He looked at her, hardly more than a girl herself, leaning over the child, and blood pulsed in his loins. He wanted to pick her up and carry her to their bedroom and make love to her all afternoon, slowly, tenderly. But he shoved this thought from his mind, because he knew that after the Wilsons left, their little girl healed, or nearly well, that Fern would intimidate him, being a far greater, more gifted person than he, and he would be embarrassed and shamed. Not only that, but their lovemaking was never slow and tender. It was fast and rough, his need suddenly all consuming, and then it was over and he was embarrassed and ashamed again.

He hated this.

Fern was talking quietly to the child. Her big eyes showed white in the red of her flushed face; perspiration stuck her bangs to her forehead like tissue paper. She nodded in response to Fern’s murmured questions.

Fern stood up and turned to Tom. “Please carry her to the bedroom. I need her on the bed where I can get around her.” Tom picked up his daughter and carried her in, laid her down on the brown and gold quilt, then went back to the kitchen. Fern closed the bedroom door.

She sat on the edge of the bed, left hand palm up in her lap. She passed her right hand a couple of inches over the child, from her toes to the top of her head. She could feel the sickness. The throat and the stomach. She laid her hand on the throat, the skin hot to her touch, and closed her eyes. She saw the familiar glittering blue sweep through her upturned palm, streak across her chest and out her right hand into the throat, it was cool and comforting, like menthol ice cream, melting on contact and sinking into the reddened, swollen tissues.

When the flow of blue stopped, she moved her hand to the other infected area, the child’s right side. She felt a corresponding ache in her own side. Ignoring it, she concentrated. She made her conscious mind like a black drumhead, stretched tight. Every thought, every noise made little thumping dents in the fabric, so she shut them out. Pure and black. Peaceful and undisturbed.

Soon she began to get a picture. She felt she was crawling inside the girl’s skin, around the different organs. In front of her were a cluster of polyps, like grapes, black and unnatural amid the pink, red, and white glowing of healthy flesh.