Page 23 of The Moonlight Healers

Camille knelt beside Louise and grazed the lily with her fingers. “It’s a small part of it. That energy you just felt, and heat. A flower requires much less from a healer than a person does. You could bring nearly any plant back, as long as there’s a bit of life left in it. A plant has a much fainter life force. It’s a living creature but it doesn’t have a soul, desires, wishes, fears. Same for animals, although they have a stronger life force than a flower of course. But with people, it’s different. We can’t simply cure someone if they are too sick or too hurt.”

Despite the awe Louise felt at seeing her ability in action, she sensed a tug of confusion, a contradiction between her grandmother’s words and what she had experienced. “But Peter. I fixed him. I brought him back. He was dead.”

Camille didn’t answer at first, her hand still caressing the lily.

“My mother told me stories. I knew it was possible, what you did, but it’s incredibly rare. It must have been years of pent-up abilities. It’s not something you could repeat.”

Camille finally looked at Louise, and her expression was serious. “You need to understand, despite what you did, that healing isn’t about cheating death. There’s a reason why healers are usually nurses and not doctors. Because the people who want to be doctors tend to be people who think that death is a failure. They spend their careers chasing it away.” A faint smile slipped onto her lips. “Nurses know better. We treat the whole person. In sickness. And in death.”

Before Louise could say anything else, a loud alarm went off on her grandmother’s phone. “I’m supposed to be at Sarah’s house. The home visit I mentioned.” Camille stood and wiped the dirt off her hands. “I hadn’t gotten around to telling you this, but since the last time you visited, I actually have… I retired. I was only part-time anyway the last few years with the hospice agency, barely worked enough hours for that. It was overdue really. Not many nurses doing bedside care in their seventies. I was ready. Now I have time for painting. It used to just be something I dabbled in from time to time, a mental break from hospice work, a place where I could always find some beauty and peace. And now…now I can do it every day.”

Louise thought of the dining room, the sudden decision to transform it into an art studio a few months earlier. How long had her grandmother waited to tell her she had retired?

“I’ve put it off for years.” She reached out a hand to Louise, who accepted it and climbed to her feet. “But it’s a good thing. I’m thrilled about it really.”

Her grandmother was rambling, and the lightness of her tone wasn’t enough to convince Louise she believed her own words. Nursing—and healing—had been the most essential part of her being, like something she would be practicing forever. Louise couldn’t imagine her grandmother existing without her life’s work.

“I was going to tell you both,” Camille said. “I just hadn’t gotten around to it. I’m still seeing a few of the people who were in my care, before I retired. Just as a favor to them and theirfamilies. Today is Sarah. You know her actually, I’m afraid to say. You remember Caroline Henley’s mother?”

Louise did have memories of Sarah. She was tall and muscular and tan and used to run races with Caroline and Louise down the hill to the creek, her arms strong and sure as she showed them how to catch tadpoles, her feet bare and muddy.

“She’s in hospice?” Louise asked, although she already knew the answer.

“Unfortunately. Colon cancer. She was diagnosed a few years ago, went into remission but then it came back. Everywhere.” She studied Louise. “I’m sorry. I didn’t really think about how hard it might be for you, to see someone you know in that state. I sometimes forget what I do isn’t normal for everyone.”

Louise wiped red clay dust from the back of her pants and looked toward the magnolia tree as a wind chime hanging from one of its dense branches chimed in the breeze.

For a moment, she saw herself at five years old, balancing on the largest branch that ran along the ground, watching her mother’s headlights light up the dusk as she arrived home from her long shift at the hospital in Charlottesville. Louise would race to her, jumping into her arms, inhaling the smell of hand sanitizer and hospital lotion. Her mother was always exhausted after work in the ICU, her hair messily piled into a bun, whatever makeup she had applied that morning worn off. But she was also content, her expression full of pride as she told Camille stories from her day. Louise had been certain she wanted to be just like her mother when she grew up, take care of people the way she cared for the animals at the orchard, the chickens and barn cats she pretended were her patients. But so much had changed. Louise had grown up, and her life had veered in a completely different direction.

“You don’t have to come with me,” Camille said gently. “It’s okay if you’ve changed your mind. You can wait here for me tocome back. And then we can talk more about all of this here, spend more time in the garden.”

Louise brushed her hands off, letting a tiny cloud of clay disperse through the air. She couldn’t deny the tiny tug inside of her, the curiosity to see her grandmother work, to practice her healing abilities on a person.

“No, I’m ready. I want to go.”

* * *

Caroline’s father, Jake, answered the door in a baseball cap, flannel shirt, and work pants. He seemed shorter than Louise remembered, and thinner, his gaunt cheeks visible beneath his unruly, gray-flecked beard.

“You remember my granddaughter, Louise, don’t you?” Camille asked him. “She’s here visiting, and asked if she could come along, to say hi to Sarah. If that’s okay with you?”

Jake’s tired brown eyes were emotionless. “Fine,” he grunted. “Just make sure Sarah is okay with it.”

“Of course,” Camille replied as Jake stepped aside for them to enter.

When they reached the back of the house, Jake stopped at the doorway that led into the den, its ceiling framed by large oak beams. There was a low hum and rhythmic clicking from the IV pump set up next to a large hospital bed, as well as a faint hissing noise from the oxygen. The sharp, acrid scent of alcohol mixed with a cloying lavender from a diffuser on a bookcase in the corner.

Louise stayed in the doorway, but Camille walked to the bed and squirted hand sanitizer from a bottle on the plastic bedside table. “Morning, Sarah,” she said warmly.

There was a rustle of movement. “Hi, Camille.”

The voice from the bed was the same voice Louise remembered, only faded.

“How are things this morning?”

“Oh, can’t complain,” Sarah said. “Or I guess I can, technically.”

“How is your pain?” Camille asked with a glance up at the pump hanging on the IV pole.

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