Forged in Grace (11 page)

I don
’t know how long I’m like this before a man yells, “paramedic.” He shines a light into my eyes, and then helps me up to sitting. He’s short and freckled, with a buzz cut of hair very much the copper color of my own former hair. “I’m fine,” I say, though my hands are shaking.

“
Are you taking any medications?” he asks. “Have you eaten today?”

“
It’s PTSD,” Marly says to him, sounding annoyed.

The paramedic feels my pulse, checks down my throat, and gives me a long look before nodding at Marly and stepping away. I imagine his thoughts:
Charred girl watching fire dancers. What was she thinking?
“Well, keep her warm and hydrated,” he says before turning away. “If she has trouble sleeping, can’t keep warm, or has short-term memory trouble, take her to the emergency room.”

Marly gives a terse nod, as though she
’s insulted that anyone would tell her how to care for me. “Let’s go home,” Marly says softly. “Can you walk, Grace?”

I stand, unnerved by the sway and buckle of my knees before gravity and I become reacquainted.
“Yeah, but I’m really tired.”

“
I know. Poor Grace.”

When I wake, through slit lids I see Marly is at my bedside.

She tips a straw to my lips and cool water flows soothingly down.

“
You didn’t move in your sleep,” she says, her eyes wide, moist. “I had to lean in close several times to make sure you were still breathing.”

“
Yeah, I learned that trick in the hospital. It hurt to move so much for so long that I just found a position and willed myself to stay there, even while sleeping.”

“
How did it feel?” she leans in closer.

How did it feel to be stripped of half my skin, soaked in caustic, anti-bacterial astringents, pumped full of pain-killing drugs, and then, after countless surgeries, to be stuffed into pressure suits that felt as though life was being squeezed out of me? To have my most personal and basic needs attended to by strangers, some of whom made it clear they would rather have been anywhere else.

“How do you know when the healing is working?” she prods.

“
Oh,” I say and shift up to sitting; she wasn’t referring to my recovery. The base of my head throbs. “It feels like…” Like energy that seems both
of
me and outside of me. “I don’t have words for it yet,” I say instead.

For an instant, I
’m afraid Marly’s going to cry. Then she says, “We found each other, Grace.” She squeezes my arm for a moment. “All is right with the world.”

I want to agree with her, but I don
’t say anything. In the early morning light she looks tired and washed out. Is she right? What do I want from Marly? And even more confusing, what, really, does she want from me?

Chapter Twelve

A week later

I buzz up a flower deliveryman who has arrived for me.

Marly peers through the peephole before opening the door. “Roses!” she says and twists back to look at me. “Who would send you roses, Grace?” I know what she means but it comes out just the tiniest bit like an insult.

She opens the door to a delivery boy in a red baseball cap who shoves the vase into her hands and doesn
’t wait for a tip. The vase is crowded with buds, and a tiny card sticks out from a plastic stem.

Grace,

A person can learn to live with anything. For me, it’s been pain from as long as I can remember. Until you laid your hands on me. Not even a twinge in two weeks. My blessings aren’t big enough to thank you for what you did. I’ll spread the word of your miracle, though.

—
Calvin Snow

I stare at the card, then bury my face in the roses.
“It still could be the placebo effect.” I set the roses on the kitchen table. I feel a bold pleasure at the flowers’ shocking flare of color in Marly’s all-white apartment.

She shakes her head as she fluffs the roses.
“You and your placebo effect nonsense. Don’t you want credit for your hard work? I would, if it was me.”

I shrug. What I
’ve done so far barely feels like work. “This was so sweet!”

“
Well, it is an auspicious beginning to our day,” Marly claps her hands together, and I revel in how good I feel.

“
You sound like you have plans,” I say, realizing she’s already got her makeup on.

“
We are going out. I thought you deserved a celebration for your hard work, and Drew has a discount at this really cool spa oasis place about an hour from here; we’ll have a fantastic brunch, then maybe some spa treatments.” She all but dances into the kitchen to pour herself some orange juice.

“
Drew?” What I feel is childish, old. The asymmetry of three never works.

She sets her juice down, frowns.
“I just thought you’d want to do something pampering.”

“
I’m guessing that spa treatments include massage, body wraps, hot water?”

Marly leans into the counter, cheeks slouching. She turns away from me, ostensibly to put the orange juice back, but I figure it
’s so I won’t see her hurt expression.

“
Things that other people enjoy remind me of medical procedures, Marly. I don’t even like the feeling of a shower on my skin, much less a massage. I don’t mean to be a downer.”

“
What about just lunch, then?” She speaks into the fridge, her food-rummaging a perfect excuse not to look at me, not to let my words sway her. “They have a mineral pool, too, and an awesome cactus garden.”

She
’s set on it, I can tell, and I have a sudden feeling that it’s less about taking me out to celebrate, and more about something to do with Drew.

We meet Drew on the street outside Marly
’s apartment. He waits, leaning against his grey Acura with a confidence in his stance, no slouching, face perfectly at ease, dark blonde hair gelled into place. Somehow he manages to look at both of us as we come toward him, or so it appears, so I can’t tell if his easy, wide smile is pleasure at seeing Marly or friendly toward me. In contrast to the overpowering chiseled picture of Loser, Drew, who is handsome in a lanky, cute professor way, doesn’t seem like Marly’s type.

“
Ladies,” he says simply, opening car doors for us. Marly hesitates only a moment before offering me the front seat and then glides into the back.

“
I thought we could leave a flier, some cards at the Oasis,” Drew says, shooting a quick look at me. Suddenly I regret not sitting in back. He’s forced to look at my ruined left side. “People that come there are, you know, often into alternative forms of healing and what not.”

“
I don’t have either,” I pat my pockets as though maybe I forgot something.

“
Well,” Marly says from the back. “I was going to wait to surprise you—” She reaches over the seat and swats the back of Drew’s head lightly. He reaches back and grasps her fingers for a moment, almost as though he’s going to swat her back, but then lingers holding her hand, until Marly pulls away.

I pretend not to notice, but I
’m keenly aware of loaded energy between them, like another passenger in the car.

“
What did you put on my cards?”

Over my shoulder she slides a card—all white of course, with dark blue lettering.

“Oh this has got to be good.” I take the card.
GRACE JENSEN, HEALER
. She’s left her own voicemail as the number. I am simultaneously embarrassed and gleeful at the sight. It might as well say:
GRACE JENSEN, HAS PURPOSE AT LAST.

We drive nearly an hour out into the desert, the conversation staying on safe topics like mermaid politics and Drew
’s job as a concierge at The Bellagio, which celebrities are rude and which ones surprisingly considerate. We eventually park in some sort of dirt enclosure.

“
Sheesh, you did say this was a spa, right? You didn’t mean walkabout?” I get out of the car slowly, stretching my tight right leg. All I see as we exit the car are more rocks and pebbly dirt, scraggly little patches of juniper and cactus here and there. A bird of prey circles overhead and shrieks, a beautiful, eerie sound. The air smells fresh but enters my nose with a dry rasp.

“
That’s right, Grace, welcome to your vision quest. Get the peyote, would you Marly?” I want to squeeze Drew’s hand for his humor.

Only about a hundred yards further the road bends around a curve, at which point I can make out a small compound of some kind—several cabin-like green buildings. The closer we get, I see a big rock fountain in the center of the circle of buildings. Bronze sculptures of Hindu deities sit perched on rock slabs amidst landscaped but wild-looking grasses.

My ears are teased by the gentle clinking of wooden chimes, the burble of more water, and delicate birdsong.

Further past the fountains stands an enormous hanging gong in a wooden frame, golden and shiny, as though it
’s polished daily. Marly lifts the smooth wooden mallet and rings the gong once, loudly. Its vibrations travel right through me, leave me buzzing.

“
Does that mean I have to leave the stage now?” Drew asks. Marly raises an eyebrow and scrunches her nose at him with a mock-frown, and I feel as though I’ve stumbled upon a conversation that’s been going on for a long time without me.

Not a minute later a man appears, some kind of Arabian Bedouin from the look of his white turban-swaddled head, who announces himself as
“Chris.” He wears a long, beige linen tunic and blowsy pants, his feet capped in soft brown moccasins. A copious brown beard drips down to chest level.

“
Welcome Miss Marly!” he booms, coming forward and taking Marly’s hand.

“
I thought you were the one with the coupon,” I say to Drew.

Drew smiles and whispers,
“One of the things I love about Marly—she knows everybody, everywhere.”

Up close I see that despite his Eastern get-up, our host is as Caucasian as we are. He nods and bows to Drew, then he bows to me and says,
“You must be Miss Grace.”

I stand unsure if I should bow back.
“I must be,” I say at last, casting suspicious looks at Marly. “Chris, did you say?” I am half-afraid I will be led to a cottage and offered a chakra realignment.

He shakes his head good-naturedly,
“No, Krish, with a ‘sh’. Let’s get you checked in.”

“
Sorry we’re late,” Marly manages a perky frown that is both apologetic and charming.

“
No, we don’t run on Western time here.” Krish makes a prayer sign with his hands.

I lag behind as Marly and Krish chatter in that familiar way that tells me she knows him from some other context, one hand continually touching his arm, walking closer to one another than strangers would. Drew doesn
’t take his eyes off their backs, but he banters with me as though it doesn’t bother him.

The rest of the grounds of this little oasis are all neatly manicured and staged—for that is the only word I can think of—to provide a sense of lush tranquility out in the desert.

We enter a low-ceilinged green cabin to find a mandala inlaid into the wood floor. There are abstract watercolor paintings on the bare wood walls and a big hot water carafe with glass mugs lined up on a long wooden table. The room looks out onto another smaller courtyard with a fountain and an aviary—a big cage full of brightly colored tiny birds. The strangers reclining with towels on their heads glance up and find my face and then whisk their gazes away again.

As we wander off to the restaurant for lunch a group of people with solemn expressions follows a yogi-like woman in a flowing beige dress down a winding stone path, out as though toward the desert. Everyone is dressed in loose clothing that looks a little thin for the weather.

“What do you think they’re doing?” I ask Marly, who glances at them with a casual flick of her head. “Dunno. Apparently they are not about to eat a scrumptious lunch like we are.”

Drew glances at me.
“Probably where the virgin sacrifice takes place.”

“
Haha, dork,” Marly smacks him on the shoulder.

Lunch is served in a covered outdoor patio, the floor a mosaic of beautiful natural stone in the shape of a labyrinth, with heat lamps to keep off the chill that I don
’t feel. Marly and Drew sit next to each other, close, leaving me to decide whose side I’m going to sit on for an uncomfortable moment, though they’re chatting so intimately they don’t notice. I finally decide to sit next to Marly, with a good couple feet of distance between our knees.

“
How’d you guys meet?” I ask, once we’ve placed orders for the lunch special.

“
Marly was looking for a job,” Drew says, with a raised eyebrow. “Before she became the underwater queen.”

“
So…a while ago, then? You’ve had your job for a few years, right?” I ask Marly.

Marly frowns.
“That was a weird time,” she says softly, and shoots Drew a hard look, as though he’s revealed something embarrassing. I’m left wondering what I’m missing.