Miracle Woman (25 page)

Andrea's eyes stared into hers searching for the truth, and Martha was delighted to see the flicker of belief which now shone from them.

Kim led a small child and his nervous mother up to her next. The little boy was about six years old and the mother whispered to her that he was a bedwetter. Martha could see the look that shot between the child and his parent and the embarrassment of the small boy Taylor that his
secret had been revealed to a stranger. ‘I was wondering, ma'am, if you could do anything to help my boy with his problem.'

Martha thought of all the things she had done with her own three; Mary Rose had been the one who had the odd accident at. night when she was small. Lifting them to the toilet, not giving them too much to drink before they went to bed. She supposed his mother had already tried most of these avenues.

‘We got a mattress with an alarm and everything, but Taylor has already gone and wet himself by the time he wakes up. I honest to God don't know what to do!'

‘He's not sick, though?'

‘Oh no, ma'am. The doctors did all sorts of checks on him and say he's right as rain otherwise.'

‘I see.' Martha smiled.

She patted the chair, trying to entice Taylor to come and sit by her. She could sense his wariness after all he'd been through already. ‘I'm not going to hurt you, Taylor,' she promised.

Eventually he moved closer to her and Martha chatted to him about his favourite TV programme, trying to put him a little at ease. He was bright and intelligent and from being close to him and just holding him she could tell that when he slept he went into a heavy dream state. Just laying her hands on his straw-coloured hair Martha sensed that already he was beginning to
feel different and alienated from his friends and classmates, humiliated by what was happening to him.

‘His older brother John Junior won't sleep in the room with him no more and he's too shamed to go visit any of his friends. When we went down to Orlando last year, to visit Disney, why, I had to bring all sorts of plastic sheets and the like and Taylor didn't like it one bit, sure you didn't, son?'

The boy nodded, embarrassed, dreading the attention that was being focused on him.

‘Mrs . . .'

‘Farentino.'

‘Mrs Farentino, I think it's best if I just talk to Taylor on my own a minute if that's all right with you.'

The mother's face was suffused with red under the glow of her tanning salon colour, but Martha could understand her worry for Taylor and what would happen to him in the future.

‘That's OK, Taylor,' she smiled.

Martha, leaning forward, asked him about Orlando, and what he thought of the Magic Kingdom, a subject most kids had a lot to say on, whether they'd ever visited the place or not. As the young boy relaxed she placed her hands on his stomach. Energy surged through her as she thought of the child's shame and humiliation at not being able to achieve what his brother and sister and friends had done easily.

‘You mustn't be scared, Taylor! When you
go to sleep you must not even think about what happens. Other people don't think about it or worry about it, believe me. They just close their eyes and sleep. Your bladder is a perfect piece of engineering and you are just going to have to trust it to work while you sleep. Do you feel that hot spot?'

‘Yeah,' he replied, puzzled.

‘I think that's what was causing your little problem, and we'll ask Mother Nature and the good earth to help you.'

When she lifted her hand from his T-shirt he still seemed puzzled. ‘Is that it?' he asked.

‘Yep, I'm afraid so,' she said, laughing and sending him back to his mother.

Kim and Ruth were signalling frantically that she had to move a bit faster, but Martha knew she had to take time to talk to people if she wanted to help them.

Hank Freeman pushed his way into the hall through the open back exit, he and his cameraman Don White getting seats at the end of a row. His corduroy jacket was soaked as it was still pissing rain outside and he'd had to park more than half a block away. He gestured to Don to keep the camera hidden: there was no point antagonizing the good folk sitting around them.

He cast his eye over the large assembled group, noting they were a hotchpotch of senior citizens, mothers with sick kids and the usual new age
types that always believed in that kind of mystic stuff. He sighed. This healing gig was going to be a load of crap! A total waste of the afternoon. The only saving grace was the fact that he and Don were at least in out of the rain. They were supposed to have covered the huge organized protest at the cutting down of an ancient oak that shaded the children's playground over near Roxbury, where neighbourhood parents and kids had chained themselves to the tree while the chainsaws buzzed. It sure would have given them great footage for the evening news but for a last-minute stay of execution – the tree had gotten a reprieve from the parks department for another week! Left with no story for the evening news he'd chased over here, the address scribbled on a notepad by one of the station's researchers.

He watched the Martha woman up on the stage. She seemed to have spent an age with the small boy, whatever his problem was. Funny, she didn't seem like one of those usual gospel type faith healers and she had none of the glittery fire and brimstone showmanship of other healing ministers he'd seen on the TV. Although the audience were intent watching her, she seemed oblivious to them, concentrating on those she was working with. He noticed Lara Chadwick, sitting a few rows from the front. The two of them covering the same story – that's if there was a story. Sitting back into the hard wooden seat, he
passed Don a square of peanut brittle, chewing on the syrupy sweetness as he waited.

So many of those who stepped forward had already done the rounds of doctors and hospitals and had no need for her to diagnose what was wrong with them; batteries of tests and X-rays and ultrasound scans had already done that. What they needed was to find a way to accept those diagnoses and in some way to heal themselves. She could lay her hands on them but they in turn needed to be able to receive that healing energy and have faith and let their body do the work. Migraine sufferers, diabetics – Martha was trying her utmost to connect with each and every one of them.

A fifty-year-old businessman with sky-high blood pressure, his wife worried out of her mind that he would die and leave her to raise their four children on her own. Hildi Jenkinson, a pensioner of seventy, too scared to agree to the bypass surgery she urgently needed, and yet in too much pain not to have it. Martha tried to soothe and calm her and remove the fear that was increasing her constant chest pain.

Martha prayed God to help her, to let his Holy Spirit fill her as she reached out to those in need of his healing. Laying on her hands she tried to ease the burden of constant pain suffered by many as they filed up to her. Not just the physical pain but the emotional and mental anguish of those
who were lonesome and felt lost and totally alone in the world.

From the right side of the hall an emaciated eighteen-year-old had to be helped by both her parents, her skeletal figure drawing gasps from those around. Martha herself had to disguise her disquiet at the girl's appearance. She was obviously suffering from a severe eating disorder. Anorexic, she'd been in and out of clinics and psychiatric departments since she was fifteen and had all but destroyed her parents' life and marriage. She had only come to the session at their insistence, and appeared totally uninterested in both Martha and her surroundings. Her child's body hid a now adult mind. Her once pretty features were gaunt, her skin covered in a fine down of hairs, her eyes huge in her head as her parents, holding back their emotions, begged Martha to help her.

Taking hold of her hand, Martha told her truthfully, ‘Melissa, I'm not sure that I can help you at all! The only healing that will help you now is for you to heal yourself. Your body has its own healing energy but you have tried to kill that. If you do not eat, it is no matter to me. Or in truth to anyone else. Your parents will grieve for you, that's natural, but they will live, and go on living without you.'

She could see the shock on the mother's face, how she wanted to protest.

‘Time and nature have decreed you are a young
woman, so you must shed the skin of a child self and put on a new garment – that of a beautiful young woman. Melissa, do you believe me that this time has come?'

Melissa just blinked, staring at the floor, refusing to make any connection with her whatsoever.

Ignoring that, Martha laid her hands on her and silently prayed for the spirit to guide this lost child-woman, for food to nourish her body, and love and acceptance to nourish her heart.

At the end her sympathy went out – to the parents as they led their daughter away.

Evie brought her another jug of water, but Martha refused the sandwich she was offered. She felt no hunger and had no sense of time or place as she worked, the energy channelling through her to those who needed healing.

The crowd moved on gradually. Most were patient and calm. Those that complained or were peevish were soothed by Ruth and Kim, who did their utmost to make sure that Martha was not distracted.

A young man clad in black leather came up to meet her, using the support of a metal crutch. He had injured himself in a motorbike accident the previous year and still had problems with his ankle and foot on the right-hand side.

‘My orthopaedic specialist says it might never come right again and that I should thank God that
I'm alive, it's just that I find it hard to accept,' he said, his voice breaking.

Martha took his hands in hers and could sense his strong faith and belief, before she leant down to touch his damaged foot.

Sean Peterson's eyes closed in concentration as she worked, his lips moving in silent prayer. Concerned, Martha walked around him. There was more, she could feel it, the pain around his chest so strong it was like a tight wire that bound him. She spread her hands along his breast bone, getting him to remove his jacket. There she could feel it – the pain almost knocked her off her feet as Sean stared into her eyes. Martha was overwhelmed with the torrent of grief that was choking the young man, who was held in a vice-like grip of suffering.

‘Sean, I am lifting this pain from you. Taking it away! You have carried it for too long and your body needs to let go of it so you can begin to heal. Do you understand what I am saying?' He nodded dumbly, trying to control his emotions. Martha returned to his bad leg and foot, feeling the energy from her hands now race and criss-cross through a zigzag pathway of nerves and muscles. Sean felt it too. As he stood up to go, she noticed that he put his weight on his bad foot without thinking and could read the look of sheer astonishment on his face as he found he was able to walk normally.

‘Mrs McGill, I can put my foot to the ground, I can put weight on it.'

He began to lean on it.

‘Take it easy, Sean, don't damage it!' she warned.

‘No, you don't understand, it feels like before, normal, like I can just stand on it.' To demonstrate he stood up straight, both arms stretched out, his crutch left against the chair he had been sitting on.

The crowd still remaining were riveted, focused on the young man standing hesitantly in front of them. A whisper rippled through them, and grew to a rumble of admiration as Sean turned to hug and thank Martha.

‘I'm cured!' he shouted aloud.

‘I'm glad that I've helped you to ease some of your pain,' Martha said modestly.

Huge applause erupted as the young man walked away. The crowd in a frenzy was shouting and clapping, thumping their feet, the old building filling with sounds of cheering as his mother ran up the aisle and embraced him, with tears rolling down her plump face. Martha was delighted for both of them.

From the corner of her eye she noticed as a tall long-haired man in his late twenties stood up and, using an expensive-looking camera, began to film Sean Peterson walking away.

Mike had spotted him too. He was down the hall in an instant and arguing with the stranger, asking him not to film and ordering him to leave the building. Martha watched appalled as he and
his friend brushed past her husband and followed Sean to the exit, Mike chasing out the doorway after them.

Evie and Ruth signalled for her to continue and led forward an elderly woman who was with her son. Confused, the poor woman didn't seem to know where she was and after only a few minutes Martha realized that Edel Connolly, a former school principal from Bangor, Maine was suffering from Alzheimer's, a disease which had managed to destroy almost every piece of information and learning this well-educated softs-poken woman had ever acquired. Her son had insisted on her coming to live with him and his family, leaving Edel with absolutely no sense of place and of where she belonged. Her heart went out to the both of them and after she had laid her hands on Edel she asked her son Greg to let her give him healing too.

The crowd was silent as afterwards Greg led his elderly and still obviously confused mother back down the hall, and Ruth led a pregnant young mother forward.

It was almost dark when they finished. The crowd finally dispersed as Mike and the rest of them began to tidy up and turn off the lights. The janitor, anxious to lock up the premises, set the alarm. Everyone was exhausted and Mike told them he had booked a table in the Italian restaurant on the next street. Martha was glad of
his thoughtfulness. They were all concerned for her, imagining how drained and worn out she must be from giving so much of herself. Martha found it hard to explain to them that it wasn't her own energy she had used during the session, she was a channel for energy that seemed to come from another source; she was just the host. Still, she had to admit that every bone in her body ached and her muscles were sore from the constant bending down.

They ordered quickly, Martha opting for a Caesar salad and pasta in a carbonara sauce, Evie and Ruth ordering a big bowl of spaghetti bolognaise each, while Mike and Kim and Rianna, Kathleen and her husband Jim went for the pizza. All of them were glad of a reviving glass of the house Chianti.