Forged in Grace by Jordan E. Rosenfeld

in it. “I am a lot of work.”
    “ I don’t blame you for being angry.” I clutch my hands together. “I barely believe myself.”
    The old man holds out his hand. “Thank you for trying.” He purses his lips. “Believe it or not, I feel better just from spending one day thinking that I might actually beat this thing.”
    “ What’s your name?” I ask.
    “ Ray.”
    “ Thank you, Ray.” Uncharacteristically, I take his hand and at the same time we both gasp as a feeling like an electric charge passes between us. The serpent of energy I felt when I touched Marly slides up his arm until it changes direction and creeps toward his mid-section. I follow the serpent with my left hand, which I place right below his belly button. He doesn’t speak or move but stares past me, off into space. I follow the energy deep into his bowels, until I feel it—a dark rotted place that makes me nauseated. His daughter has let go of him and is staring at us as, gape-mouthed, as if we are insane.
    “ Lay him down.” My voice sounds husky and thick to me. Drew and Marly get to task; they lay him on the grass and I see the dark place, a shadow spot, that my hands want to follow. “I have to unbuckle your pants,” I say. “I have to touch you skin to skin.” He gives a kind of half-nod, half-shrug and I place my hands against the flesh of his belly, soft and wrinkled. Though I know my hands only rest on the surface of him, it feels as though I am dipping them into pudding. From the outside, what I am doing probably looks obscene, though I don’t touch lower than the top of his pubic bone.
    After wading through the pudding I arrive at a hard stone. I close my eyes and see myself lifting the black pulsing stone and tossing it into a bottomless well. Ray groans and his daughter paces around us as though she wants to intervene but can ’t bring herself to.
    Beneath the “stone” is another stone, and another one. I mentally lift, and toss, at least a dozen, Ray groaning beneath my hands each time, until finally he rolls away from me and throws up into the grass.
    “ What are you doing to him?” his daughter shouts.
    The connection broken, I now feel like a fish flung out of water onto dry land, breathless and dazed. My hands are heavy and I could close my eyes and sleep right then and there if they let me.
    Ray shakes his head over and over, though he doesn’t seem to be able to speak.
    “ Stay close to a toilet,” I say, my throat parched. “For a couple of days. You won’t be able to keep anything solid down. Lots of fluids, soup, water.” I don’t know where these instructions come from, but I am sure of them.
    His daughter helps him to his feet with a scowl at me I interpret as suspicion, and leads him, stumbling off to their car. He looks wrung out, barely able to make his feet walk him to the car, and I want to offer a hand but am too spent. Drew and Marly watch, seemingly paralyzed, as though too afraid of the man ’s daughter to help, either. Just before she buckles herself into the driver’s seat, I see her look down and touch the spot above her right breast.
    Then the blackness comes.

    When I wake, I ’m in a four-poster bed. The scent of roses perfumes the air around my head, and weak late afternoon sun scurries toward the horizon. Every surface of me aches, as though someone has spent an hour poking me vigorously all over. I expect to find bruises to back this up, but when I turn back the downy coverlet and sheets to investigate myself I find nothing but my usual lunar surfaces.
    I am still at Drew ’s. At my side sits a tray with a thin, yellow soup and a glass of water with ice and a sprig of mint. I gulp the water. The ice crashes into my teeth and makes my gums throb, but I don’t care. I haven’t been so thirsty since the hospital, when medications stole any moisture the fire hadn’t licked away.
    Slowly, I rise. When my bare feet meet cool wood floor, I wonder which of them removed my shoes. Was