She shakes her head, sending a tumble of wild blond curls over her shoulders. Her lip quivers. “This is not how I wanted to start things,” she chokes out, and buries her face in her hands.
I glance around. The group has moved far enough away that we can only faintly hear them. Pierce is standing next to the building with his back to us, talking into his cell. It’s dark. No one’s around.
I lay my hand gently on Amy’s ankle. She tenses, like even this light touch is hurting her, but doesn’t lift her head. Through my empathy I can feel the hurt in her, not only the way she’s mentally beating herself up over how she’s already ruined her reputation, but the physical part, too, the way the ligaments in her ankle are pulled away from the bone. It’s a bad injury, I know instantly. She could be on crutches all semester.
I could help her, I think.
I’ve healed people before. My mom after she was attacked by Samjeeza. Tucker after our post-prom car accident last year. But those times I had the full circle of glory around me, the whole shebang, light emanating from my hair, my body glowing like a lantern. I wonder if there’s a way to localize the glory to just, say, my hands, to channel it fast so that nobody will notice.
I clear my head, glad for the relative quiet, and focus my energy on my right hand. Just the fingers, I think. All I need is glory in my fingers. Just once. I concentrate on it so hard that a bead of sweat moves along my hairline and drips down onto the concrete, and after a few minutes the very tips of my fingers start to glow, dimly at first and then more brightly. I press my hand firmly to Amy’s ankle. Then I send the glory out of me like a trickle of light spreading from me to her, not too much or too fast but hopefully enough to do some good.
Amy sighs, then stops crying. I sit back, watching her. I can’t tell if what I did helped at all.
Pierce comes back over, looking apologetic. “I can’t find anyone to come get you. I’ll have to run and get my car, but it’s on the other side of campus, so it will take a while. How are you doing?”
“Better,” she says. “It doesn’t hurt as much as before.”
He kneels down next to her again and examines her ankle. “It looks better, actually, not as swollen. Maybe you just twisted it. Can you try to walk?”
She gets up and gingerly puts her weight on her injured foot. Pierce and I watch as she limps a few steps, then turns back to us. “It feels okay now,” she admits. “Oh my God, am I a drama queen or what?” She laughs, her voice full of relief.
“Let’s get you back to your room,” I stammer out quickly. “You still need to put some ice on that, right, Pierce?”
“Absolutely,” he says, and we get on either side of her and walk her slowly back to Roble.
“Thanks for helping me out tonight,” Amy says to me after she’s situated in her room with her foot wrapped tightly in an Ace bandage, propped on a stack of pillows with a bag of ice pressed to her ankle. “I don’t know what I would have done without you. You’re a lifesaver.”
“You’re welcome,” I say, and I can’t help a gloaty smile.
I did help her, I think later when I’ve gone back to my room. The sun is almost up, but Wan Chen isn’t back yet. I lie on my tiny twin bed and stare at the water damage on the ceiling panels. I want to sleep, but I’ve still got too much adrenaline in my system from using my power out in the open like that. But I did it. I did it, I keep thinking, over and over and over again. I healed that girl. And it felt amazing. It felt right.
Which gives me another crazy idea.
“I think I might want to go premed.”
Dr. Day, the academic adviser for Roble Hall, looks up from her computer. She has the grace not to look too surprised that I’ve burst into her office and informed her that I am contemplating becoming a doctor. She simply nods and takes a minute to pull up my schedule.
“If you’re considering premed, which is typically a straight biology or human biology major, we should get you enrolled in Chem 31X,” she says. “It’s a prerequisite for most of the other biology courses, and if you don’t take it this fall, you’ll have to wait until next fall to start the core classes you’ll need.”
“Okay,” I say. “I like chemistry. I took College Prep Chemistry last year.”
She looks at me from over the top of her glasses. “This course can be a little hard-core,” she warns me. “The class meets three times a week, and then there’s a biweekly discussion session led by a teaching assistant, plus another couple hours a week in the lab. The entire biology track can be fairly high intensity. Are you ready for that?”
“I can handle it,” I say, and an excited tremor passes through me, because I feel oddly sure about this. I think about how good it felt when Amy’s ankle was righting itself under my hand. Being a doctor would put me in contact with the people who need healing the most. I could help people. I could fix the broken things in this world.
I smile at Dr. Day, and she smiles back.
“This is what I want to do,” I tell her.
“All right, then,” she says. “Let’s get you started.”
Everybody takes the news that I’ve gone premed in a different way. Wan Chen, for instance, who’s premed herself, reacts like I’m suddenly competition. For a few days she doesn’t say more than two words to me, maneuvering around our tiny dorm room in chilled silence, until she realizes that we’re both in that insanely hard chemistry class and I’m pretty good at chemistry. Then she warms up to me fast. I hear her tell her mother on the phone in Mandarin that I’m a “nice girl, and very smart.” I make an effort not to smile when I hear her say it.
Angela instantly loves the idea of me as a doctor. “Very cool” are her exact words. “I believe we should use our gifts, you know, for good, not just sit on them unless we’re required to do some angel-related duty. If you can stomach all the blood and guts and gore—which I totally couldn’t, but kudos to you, if you can—then you should go for it.”
It’s Christian who doesn’t think it’s a good idea.
“A doctor,” he repeats when I tell him. “What brought this on?”
I explain about band run and Amy’s miraculously healed ankle and my subsequent aha moment. I expect him to be impressed. Excited for me. Approving. But he frowns.
“You don’t like it,” I observe. “Why?”