile acute myeloblastic leukemia. That was 13 months ago. After the first round of the prescribed treatment, chiefly chemotherapy and later an attempted bone marrow transplant, her parents were told that her chances of achieving recession and eventual cure were not promising. Since that time additional medical intervention including more chemotherapy and radiation, had left her tiny body shriveled, her skin a sallow yellow-brown and her spirit crushed. Now at the age of nine she was ready for her death.
   He was sure he could change all that. All he had to do was take her little hand in his and wish it so.
   Looking into the little girl’s face brought back memories of other faces. They had all been like little Charee, near death. Her image blurred as tears filled his eyes. Not for her, but for the others.

   He remembered them well.
   He had been just a little older than Charee when he first became aware of his gift. That’s what he called it at first, his “gift.” Later, he came to think of it quite differently.

 

 

   The first life he touched was that of his boyhood friend, Thomas. Thomas—no one ever called him “Tom” or “Tommy”—became ill late one summer day. The two boys had explored the upstream source of a small creek that flowed sluggishly through the woods around the farm his mother rented. They had both sipped the clear water to slake their thirst.

   Thomas was put to bed with a cough, rash and high fever. Fearing that the illness might be contagious, his own mother had forbidden him to see Thomas. She did not tell him what made Thomas so dangerous but he sensed her terror and knew it must be serious.

   He slipped out of his room late the next night, and using a tree limb, climbed into Thomas’ bedroom window. There was a rising moon and it was easy. He had done it before. He could hear Thomas’ mother and sisters talking softly in another room. He was sure at least one of the women was crying.

   Thomas did not move or seem even to know he was there. He stood by the bed and grasped his friend’s hand and whispered a few words to him. The words came to him, unbidden, and he didn’t understand them. He didn’t think he was praying. His mother was not a “church person” and he had never attended church or been given any instruction in devotionals or prayer.

   He felt Thomas’s hand in his become very hot. It reminded him of the handle on his mother’s iron skillet but he held it tightly, anyway. The words he spoke were the same his father had spoken to him, once. His father had held his hand in the same way he now held Thomas’ hand. He didn’t think about his father much, anymore. His father had left them years ago—had just walked out on his mother and him. It seemed strange he should remember his words, now.

   Thomas stirred for a moment and then seemed to slip back into a dreamless sleep. He left the room the same way he had come and went home terrified that his friend would die and so would he.
   The next day, Thomas got out of bed early in the morning and declared to his mother and sisters that he was “hungry enough to eat a horse.”

   His own mother told him the good news about Thomas with a question on her face.

   When he confessed, her face changed—first to anger then to something he had never seen before. A deep, grave sadness took her face down and her whole body seemed to sag with it. It scared him and he started to cry. She slapped him, and then keeping her hand on his cheek, forced him to look at her.

   She whispered, “Oh, Lord, oh, my Lord, boy. Don’t you ever do that, again—you promise me, now—never again.”

   Her anger flared for a moment blocking out her despair—but only for a moment. He saw her tears as she straightened up and walked slowly away. She moved as if she were carrying all the weight of the world. He was sure what he had done saved his friend’s life. Despite what his mother said, he was glad he did it.

   It frightened him, though.

 

   Edna P. Snow liked her job as personnel director at Presbyterian Medical Center. She liked helping people find secure jobs. She also liked sniffing out the undesirable applicants: the incompetent, the unreliable, and most of all, the thieves and sex offenders looking for easy targets. The prospect that one of the latter might slip through her finely tuned detection system had etched an almost permanent scowl on her face. No one in the Center ever remembered seeing her smile. There were those who said the “P” in her middle name must be for “Pissed.”
   Miss Snow (she did not like being addressed as “Ms.” Snow) was responsible for hiring almost everyone now employed at the Center. They all had experienced her scrutiny and agreed she gave a new and daunting meaning to the words, “snow job.” Many were sure she was the quintessential aging virgin. They were only half right. She wasn’t a physically imposing person. At just 5’ 3” tall and still very slender, she was considered a “little old lady” by the 18 to 24-year-old nurse trainees. Although she was more than twice their age at 57, the thought that she might be “little” or “old” hadn’t occurred to her. She lived alone but that, too, hadn’t always been true. Her hair had once been long, straight and blonde. Now it was short and curled loosely. Its color had become whiter, although she liked to think of it as just “lighter” not, “whiter.” She had been a “flower-child” back in the sixties with many suitors. She was smart and learned quickly that “free love” wasn’t always free. Only two men ever had a chance for her heart. Ten years ago she took a train to Washington, D.C. to find their names on the Vietnam Wall.
   She hired him quickly—much too quickly she was sure—it violated her normally cautious routine.

   There was nothing particularly striking about his physical appearance. He was above average in height but not a man who would be called, “tall.” Through his neatly pressed dress shirt she could see he was muscular with a powerful frame. She was sure he was strong enough to handle even the largest patients. His hair was brown, his eyes a softer brown. He was clean shaven, well groomed and his necktie, pants and shoes were spotless. He obviously cared about himself.

   She didn’t approve of tattoos or piercings which had become so commonplace today. She couldn’t see any such distinguishing marks on this young man’s arms or face. The only obvious mark he carried was a peculiar scar at the hairline on his left temple. It looked quite old. She thought it was probably the result of a childhood accident.

   Had she known the true origin of that scar she would have run from her office screaming for someone to call Hospital Security.

   But she didn’t know. She didn’t know how he became “marked” so she hired him to work in a modern hospital—to work in a place where people needed him—a place where he could do the most good. She also didn’t know it but she was one of those who would need him the most.
   He was very appealing; direct; even courtly—traits not usually found in one so young. She found herself attracted to him but forced the idea away. She was, after all, old enough to be his mother. That was something else that had escaped her about him—something else she didn’t know.
   But nothing escaped his notice as he sat in her office. He saw the utilitarian and very Spartan furnishings; the quiet efficiency of the carefully ordered space; the attention to lighting and ventilation. There was no dust and no clutter. Miss Snow’s desk held no framed photos of children or grandchildren or nieces or nephews. He was sure she lived alone and had no close relatives to question what he had begun to plan for her. She was perfect.   

   When she said she had a position open for him, he gave her his brightest and most charming smile.
   The haste of her decision to employ him as a physicians’ assistant bothered her later and she made a pledge to herself to continue to investigate his background. She checked all the easy references and documents. His birth certificate was genuine. She called the records division of the issuing hospital in Cleveland to be sure. He had a credit history (very clean) holding credit cards from three different lenders. Legally, she couldn’t ask him about his finances but credit checks were still easy even without permission. A poor credit history might indicate a need for money which could, in turn, mean a drug habit. Controlled drugs were too easy to steal at PMC. His documents indicated he had graduated from a high school in the Cleveland suburbs (his grades had been C’s and B’s with several athletic letters). He had worked as a nurses’ assistant in a retirement home while attending nursing school where he had earned straight A’s. Men willing to take on the duties and relatively low pay offered nurses were hard to find—almost as hard to find as trained RN’s.
   She didn’t give any thought to how easy it might be for him, as a hospital employee, to check back files of birth certificates for children who had died in infancy; then to check the local newspapers for lists of graduating seniors of the right age, matching the name on the birth certificate to the name of the student. Using that name, he could simply write both institutions requesting copies of the documents. Armed with a seemingly valid birth certificate, Social Security cards and drivers licenses were easy to obtain. He had a cache of such certificates. Credit card offers would soon arrive in the mail after any employment.

   He knew the time would come when he would have to move on and assume another identity. A new set of documents had to be created every fifteen to twenty years lest his unchanging physical appearance inspire unwanted questions. Should any of those fail, he had plenty of experience as a forger. He had once even fooled an expert collector with a very authentic-looking discharge paper from the American Continental Army copied from the original he had received in August of 1789.

Edna P. Snow had been “snowed.”

   In the dimmed light of her hospital room, Charee’s face seemed almost luminous. He thought of his boyhood friend, Thomas, and his face when he had seen it last. The face in his dreams was so swollen and blackened that it was almost unrecognizable—almost.       

   Thomas had hanged himself.

   His friend had continued to live in the same house, never leaving his mother and sisters. Thomas’ miraculous recovery from “the fever” gained him a measure of local fame. He was their “miracle boy” adored and doted on by his mother and four older sisters.

   His sisters never married, never left the family home. Their purpose in life was to serve Thomas. But in time his unmarried sisters grew older, and then old, with spotted, wrinkled skin and gray hair, their backs bent with osteoporosis. But Thomas remained trim, supple, with his flesh as smooth and as pink as ever—ever more the “miracle boy.”

   Eventually, his mother and sisters died and Thomas was left alone. The care his mother and sisters provided for him all his life died with the last of them.

   Unable, or unwilling, to care for himself, he tied one end of a short, stout rope to a heavy bed post and the other around his neck, then jumped out of a second-story window; the same window his boyhood friend used the night he condemned him to live.
   He could see Thomas’ death face as if in a dream, just as he could the others. Again, he looked down at Charee, her tiny chest moving unevenly with her labored breathing. Could she be different? Could this be the one he had searched for—the one he had been sent to save?

 

   Despite Miss Snow’s afterthoughts about hiring him too quickly, he was an excellent worker with skills beyond what might be expected in one so young. The other nurses found his physical strength amazing as he lifted patients with ease. Every member of the staff had a smile for him—always returning his. The patients were even more adoring. After all, he spent most of his time with them. He was careful to devote the majority of his time to the elderly geriatric patients and to the children in the oncology ward.

   He would sing with them, the golden oldies or hymns with the old and the latest children’s TV songs or nursery rhymes with the young.

   "Me, me! Come sing with me!"

   Billy was only four but he was a fighter; cancer wouldn't take him without a battle.

   So they sang together: "I love you, you love me…"

   Old Bill liked to sing, too.

   "I bet I know one you don't," came his challenge, "and I'll tell you what it is as soon as I can remember it myself."

   Bill had tried to stump him for weeks - had tried to think of a song he didn't know - and failed. But he wouldn't give up either.

  "How about 'In the Sweet By and By' while I try to remember the other one?"

   Of course Bill knew that old hymn wouldn't stump him. He seemed to know every song anyone could remember.

   It wasn’t necessary for him to touch them, but he did. With his touch and his voice he gave them something he knew would bring healing, if healing were possible—healing to their bodies and to their souls. He gave them hope. Hope, like nothing else, increased their expectations of life. In time, there were far fewer deaths and far more complete recoveries in the wards where his sunny outlook and gentle encouragement lifted all hearts.

   The other nurses could always find him by simply going wherever they heard people laughing and singing. In time, too, Miss Edna P. Snow relaxed her vigil—just a bit. But that would be enough.