Love's Healing Touch. Jane Perrine Myers

      He unlocked the front door, shoved it open and took a step inside. Silence surrounded him, the usual situation with Tim gone except normally his mother was drinking coffee and reading the paper in the kitchen when he got home. Today the door of her bedroom was shut and a line of light glowed from beneath it. Was she sick?

      He knocked and said, “Mom, are you okay?”

      When she threw the door open, the dazzling light from her smile and several lamps made him blink.

      “I’m magnificent, dear. Look at this.” She swirled and gestured around her.

      The blast of brilliance made him stand still for a moment. Then he took three steps inside and blinked in an effort to take the scene in.

      On the wall to his left, his mother had painted a view of a meadow with two women walking through it. Vibrant green grass and a dazzling sky filled the entire area. On the wall in front of him, she’d begun to paint a pond with gauzy water lilies floating on its shimmering surface.

      Wearing one of his shirts and old jeans smeared with paint, his mother stood in the middle of an amazing blaze of beauty.

      “I see you’re Claude Monet today,” he said stunned by the joy in his mother’s face and the glow of the painting on the walls. Mixed with all this was the realization this was a rental house for which he’d signed an agreement: all plans to paint had to be approved by the landlord. He didn’t think the landlord would appreciate the swirling glory on the walls, but it was too late to worry now. He and Tim could paint over it before they moved out.

      Walking to the center of the room, he allowed the paintings to fill him with joy. “When did you decide to do this?”

      “After you left yesterday afternoon, I took a walk.” While she talked, she picked up a paper towel and wiped the plate she’d used as a palette. “There’s a wonderful art store only three block from here. Did you know that?” She glanced up at him with a smile, the kind he remembered from when he was a kid.

      He dropped on the bed to listen.

      “They had a bin of old paint really cheap, so I bought some and a few brushes, and, well, everything I needed. It cost almost nothing.” She turned in a slow circle to study her creations. “Once I got started, I couldn’t stop. I painted the rest of the day and all night, stopped to feed Tim dinner and breakfast then came back here.” With a sigh, she put the plate down and sat next to him on the bed.

      “I didn’t know how much I missed it. The painting.” Her eyes shone. “Not until I put the first stroke of color on the wall and inspiration flowed through me. It kept coming and coming, like it had been locked up inside me all these years.”

      “You painted for twenty hours?”

      “Almost.” She smiled. “It was wonderful. It was like coming home, coming home to you and Tim and my painting.” She stood to twirl in the middle of the room.

      Mike pulled himself off the bed. “I’m glad, Mom. It’s great.”

      “Thank you, dear.” She patted his cheek. “Now, let me get you some breakfast. We can eat together. Then I have to take a nap. Although,” she said, “my brain is so filled with images, I don’t know if I can sleep.”

      “Mom, it’s beautiful. What’s next? Another Monet? Degas’s dancers? Seurat?”

      “Never Seurat. I find painting all those little dots so tedious.”

      She was happy. He’d let her finish her bedroom, which wouldn’t take long at the speed she was going. Then he’d help her find a job.

      Almost a week later, his mom still hadn’t found work although she’d made several calls and filled out lots of applications. On the other hand, a Degas dancer stretched her long right leg across one corner in the kitchen. In the hall, the start of his mother’s interpretation of a Pisarro view of a street made Mike feel as if he were walking through Paris. The landlord might be able to use the house as a gallery or charge higher rent with all the art filling it.

      “Fuller, there’s a kid in the E.R. who needs you,” Dr. Armstrong said, interrupting Mike’s thoughts.

      In the past few weeks, Mike had gotten a reputation for being good with kids. This was good because he liked children, but bad because he really hated to see a kid hurt.

      After finding the child, comforting her and getting her prepped for surgery, he transported her to the OR and promised he’d be there when she got out of surgery.

      A few hours later, Mike glanced at his watch. Almost 6:00 a.m. His mother would be picking him up after the shift change. She’d needed the car to go to the doctor yesterday afternoon, only a routine visit, she’d said. He hoped everything had gone well.

      Because he’d expected her to arrive an hour later, seeing her in the E.R. hallway surprised him. Even more amazing, she supported a gray-haired man with one hand and tried to staunch the blood dripping from the towels wrapped around the man’s arm with the other.

      “Mom?”

      “Hello, dear.” She gave him a quick smile. “I met Mr. Ramírez in the parking lot and helped him in.” She lowered the man into a chair. “He says his daughter works here. Do you know her?”

      “Yeah.” Mike pulled gloves from his pockets, slipping them on as he ran to the nurses’ station. “Page Dr. Ramírez, please.” Then he grabbed a couple of towels from a hall cabinet, dropped the blood-soaked towels from Mr. Ramírez’s arm on the tile floor and wrapped the clean ones around it. Before he could do more, Dr. Ramírez rushed toward her father.