Dreams and Traditions

[Mikkelus]

Today was the day. Centered and energized from his early morning workout, he had resolved that today, within the hour, he would master the pain and thus his inability to approach the medical facility. Today, he would put all of that behind him, dismiss it, and walk into the facility. Today, just like any other person at Cobalt Hill, he would step through those doors without hesitation, crossing the threshold to a tradition of service to others, just like his father and his grandfather before him.

Mikkelus changed out of his workout clothes, showered, and changed into khaki pants and a matching button-up shirt. He shouldered his book-bag and left the dorms, heading straight down the path past the medical center. He walked, breathed deeply, and drew slowly closer to the medical facility.

Inhale, step, step, step, pause, step, step, step, exhale, step, step, step: yes, he could do it. He could do this. He would do this. He was going to do this. He was, he was doing this.

Fifty feet from the end of the building he felt no discomfort. No problem! He could do this! He would walk up to the steps of the medical facility, walk in through the door like everyone else. He would step inside with impunity, and having mastered his fear and pain, he would begin taking the classes in the fall that would prepare him to study medicine, either in the United States or at the Universität Ulm. He’d follow in the tradition of his father, becoming a doctor.

He’d never thought of his father as a mutant. Growing up, it had been perfectly normal to see his father tending to the needs of people in the village, examining an injured limb to bring a patient back to health and wholeness, touching a fevered brow to bring comfort; wasn’t that what every doctor did? He’d known the warmth in his father’s touch for his entire life, even longer than he’d been outside his mother’s womb according to some of the stories his mother had told him. With the touch of a hand, with a sweep of the Terraquant medical laser, with the deft twist of the knob on a Rife frequency instrument, his father had been Herr Doktor in their village, the wunderkind of non-invasive medicine.

And then, after the episode with the broken hand, his father had sat him down for a long talk. The Talk. Although the village recognized his father, and in fact the medical community recognized many from his extended family as skilled doctors and experts in their field, their family medical practice made use of skills and abilities that transcended those medical skills taught in universities. Their family had a secret.

They were not like the others in the village. At an early age, his father had been able to sense illness and injuries. Opa Mikkelus had taught his father how to shield his senses from the discomfort around him. Later, as his father’s abilities grew and matured, opa had taught his father how to extend a portion of his will and vitality to greatly accelerate the natural healing processes of his patients, healing in a matter of hours or days those injuries that would ordinarily require weeks or months. His opa had also insisted that his father train as a physician in osteopathic medicine, under which guise he treated illnesses and injuries, making subtle use of his innate abilities when medicine alone did not suffice.

His father then went on to explain that Mikkelus had inherited some of those abilities. The vitality flowing through young Mikkelus accelerated his healing processes. From all indications, he could share his vitality when in perfect health through direct physical contact, fuelling the healing processes of others at that same accelerated rate; the chill he felt from touching someone who was ill or injured was his own vitality, rushing into the patient to aid the healing process. And later, when he was old enough to be considered a blood donor, his type O- blood could prove to be remarkably effective in reducing the recovery time of patients; with proper nutrition, Mikkelus could safely provide a pint or two each day.

As his abilities developed, he had become more sensitive to the physical and emotional state of those around him. Unfortunately, though his father knew how to shield himself from pains and infirmities of the people surrounding him, he had not learned how to teach anyone else how to shield themselves. Had he not vanished some years earlier, opa could have taught young Mikkelus how to shield himself.
This left the family with a problem. Well, two problems, really. First, something seemed to have gone wrong: instead of consciously transferring his energy and consciously accelerating someone’s healing processes, young Mikkelus unconsciously drew the disruptions to their energy flow into his own, along with their pain and injury. To make the situation worse, he had no control over the process; casual physical contact with others in school, in a market, in a crowded plaza or cathedral left him covered with minor cuts and bruises. And finally, in their village, his condition would not go unnoticed for long.

It was a family secret. It had been a family secret. His father stressed the importance of protecting that secret. Yes, they had abilities that seemed miraculous, could cure wounds and heal diseases that medicine would otherwise consider a death sentence. And if word got out that he could heal two, three, maybe four people a day of whatever ailed them, then how many desperate people would flock to the clinic? To what extremes would a desperate person go to secure a treatment for themselves, or for a loved one? Desperate, hurting people take desperate chances, people with nothing left to lose usually don’t care whom they hurt, and there were always far more people needing help than help to be had. It must remain a family secret.

He was here because he was… a mutant. He was here because his family had a secret to protect, and he had to learn how to protect that secret. He was here because the only help his family had been able to provide had been securing him a place in this school to help him learn to help himself.

And he would. The first step was to master the pain that kept him out of the medical center, twenty five feet ahead of him. He continued walking, breathing, and drew even with the end of the building before he felt the first twinges. Remember that pain is weakness, escaping the body, and keep walking. Another step and he felt an ache in his shoulder. He pushed on grimly, wading deeper into a crimson wave.

Tears stung his eyes as he took another step, then another. Fire filled his center, radiating through his lungs and stealing his breath away. Another step closer and his vision swam; where was that door? His legs trembled and ached until he hardly dared to trust them to support his weight. His stomach knotted in protest, threatening to revolt. He was forcing his way through molten glass, but the molten glass was forcing its way through him as well, burning away everything except the pain, until all he could do was collapse, curled into a sobbing heap on the sidewalk

Footsteps approached. They paused beside him, then a strangely familiar voice called out his name. It took several moments before he could discern the words over the pain roaring in his ears. Failure... disappointment... weakling... useless... the litany from his father's lips went on and on, crushing him.

He tried to roll away, forcing his body from the walk. He reached the edge, pushed beyond, and then he was falling. Down, down, flailing as he dropped into a bottomless pit, he cried out and tried to clutch onto anything, but his arms refused to respond. From far away, he heard laughter, then nothing.

Something hard arrested his fall, knocking the wind from him. Darkness surrounded him, and his arms had been bound to his side by a blanket. No, not so much bound as simply trapped; a moment of squirming found him free of the blanket and laying on his back in his dorm room. The clock blinked 12:01, the same time that it had displayed for the last week. Perhaps, judging from the lack of light outside his window, the clock was actually right this time?

Perhaps tomorrow, he would master his pain. Hopefully, it'd go much better than in his dream.