[ WP ] The Healer

As I shift in my chair, I remember the first time that I had ever helped something. I was playing out in the field behind my childhood home. A swallow had just clipped a wing on a tree branch, and I held the small frightened creature in my hands. I felt the beating of its quick little heart, and the half flutter of its broken wing. I closed my eyes, only for a moment, and when I opened them, the sparrow stood on my palms. He flitted both wings, looked at me, and flew away. 
 
 `` Sam...'' Her voice shook me out of my memories, and the stark white walls of a hospital rushed through my imagined field. The sound of birds chirping turned into a rhythmic beeping. 
 
 *beep beep beep* 
 
 I looked down at my wife, her face streaked with tears. Her hand was in mine, and I still felt the beating of a heart and a faint fluttering of that tiny bird. 
 
 `` I'm so sorry...'' I whispered. 
 
 `` Please, Sam. Please.'' She whispered back. 
 
 `` I ca n't. It would n't be the same.'' 
 
 `` Do n't call him an it!'' She cried out, and let go of my hand, turning away from me. 
 
 `` That's not what I meant Michelle, and you know that.'' 
 
 She screamed into her pillow, then stopped, breathing heavily. She looked back at me, anger in her blue eyes. 
 
 `` You helped that homeless woman a few days ago. A homeless woman.'' She spit out. 
 
 `` Michelle, she broke her hip when she slippe-'' 
 
 `` I do n't fucking care. You'll help some junky, but you wo n't even bring back our god-damned son!'' She broke down again. 
 
 Jesus that hurt. My mind flashed to our house, to an empty blue room waiting with an empty crib. 
 
 `` I ca n't bring anyone back, Michelle. I can help them, but I ca n't give them life.'' I said quietly. She surfaced. 
 
 `` Are you going to even try?'' She asked with pain in her voice. 
 
 `` I did. My sister...'' I whispered. 
 
 Michelle stopped crying instantly. 
 
 `` Oh god, oh god, but....how?....when?....'' She stammered. 
 
 `` When she was two, she had caught the flu. And one night I went to see her and she was gone. So I called up everything I could and it worked. I brought her back. But not `` her.'' Just the body. I was a zombie for the next few months, but I hid it from everyone. The doctors insisted that some sort of brain damage had occurred while she was sick. And from that point on, Leah just was n't there. And at 15 we had her committed because we could n't stand the screaming every night.'' 
 
 `` Oh god Sam, I never knew.'' Michelle cried softly, and took my hands. 
 
 `` I ca n't bring him back Michelle. No matter what. I ca n't have that sin on my hands twice.'' 
 
 I crawled beside her on the hospital bed and we held each other. 
 
 That night two people were in pain, and one was gone. 
 
 That pain I could not heal. 
 
 That night my little bird died. 
 

