Part 9 (2/2)

With a muttered curse, he turned and took a couple of strides away from the window to stand at the foot of the pushed-together beds. Then, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck, he drew a ragged breath and whirled to face her. ”Katie, I know what you want to hear. You want me to give you a reason that guy you took to the hospital is still alive. All I can tell you is that he was going to die, and I couldn't let it happen. So I put my hands on him and made the bleeding stop. I made his heartbeat get faster and his breathing get deeper. I knew it would work because I've done it-or things like it-a hundred or more times, now. But, honest to G.o.d, I don't know why it works.”

The look he gave her was an odd mixture of defiance that she might dare not to believe him and hope that she would. Kate didn't know what to think.

”Are you trying to tell me-” she began.

Sam waved her off with an arm flung wide. ”Something happened to me,” he said urgently. ”When I was dead, I mean. The experience . . . changed me-except, I didn't find out until months later, after I got out of the hospital.”

”How could you not-” She stopped herself this time, realizing she was asking the wrong question. He couldn't give her reasons. Perhaps, though, he'd give her facts.

Choosing her words, she asked, ”How did you find out?”

He stared at her for an instant, then turned and paced toward the door. She thought the conversation had ended, but he stopped in the doorway, standing in silence for several moments, his hands gripping the door frame on either side of him. Then, with a heavy sigh, he spoke in a flat, matter-of-fact tone.

”There was an accident. It was a few weeks after I got out of the hospital. Sid and I were helping another friend put a deck on the back of his house.” Shrugging slightly, he admitted, ”I was mostly watching, since I wasn't walking too well at that point. Anyway, Sid was working with a power saw, and his hand slipped. The blade hit him, and it cut his leg open at the groin. I was standing maybe five feet away, and in the couple of seconds it took me to get my hands on him, the ground was covered with blood. When the medics got there, they shoved me out of the way and started working on him. One of them said something about it being the femoral artery that was cut, and he said it like that meant Sid was already dead. But then the other one realized the bleeding had stopped. Sid had pa.s.sed out, but he was alive. They took him to the hospital, and . . . well, that was that.”

That was what?

The starkness of Sam's speech sent chills up Kate's spine. The understatement with which he described what must have been a horrifying event was unbelievable, as was the complete absence of description as to what he'd actually done in those moments before the medics arrived. Where was the emotion she'd seen in his expression last night when he'd put his hands on Ray c.o.o.ney?

She had her answer when he turned to look at her from across the room; the lines on his desert-bronzed face were deep with strain and exhaustion, and she knew the words he'd left out, the details of the scene, were as vivid in his mind as if it were happening at that very moment. It was costing him a great deal to tell her this story.

”Go on,” she said softly. ”That was the first time you healed someone?”

”Yeah,” Sam replied in the same emotionless tone. Then, with a brooding frown, he added, ”But I'd been feeling . . . well, different for a while.”

”Different?”

He lifted a shoulder and let it fall. ”It started in the hospital, with the TV. I couldn't watch anything where people were killing or beating on each other. And I hated being around other sick people. Then, after I got out of there, I'd be in a place like, say, the grocery store, and I'd see a person with some kind of physical problem-a crippled leg, maybe-and I'd get this urge to make it go away.”

Kate gave him a bewildered look.

”To fix it,” he explained succinctly. ”The thing with Sid triggered it, though. After that, it got so I had to try to fix it. Then, one day, I was driving home from visiting Sid, after he got home from the hospital, and I pa.s.sed an accident. Except, I couldn't pa.s.s it.” His breath caught for an instant. ”It was a kid. He'd been riding a bike, and a car had hit him. He had a cracked skull, and I don't think there were two breaths left in him. But I put my hands on his head, and . . .” He trailed off, then gave her a quick glance. ”I understand he's still got some problems with his eyesight, but otherwise, he's okay.”

Kate shook her head, trying to translate images from the previous night into the scene Sam described. ”Weren't there other people there?” she asked. ”Had the ambulance come?”

”Lots of people. No ambulance yet. But there was a cop.”

”And how did you get him to let you near the child?”

He hesitated a moment. ”I told him I was a doctor. It didn't matter. I would have said whatever I had to say to get my hands on that boy.”

”And what did the hospital say? Dear heavens, Sam, how did you get away with such a thing?”

He snorted. ”I didn't.”

When he didn't immediately explain, she struggled to control the rush of impatience that coursed through her, watching as he pushed off from the door frame to wander restlessly around the small room.

”The next morning, a neurosurgeon named Martin Anderson called and asked if I'd come to the hospital to tell him about my role in saving the kid's life. I went because . . . well . . .”

He came to a halt, staring down at the b.l.o.o.d.y clothes lying at his feet. Then, bending slowly to pick them up, he kept looking at them as he continued. ”I knew what had happened to me when I died was related to what I'd done with the boy and with Sid. I hadn't been able to get anybody to listen when I tried to tell them about the near-death experience. The nurses and doctors at the hospital thought I was hallucinating. I knew I wasn't, but I shut up about it because I didn't want them putting it in my medical records that I was crazy. But when Marty Anderson called, something about him made me think he might listen. I went to talk to him because I had to know what was happening to me.”

”I should think so,” Kate murmured. Then, seeing his confusion over what to do with the stained garments, she crossed the room and gently took them from him. Turning to walk in the direction of the kitchen, she spoke over her shoulder. ”So, what did this Dr. Anderson have to say?”

”He asked questions, mostly,” Sam replied, following her slowly. ”But when I told him about the crash and the neardeath experience, he went wild.”

”You mean, he didn't believe you?”

”Oh, he believed me, all right. He gave me a book and sent me home to read it. The next day I was back there, looking for him. The descriptions in the book of what people said it had been like to die sounded just like what had happened to me.” Watching as she ran cold water over his clothes in the kitchen sink, he added, ”Truth is, it was d.a.m.ned rea.s.suring to find out I wasn't the only one. But I still didn't understand what the near-death experience had to do with this crazy thing with Sid and the boy.”

Swis.h.i.+ng the clothes with a squirt of dishwas.h.i.+ng detergent, Kate turned off the water. ”And Dr. Anderson told you?”

”h.e.l.l, no,” Sam grated, wandering around the kitchen. Marty didn't have answers-only suspicions. He took me to see a couple of his patients in the hospital, and he didn't have to ask for me to want to help them. Every time I even glanced at a sick person, I . . . well, this thing happens to me where I . . . want to make them well.”

The hint of embarra.s.sment in his tone made her frown in puzzlement, and she watched the interplay of emotions flickering across his features as he picked up a box of cereal off the table, stared at it, then tossed it down again to move on.

”The business with my hands only worked on two out of five of Marty's patients,” he said. ”But that was enough for Marty. The next thing I knew, he was on the phone with some friend of his at a hospital in New England. A couple of days later, I was headed back east to this place where they study people who have what they call paranormal abilities.”

”What sort of place was it?” she asked, unable to keep the note of suspicion out of her tone.

He heard it and c.o.c.ked one eyebrow in her direction. ”A research center,” he replied, and when he named the major university to which the center was connected, her eyes widened. ”Yeah, it's legitimate. No hocus-pocus. It's run by scientists with M.D.s and Ph.D.s in everything under the sun. For three weeks, I filled out questionnaires and sat through hours of interviews and let them hook me up to machines that measure brain waves and dreams and electromagnetic fields and G.o.d only knows what else. They tested my blood cells and my skin cells and every other cell they could put on a slide or in a test tube. And I've got to say, after putting up with seven months of the same kind of stuff in the hospital, I wasn't the most cooperative subject they ever had.”

And I'll bet that's putting it mildly. Kate watched with growing concern as Sam made his third trip around the kitchen table, each time pulling out and pus.h.i.+ng in the end chair as he pa.s.sed. ”Would you like to go for a walk?” she asked.

He gave her a quick, relieved look. ”h.e.l.l, yes, let's get out of here.” And with that, he headed for the front door.

Biting her tongue against the urge to tell him that he might get cold without a s.h.i.+rt, she followed.

Outside, he started down the cleared track that led to the old lake road. He'd gotten about ten yards when his steps slowed and he glanced over his shoulder, watching as she hurried to catch up. When she reached him, he mumbled an apology, shoving his hands into his pockets as he continued at a slower pace.

They walked for a few minutes in silence, Kate looking at the spring beauty and bloodroot that had bloomed that week, all the while casting sideways glances at Sam, who was staring straight ahead.

Finally, when she thought he seemed a little more relaxed, she asked, ”So, what did all that testing tell you?”

He let out a sigh. ”Not much. The only thing they had me do that seemed worthwhile was work on patients from the university hospital. They'd tell me what was wrong with them, and I'd try to cure them. It turns out this weird thing I've got is selective. It doesn't work on birth defects or disease, which is why I'd had such bad luck with Marty's patients. Once in a while-about five percent of the time-I can slow down a progressive illness. But so far, at least, I haven't been able to stop or cure one.”

Leaning to s.n.a.t.c.h a small pebble off the ground, he flicked it into the woods. ”On the other hand, about ninety-eight percent of the time, I can stop bleeding. And I do almost that well with problems caused by an injury or an illness-like bad circulation from diabetes or arthritis that develops around an old break. Once I worked on a woman who'd had polio. Afterwards, she could lift her arms above her head, where she couldn't before, and not long after that, her leg muscles developed to where she could walk without braces.”

Kate's eyes grew wide. ”Sam, that's wonderful!”

He pa.s.sed off her praise with a shrug. ”Yeah, I was pleased.”

Pleased? Not elated or wild with excitement? He was just pleased? She didn't believe it, not for a minute. He might talk about this amazing power he'd acquired as though it were so mundane as to be boring-”this weird thing I've got,” he called it-but she knew he couldn't possibly feel that way about it.

But how did he feel? He certainly seemed less than thrilled, and for the life of her, Kate didn't understand why. She herself had barely begun to accept what he was telling her, and, still, she was in awe. It was astonis.h.i.+ng enough to learn that someone she knew had the kind of gift Sam was describing; it was incomprehensible to think he might not want it.

”So, what happened?” she asked. ”Did the center just send you home when they'd finished their tests?”

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