I have been reluctant to go back to work—I have checked on all of my charges each day, but I have found myself unable to think of how to help them. Brid informs me that enough is enough.
“Work is what defines us, Asa’el,” she said. “It makes us grieve our failures, but it also means that staying away from it will never make things better.” With that, she dragged me to meet our newest charge.
At first, meeting Harrington Price was not at all reassuring. We found him in the hospital, a cheerful and colorful building decorated with rabbits and colored eggs. There was an atmosphere of celebration, and sweet, familiar songs were heard from the chapel.
There was no such happiness is Harrington’s room, however. He is a man of nearly fifty, usually heavy-set, though now he looks shrunken and pale. He was lying half-reclined on his bed, staring at the ceiling and trying not to think of anything.
Brid studied him for a long moment, and I realized that just I read a charge’s aura, she was reading the energy and shapes of his body. “He has an incomplete spinal cord injury,” she said—well, there was more that she said, but it made no sense to me, so I cannot remember perfectly. “It will be months before he can walk again, and he may never recover complete movement.”
“How did this happen?” I asked, seeing the despondency in his spirit. That feeling seemed very familiar to me.
“It was a car accident,” Brid said with a sigh. “I believe the other driver walked away safely.”
How awful, and how unfortunate. I stretched out one wing over the man, giving him what comfort I could. He only closed his eyes.
A nurse in bright yellow scrubs came in. “Happy Easter, Mr. Price!” she said, checking her chart and the readings on a machine next to Harrington’s bed. “How are you feeling today?”
He forced himself to angle his head so that he could look at her. “Fine,” he said, though he couldn’t manage a smile. “Are my wife and son here?”
She blinked at him. “Mrs. Price told me last night that she’d be back after church this morning.”
“Oh,” Harrington said after a moment, and let his head fall back. “Church.”
The nurse leaned toward him. “But didn’t you tell them that you wanted to go to church?”
He nodded. He had told them that, but still he missed their presence. It was his only comfort. And yet I could see him thinking that when they were there, he wished them gone.
“Possible depression,” Brid murmured.
I hope not. That will be difficult to fight.
The nurse set a hand on Harrington’s shoulder. “Don’t lose hope,” she said. “It’s Easter, sir! There’s plenty of hope to go around.”
He looked at her, and for a moment her smile lifted his spirits. “You’re right,” he said. “Happy Easter.”
She patted his shoulder. “I’ll bring your lunch in about an hour. Unless Mrs. Price brings you something better from outside for your Easter meal!”
“Isn’t that against the rules?” he asked, his mouth twisting up.
She leaned in conspiratorially. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
That made him laugh, if only for a moment. The nurse left satisfied, and Harrington reached out for his glasses on the side table, resting on top of his bible.
“She’s right,” Brid said, and I looked around to see her watching me the same way she had watched her patient. “Plenty of hope to go around.”
I realized then that she had brought me here to make me forget about myself. It was never about me, after all—it is about them. And how can I hesitate when a man like this, who is facing the crumbling of his life, can still reach out for hope?
Perhaps they do deserve better care, but I am what they have been given, and so I must make myself better. I must have better judgment and better care, better thought and better love. I cannot afford to lose any more time.
Brid, thank you. You have already proved yourself a healer indeed. I will do what I can not to hold you back on this mission we share—for Harrington’s sake, and for my own.