Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 287: The Healer

Chapter 287: The Healer

I closed my eyes and connected to the ground underneath me. I let my healing power flow through the roots and trees around me until I could feel every living thing for miles away.

I could tell the animals that were sick, the human that were injured or had aches and pains. I could see that Wang Shu Lan’s womb and ovaries were injured from a long time ago. I could see the growths inside of her that made it medically impossible for her to have a child.

And I could feel the exact location of the Retribution guild teams and the women with them. And I could feel tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, zombies making their way toward City A.

"We have at least two days," I muttered sleepily. I hoped one of the guys would remember what I said, but I knew it was important.

"Understood," grunted a deep voice, but I didn’t know who it was. All I knew was the energy, all I knew was what I needed to do to heal those I wanted healed.

I refused to take the power from the land, knowing just how much it was spending keeping the crops and animals healthy. Instead, I went for my favorite power source. The zombies.

Gripping their life force almost violently, I yanked it out of them, watching half heartedly as many of them stumbled and fell. But not a single one died. More’s the pity.

Dragging their force through the roots of the trees and into the land, I let it flow unchecked.

It was like I opened up a faucet along a pipeline. Energy was leached out of the zombies and it went directly into the land around me.

Trees grew, plants produced more harvest and the grains became more mature. Once I was certain that the land couldn’t hold any more, I then turned my attention to the humans around me.

I knew that they couldn’t take the power of the zombies in the same way that the land could, so I slowed it down, allowing it to trickle up their feet and into their bodies.

"What the hell?" grunted a male voice before another one told him to shut up.

But I ignored it all. I didn’t care if I looked like a freak or if the people here were scared of me or hated me. They had given me their supplies in a time when family members would turn on each other for a slice of bread.

This was the least I could do.

Finally, once all of the men around me had been healed and their sore muscles had been tended to, I concentrated on Wang Shu Lan.

I saw her look when Mama Li asked for grandbabies. I knew that it was something that she has probably wanted for a very long time. I would make sure that she could have them.

I manipulated the energy so that it flowed through me and not the earth as I walked over to the other woman and placed my hand in hers.

There was a moment of déjà vu as I remembered a time when I did this with Li Dai Lu. Only now I didn’t have a cage between us.

"What?" she whispered as I delicately entered her body. My gift of healing went straight into her womb, healing the lesions and cysts that I found. I reattached her left ovary to her fallopian tube where a cyst had cut off the connection between the two, and I continued to pour energy into her.

It seemed like it took hours to restore her body to peak condition, but I knew it was only a matter of minutes.

But what surprised me the most was that I wasn’t feeling her pain at all. In fact, I was re energized, even after healing her for so long.

Why wasn’t it like this in Camp Hell? Why was it nothing but excruciating pain?

’Both you and them fought the healing,’ hissed a voice in my head and I knew that it was Squirt. ’Healing, when done feely, is not a painful task. But you didn’t want to do it and they didn’t want it done. And so, it hurt, and took out of you more than it should have.’

I blinked a few times at his words as I came out of my healing trance. I mean, it did make sense, I hadn’t once been in pain when I healed those I chose to heal. In fact, I always enjoyed it.

’Healing is a gift, not the curse you thought it was,’ continued Squirt. If he was going to say something next, he was cut off by Wang Shu Lan wrapping me up in a massive hug.

"Thank you," she breathed, and it was like all the burdens of the world had been lifted from her shoulders. "I don’t know how you did it, but I know what you did. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you."

"All good," I smiled at her, returning her hug. "After all, I am the Healer."

It was the first time I had ever called myself that would some sort of fear or trepidation and the feeling of it was... blissful.

I could accept it now.

I was the Healer.

----

"You’re smiling," chuckled Zhang Hui Fan as he and his wife watched the woman walking away, the trees parting for her as they showed her the way out of the ranch.

"I am," replied his wife, happily.

"Should I be jealous? I don’t think I have ever seen you this happy before. Not even when we were dating." The man laughed as he dodged a half hearted hit from the woman he loved more than life itself.

He had done a lot of bad things, things he hadn’t been proud of at the time, but it was worth it to know that she was there, walking beside him for the rest of his life.

"She healed me," whispered Wang Shu Lan, looking up at him.

"I know, she somehow managed to heal all of us. Even that gunshot I took a few years ago is no longer as painful," smiled Zhang Hui Fan as he rotated his shoulder.

"No, you stupid man, she healed me. After all the doctor’s visits, after all the times that they told me there was nothing they could do and I just have to live through the pain... and the knowledge I couldn’t have children... she healed me."

Zhang Hui Fen blinked at her for a moment before throwing her over his shoulder and sprinting for the house, the sound of her carefree laughter echoing in the land around them.