78 Keys by Kristin Marra Page B

clients? Oh yeah, she was. In fact, Stratton and her Elmer Gantry of a husband were worse. They wanted to control the whole country. No, they wanted to control people.
    And there I sat, a skinny Jewish girl who, science would claim, was experiencing psychotic hallucinations telling her to save the world. Regardless, all the years of studying paranormal phenomena helped me to trust my experiences with the High Priestess, Pento, and the Theater. To my core, I knew what was happening to me was real.
    But who was I to take this on? Why me? Why now? Then I remembered the famous quote from Rabbi Hillel: “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?” For the first time in my life, I was doing something noble.
    “Go figure,” I said.

    *

    Several years ago, I conducted a reading with a client who was a nurse at Harborview Hospital. I had a vision that she would be busted for drug use in the near future. She gazed at me, shocked, as I relayed the image of handcuffs wrapping her wrists and she being wedged into a police cruiser.
    “Actually, it’s not me using drugs,” she said. “It’s my boyfriend. I…I steal drugs from the hospital for him to sell. I don’t dare stop. He’d hurt me. You have no idea.”
    I told her that I certainly did have an idea about what kind of trouble her boyfriend was. I offered my services to send her boyfriend in another direction and get him out of her life. She was broke, having given all her money to, of course, the boyfriend. I wasn’t above a convenient barter.
    I knew men like that piece-of-dreck boyfriend were essentially cowards. He had his girlfriend do his dirty work, lived off her paycheck, and beat her to boot. He was a spineless loser. So I offered the pitiable nurse a trade. She would owe me some favors for a few years, and I’d redirect the boyfriend. I would get my own form of hospital privileges, and the boyfriend would ditch town when served with a convincing, yet phony, threat from the local underworld. Spotless, nobody hurt. It was that grateful nurse who smuggled me into Laura Bishop’s hospital wing.
    After my nurse friend got me into the secure hospital wing, she left me to find my way to Laura’s room. I made it to the nurse’s station of Laura’s floor only to be stymied by Harborview’s version of Big Nurse.
    “But I’m Laura Bishop’s girlfriend. Her…her partner. I have hospital privileges in the state of Washington.” My palms were sweating in anticipation of finally coming face-to-face with Laura. Lying about being her partner didn’t faze me.
    “Her partner was already here. Dropped off her stuff and left a few minutes ago. You’re not her because you don’t have red hair. Besides, I can tell you’re from a newspaper or something. You got that pushy East Coast accent.” This woman had her meager mind made up. It was clear she wasn’t going to let me past the security guard that stood by Laura’s room door. I wasn’t about to enlighten her about her prejudices for people from the East Coast.
    Laura had a partner. I was irked at my twinge of disappointment. I was there to save her, not ask her on a date. “Okay, but she knows me.” At least I hoped she’d remember me. “She knows I can help her.” I took one of my business cards from my wallet and grabbed a pen from the counter of the nurse’s station. On the back of the card, I wrote, Let me help you .
    “Please, give her this card. Can you promise to give her this card? Honest, I’m a friend. Please?”
    Big Nurse took the card, studied both sides, and said, “You’re not no ambulance chaser, are you?”
    “Me? Oh, no. Besides, Ms. Bishop is an important Seattle attorney. She has her own people she can call. Can you give her the card? Please? She will appreciate it. I’m sure of that.” I couldn’t remember ever groveling as much as I did to that woman, not even to Rabbi Metzger when I was attending Hebrew