Chapter Five
God-Touched
Tara Maclay, RN, prophet-dreamer, truth seeker, and chocolate lover sat on a plain plastic chair next to the occupied hospital bed in what was so recently
(deathspace)
Peter Whitney's room. When Ethan asked her where she would like to place her new client, Tara immediately chose late Mr. Whitney's room. On the outside she said it was because of the singularly spectacular view of the waterfall in the garden courtyard (which her comatose patient may never see), but on the inside she knew much better. Mother Earth had a way of absorbing energies from her inhabitants, and Tara knew this was sacred ground, hallowed by her diligent love and devotion and the sweet passing of innocent Mr. Whitney. If she closed her eyes, she could almost sense the peaceful threads of eternity right here, for it was in this very spot that the heavenly host came to escort him to an eternal home strikingly free of pain and heartache. The passage of the gods through the filters of the worlds left a distinctive mark, like a delicious scent or a ghostly footprint, to be sensed by anyone with purity of soul. The air practically shimmered with it, as even the dust motes sensed the glory of the gods and for a brief moment became one in purpose and intention with them. What better space for a healer's work?
Even the sun seemed to enter this room with a kind of peaceful deference. Soft rays of early afternoon illuminated the room and bathed the unconscious woman in the hospital bed in a halo of light, teasing Tara with remembered images of the goddess in her dream. It didn't shock Tara to see Willow's eyes open; all patients in comas would still spontaneously open or close their eyes, an interesting fact never portrayed in Hallmark movie-of-the-week deathbed romances. Besides, it was obvious to anyone with a brain that, though her sea green eyes may be open, there was essentially nothing behind them. The soul was in hiding, all run away with the shock of the bus accident.
(the first)
Tara had held Willow's immobile hand as the paramedics wheeled her into her new home, watched steadily as they transferred her to her new bed, and eagerly closed the door behind them. Now she was finally alone with Willow, and her trained eyes examined all the machines dedicated to keeping this woman alive.
Reaching for the clipboard always resident at the foot of the bed, Tara read through some columns, then signed her name. Reaching for the blood pressure cuff, Tara tenderly placed it around the woman's upper arm, clucking at the profusion of cuts and bruises. In moments she had taken Willow's blood pressure and temperature and dutifully recorded them.
Seeing everything in order, Tara looked over to the door to confirm that it was still closed and took a deep breath. Time to start the physical examination. Tara took Willow's left hand in one of her own, feeling her clammy skin, and with her other hand very gently stroked Willow's forehead, her fingers straying to the dishevelled white mangled hair. Tara wondered if the trauma had caused her hair to whiten. It was extremely rare, but it did sometimes happen. It simply didn't look natural on her, made her seem pale and insignificant, a far cry from the dynamic woman who had so fully enchanted her in her dream.
Tara looked into those deadened green eyes and said, "Honey, my name is Tara Maclay. I'm your nurse." Her thumb made comforting little circles on Willow's hand. "I'm your protector now, I'm the one who is going to take care of you. I know you've been through some scary things, and maybe the place you've gone to in your mind is a haven for you. I just want you to know that you are safe here with me, that the world is safe again for you, that I'm going to protect you and care for you."
There was no answer, no flicker of movement in Willow's fingers, but Tara didn't expect any. She released Willow's hand, laid it gently on the coverlet and stared searchingly at her face. Tara rose to stand by the bed and began to take an inventory of Willow's injuries.
Her new charge was very small and soft and vulnerable, with a light dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose and cheeks. There was a gaping bald spot on Willow's head where a long gash had been stitched, short black bristles of thread contrasting painfully with her white hair. Another long and ragged laceration across her temple to her jawbone was sprouting black bristles and Tara desperately hoped she could heal it without any scarring. It would be a travesty to mar such a perfect face. Willow's lips looked a little dry and chapped with a slowly healing gash by the corner of her mouth. There was a healing scrape on her forehead, and her vacant eyes looked devastating surrounded as they were by dark circles of exhaustion and malaise.
Tara tenderly untied the strings holding Willow's robe closed and folded the coverlet across. Murmuring words of endearment, Tara lifted the robe to expose Willow's chest. Not that she could see very much skin at all; Willow's torso was almost completely covered with crusted bandages, desperately needing a change. Tara got up and strode to the sink. Pouring water into a stainless steel bowl, Tara got a cloth and returned to the bed. Ethan had said there was a bite on Willow's neck, so her fingers strayed first to that large bandage directly over her collarbone. Carefully tugging and using the water to soften and remove the bandage, Tara gasped as she first beheld the terrible bite on Willow's neck. To her horror, the first image that came to her mind was from the movie 'Sleepy Hollow' when the Hessian first showed his fanged and malicious smile, each tooth filed to razor sharpness. Something similar had bitten Willow, something almost human, and Tara wondered if all the rumours she had ever heard about Sunnydale were true. The Demon Hunter slash Witch Doctor that Tara had grudgingly accepted as her informant had once told her that Sunnydale was a haven for vampires. She had never quite believed it, and found that scepticism within herself to be highly unusual. After all, she herself was a witch
(a drifting mite)
of no small power. Highly hypocritical of her to accept her own gifts yet deny the existence of others. So. Willow was bitten by a vampire. Maybe the story of a sword wound would now make sense.
She cast her apologetic eyes down Willow's bare chest. Here she could see the deep purplish yellow bruising of a broken rib and collapsed lung. There was a large and crusty bandage just above Willow's right breast and Tara started to work it off. Underneath was a horrific scrape, all scabbed over and leaking pus. A long bandage on Willow's lower abdomen, once soaked off, revealed bristly stitches and swollen infection around her near-fatal gut wound. Someone (something!) had tried to eviscerate this woman, and nearly succeeded. Tara found anger boiling within her, and she had to take several calming breaths to restore her nerves.
Still breathing deeply, Tara saw that there was a smaller bandage on Willow's right side, which Tara painstakingly removed to reveal the once-dubious sword wound. The cut was unmistakable, and Tara carefully lifted Willow to work off the bandage for the exit wound on Willow's lower back. So. Willow was skewered like a pig in a slaughterhouse. Tara felt that deep flush of anger return to creep along her bones. "Sweetheart, who did this to you?" Tara asked.
Conscious of the sleeping woman's privacy, Tara deftly covered Willow's top as she continued her examination. Willow was shockingly thin, whether naturally or because of a steady diet of IV fluid. More bandages came off of Willow's battered arms, and Tara's heart melted to see the scrapes on Willow's knuckles, realising that Willow had tried to fight back the horrors coming straight for her. Carefully positioning Willow on her side, Tara steadily worked to clean various cuts and scrapes on Willow's shoulders and back. Then repositioning Willow on her back, Tara came at last to Willow's legs. Tara meticulously removed the old bandages to take stock of the injuries. It was obvious her legs had been trapped under something heavy; they were riddled with deep cuts and scrapes and Tara marvelled at the amount of blood Willow had to have lost while waiting for rescue. How did she possibly survive? And no broken bones?
Tara was a realist. A few years ago she may have been furious that the gods would allow such horrible things to happen to good people. It was a victim's attitude, a prevalent attitude that would have such people curse the gods and die. But now, even in the face of such evidence against overwhelming evil, Tara could only believe that some good would yet come of it all. After all
(god is in the why)
what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger.
(Liar!)
Tara knew that Willow's cuts and scrapes needed oxygen, so she carefully laid Willow's cool hands by her sides, taking care of Willow's right hand laced with her IV, and laid light linen over Willow's privates, leaving the rest of her injuries to the air. Tara glanced once more around her to make sure the door was closed and then she drew the curtain around Willow's bed. She felt an intense sort of protectiveness for Willow, and she didn't want anyone else to see her all exposed like this.
As Tara got up to take the bloodied bowl of water to the sink, she examined that feeling of possessiveness. It was true that she often felt deeply for her patients, and that her professors and teachers had often warned her against it, trying to scare her with tales of burnout and emotional exhaustion. But for Tara there was simply no other way. Charity and love were essential ingredients for her healing magic to work, and the more animosity she felt to a person the harder it was to heal them, as she lamentably discovered when her father had once broken his wrist. He had not been so impressed with her gifts that day.
Tara dumped the bloodied water and deftly washed her hands, looking over at the curtain separating her from her new charge. Was it really so wrong to feel this way for a patient? Could true hurt come from her selfless love? Willow Rosenberg was just another girl, wasn't she? She felt this strongly for anyone, didn't she?
(Liar!)
And she tried to harden her heart, to pretend that this girl, this Willow, was no different from the rest. No matter that the physical attraction she felt for the woman was as a terrific magnet. No good could come of it. Tara could work her healing magic without being in love. She had taken Mr. Whitney's pain, didn't she? Willow was a patient, Tara was her nurse. The bounds of their relationship protected her. So be hard, Tara, be hard.
As she returned to Willow's bedside she looked outside, at the birds gaily chirping in the cradled embrace of the blossoming trees, the fairy sparkles of sunlight glinting from the waterfall, the soft green filter of leaves embossed with delicate veins. The world could be such a place of beauty.
And as Tara stood thus, her gentle heart wrenched within her for the horrors that this poor girl must have seen and experienced. There, in the lustrous sunlight of a summer afternoon, Tara felt a wall within her dissolve, like a coin turning, like a shadow exposed to light,
(be hard, Tara!)
and she finally let herself feel for this woman. The waves of emotion she finally allowed to pour from her caused her to choke back a sob, and she clutched her arms around her middle. Her soft brown hair fell in front of her face, obscuring the sunlight, but to Tara that suddenly didn't matter anymore.
She had a new sun.
Her soul shifted, and as Tara closed her eyes, she could feel the woman on the bed behind her. The woman pulsed with a light more glorious than sunlight, moonlight, and starlight combined, and Tara's hungry soul eagerly turned away from those conventional lights to face the
(Willow light)
new light, the love light, her new north star.
Could she save her?
Desperate to stop the tide of tears, yet constantly feeling the smouldering soulfire of Willow Rosenberg, the ache that rose within her could not be extinguished, and Tara began to weep, her breath pouring forth in hitching sobs. Her throat constricted and her eyes throbbed as lines of tears furrowed down her face. Latent pain ebbed and flowed so fiercely through her body that Tara could do naught but cry. She wept for Peter Whitney, she wept for the poor black rabbit, she wept for the broken thing lying
(dying!)
on the hospital bed behind her.
And finally, Tara wept for herself, for the childhood she would never celebrate, for the family she would never have, for the stark emptiness of a future devoid of love.
So Tara battled, there in the delicate peace of Willow's hospital room, a battle all the more titanic for its silence. So she wept, so she struggled.
So she lived.
Tara finally opened her eyes and raised her tear-stricken face to the heavens. It took a few minutes to calm herself, for the hitching breath to finally ease, and as she waited an iron resolve formed within her soul. No hardness. Not anymore. Only love. She clenched her jaw, tucked her brown hair behind her ears and turned to face Willow once more.
The previous examination was the easy part. Now for the really informative assessment, the one that only Tara could do. Tara pulled the hospital bed gently away from the wall until there was enough space behind Willow's head for her to sit on her stool. She composed herself for a moment, suddenly afraid of what she might find in there,
(not even the poet knows the end from the beginning)
in the comatose mind of vampire-bitten, knife-sliced, sword-clenched Willow. Tara took a deep and calming breath, then deftly placed her sensuous fingers on Willow's head, taking great care not to disturb the broken skull within but desperately needing the close physical proximity of her patient's mind. She allowed her eyes to close
(approach the barrier, don't push it)
and focused on the calm, even breathing of the broken girl before her.
"Dearest heart, let me in," she breathed.
For Willow, Tara had prepared a special tree. It was a tree from her youth, enormous yet graceful, with showering curtains of green leaves, a weeping willow. She remembered hiding behind that glowing curtain in the heat of a summer afternoon, when she could smell an approaching thunderstorm in the wind-strewn dust of the family farm. It was safe under the weeping willow, an organic womb to shelter her from the big bad world, a place to daydream and create fantasy futures of delight and enchantment. There she would not be merely tolerated, or even merely loved, but beloved. Essential.
With exacting care Tara fashioned this tree and sent it to the barrier of Willow's beleaguered mind. A little push, and the tree materialised on the other side.
Ah.
(so this is how she's still alive)
The very moment Tara's gentle mind touched the mind of Willow Rosenberg, the world as she knew it shattered. The hospice room she sat in with Willow may have been God-touched, but Willow's mind was God-ravaged. The fine silken heaven-threads that Tara felt within the room
(Mr. Whitney's last hurrah)
paled next to the insistent white presence in Willow's mind. Tara began to lose her composure. This pale and seemingly insignificant woman had been a genuine avatar, and had surrendered her will completely, like a little child, to the limitless power of the gods.
Tara shrank from the enormity of the task that Willow must have faced. The power within Willow was deeper and greater than Tara thought could exist within a human, and threatened to pull Tara in with the sucking force of a maelstrom. Recognising that her mind could be snuffed here with the ease of blowing out a birthday candle, Tara shrank away from that infinite depth, and took a mental step away from the brink.
Among these revelations, and within this holy and transcendent place that still pulsed with the touch of the goddess, Tara looked for the weeping willow tree that she had brought into Willow's mind. She watched it blacken and shrivel until it was an abomination of it's former self. And she grieved to see it arrayed thus, a far too potent sign of Willow's impending death. Tara knew her wounds were grievous, but Willow was on the mend, wasn't she? Her body was healing; she was no longer critical. Why then was her death so close?
And then her own mind, nestled as it was in the protective folds of Willow's God-ravaged mind, sensed that she was not alone here.
Tara whirled around, looking for Willow, and found someone else.
To Tara's everlasting astonishment, she looked through the blackened curtain of Willow's tree to behold a girl-child calmly sitting cross-legged on the winter-blasted ground. She was wearing a simple immaculate white linen shift and there were grass-stains on her feet, surely some remnant of another, happier, greener place. The child's head was endowed with a living crown of daisies, perched solemnly atop golden curls. Part of Tara's mind wished to believe that this was some incarnation of Willow as a child, but she truly knew it wasn't. It was a lie to protect her from the insistent white god-curtain that burst from this child with a pulsing force. The presence was concentrated here, and Tara reeled back from the child, shading her eyes as if beholding a solar eclipse.
The girl beckoned to Tara, and before her bemused mind could give the command to move forward Tara felt an insistent pull behind her navel button, as if this child were calmly fishing her from the sea. She automatically moved forward, then sat down across from the child. In the
(deathspace)
empty ground between them, Tara watched as a low table flickered into existence. But Tara's eyes were drawn away from the table, inexorably pulled to the solemn blue eyes of the child.
"I've been waiting for you, Tara."
