The Healer

By: Carleigh Baker

When I met Shawna she was recovering from a brain injury. She and two friends were driving home from a movie when they’d spun off the road and fallen down a 100 foot embankment into the Francis River. She had hung upside down in a seatbelt, unconscious, inches from the brown water, for who knows how long. The rescuers had to cut her hair with a Swiss army knife because the river had wrapped it around twisted metal. Everyone survived and nobody was at fault—they were travelling at the posted speed but the road was icy. The other passengers needed a lot of stitching up. Shawna often said she was lucky that she got out with only a bad haircut. 

That was a year before I met her, on a singles snowshoeing excursion. I signed up because I didn’t own a car back then and it was an easy way to get to the mountain. Winter in the city was dark and rainy, and spending time above the clouds was the only way I’d successfully fought seasonal angst. As for the singles element, even if anyone had shown any interest in me, that kind of interest, I would have politely declined. Too much work. But I was still flattered when Shawna sat beside me in the van and struck up a conversation. 

She offered up the details of her accident quite breezily, and seemed uninterested in my meagre offerings of empathy. I’d assumed that a year must have been adequate time to recover from the jangling that such a dramatic brush with death would bring. Nothing that serious had ever happened to me. All my notable life problems were self-inflicted, the results of poor life choices or laziness. But Shawna had a zest that made me think about her more than I usually thought about people. 

By the time we got to the mountain, some folks had already paired off into prospective love interests. Optimism makes everyone more attractive, and for some reason so does cold air. Shawna and I lagged behind the group—this was her first time and snowshoes take some getting used to. She kept catching the tips and stumbling. I was happy to go slow since it was a sunny day and we could see clear out to the ocean. Above us, the chairlifts whirred softly. Kids swung their skis back and forth.

She frowned at the long line of people in front of us. “Feels like a school trip.” 

“We don’t have to follow them,” I said. “As long as we’re back at the van on time.” 

She enthusiastically agreed so we pushed between heavy cedar branches and into the bush, keeping the chairlift to our left so we knew where the main trail cut. I had done this before, and I knew there was a cross-trail to a warming cabin about a kilometre away. But for a while we just trekked through fresh powder that whooshed up in crystalline clouds every time Shawna fell on her ass. She laughed, and I laughed. She did most of the talking—about her accident and miraculous recovery—and that was fine. It takes me a while to get comfortable with people. 

By the time we reached the cabin trail the sun was high in the sky. “I have mint and kelp tea in my thermos,” she said. 

That sounded terrible but I didn’t say so. A few minutes later we crested a glittering hill and looked down. A plume curled out of the cabin’s chimney. The place was deserted, but probably not for long. Most people planned to arrive around lunchtime and from the position of the sun I knew that was soon.  

There was a slight slope down to a bridge, which led to the cabin. Going downhill uses different balance on the snowshoes so I went first. Trying to describe to Shawna what my body was doing was harder than expected. Most of the movements had become natural, and therefore, forgettable. But it was only about fifteen steps. When I looked up from my feet I saw real fear in her face. 

“Just slide down on your butt if you want,” I said, surprised. “No judgement here.” 

She stood still for a couple of seconds, crouched like a mouse with a hawk overhead. Her eyes darted from the ridge to the bottom of the hill and back again, lips moving like she was doing calculations. Concerned she might be embarrassed, I took a few steps towards the cabin, like I trusted her to get herself out of it. Kicked some snow around.

Finally, her shoulders relaxed. “Sometimes I get a little—“ She waved her hands around and laughed. 

“Totally,” I said, because anything else would have been condescending. 

She sidestepped herself down the hill, as I’d originally suggested, and strode right past me over the bridge. I followed. 

The cabin smelled like wet wool and cedar. It always reminded me of when mom used to pull the winter blankets out of what she called her hope chest. They were supposed to hold a young woman’s accumulation of domestic treasures before marriage, but she’d always just used it for beads, old magazines, and of course things that needed protection from moths. Shawna had never used a wood stove so I showed her how to stoke it up and add logs in a pyramid shape. It got hot almost instantly and we stripped off our jackets. I was still watching to see if she’d recovered from whatever happened earlier. She poured the tea into our Thermos lids. 

“I don’t normally indulge like this, but I figure we need the calories.” She took a big swig and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. 

“You do burn a lot out here.” The tea tasted like salty toothpaste. I added plain coffee from my Thermos. 

“It makes the skin glowy too, but you don’t need to worry about that.” She reached for my cheek and I hopped back a little. “Oh, sorry. And it’s sweetened with agave, which won’t spike your GI. Cutting out refined sugar helped a lot with my recovery.” 

I would have asked her what a GI was, but the door opened and a laughing group joined us. German, or maybe Swiss. They were annoyed to see us, and even though we had every right to be there I suggested that we move on. The wind had picked up and puffs of snow swirled around our knees. It was all downhill back to the van of course but Shawna took longer, more confident steps this time.

At the bottom of the trail she suggested we stick around and have dinner at the lodge. The restaurant wasn’t fancy but there was a fire in the big stone fireplace and leather arm chairs that looked so cozy. I told her the bus home would take forever, but she offered to get us a cab. The cost of that would be astronomical by my standards, but she insisted. I wondered if the other people on the tour would think we’d made a successful love match. Bet they’d be jealous. She had steamed cod and I had a steak with extra cauliflower. She said I have nice hands and I thanked her though they just look like normal hands to me. For the first time I got to see up close how the sunset turns white to blue, right before the lights go on. 

***

I have a lot of fillings. The silver ones, which Shawna says are toxic. She noticed them when I laughed at her joke. 

“There’s probably a lot of toxic stuff in me,” I said, hoping to diffuse the situation. She can go on and on about toxicity. I know it’s because she cares. 

She was dumping chopped kale into the Vitamix. “You should come with me to the sauna. I go three days a week but you might need more since you work with all those chemicals at the salon.” 

I’m more of a cold person, but she said it would sweat out all kinds of nasty things running through my body. Who knows how many years it had been but I clearly remembered the smell of damp wood and chlorine. The discomfort of strange skin proximity and the aggression of hot air. Just thinking about it made my chest flutter, which was the point I guess. Pump that blood. 

She added homemade oat milk and protein powder and blended everything into a green slurry. Poured it into two mason jars. “Vitamin K is good for your bones, and nobody gets enough.” 

We toasted and drank. It tasted like vanilla grass, a combination that was neither logical nor enjoyable. 

“What else has vitamin K in it?” I asked. 

She thought for a minute. “Spinach, Brussels sprouts, chard.” 

“Bleh.” I laughed, but she didn’t. 

“I’m living proof that if you give your body what it needs, it will heal itself.” 

The next morning, we met at the community pool. Getting there for opening was my idea, surely it wouldn’t be too busy. This plan turned out to be solid—the place had a nice liminal vibe at that hour. No sound but the swooshing of limbs, and the lifeguards had only turned on some of the overhead lights. We floated down the lazy river a few times before moving to the sauna. An older man in beige swim trunks was stretched out over the entire top bench, eyes closed. A faded scar cut across his lower stomach. He breathed so slow he looked dead. I let my gaze rest on his brown nipples until Shawna poked me. 

“Clench your toes, helps with circulation.”

I clenched and thought about blood, bright red with oxygen, dark red without. I tried to visualize how specks of mercury amalgam would get out of the blood and into my sweat, which was already streaming from my temples, running between my boobs to a pool in my crotch. That part didn’t make sense but probably because I didn’t know much about how bodies work. Shawna knew a lot about bodies, she had taken a Classical Herbalist course from Sovereign Natural College last year, and was about to write her exams. It wasn’t a real college. Nobody needs a degree to make hair oil and burn salve. She planned to use the certificate to apply for a more vigorous program at Vibrance Healing College. I wondered if these places ever got in trouble with the authorities for misrepresenting themselves. Shawna said this kind of learning was more real than chemistry or sociology or psychiatry. None of that is any use if you don’t have your health. 

Every so often we got out of the sauna and stood under the showers to cool off. She ran the water ice cold, which is what real Nordic people do, but I had to add a little heat. The shock was too painful. Between the smoothies and the sweating, healing was pretty uncomfortable. 

On our last tour of duty in the sauna, the man was gone. Two women wearing neoprene bathing caps sat on the top bench instead. “I’ve seen you here before,” one of them said to Shawna. “You never swim.” 

“I have a fear of water since the accident,” she said, as if they knew what the accident was. They both nodded, and the woman who had spoken looked embarrassed. Later, after we were dressed and walking to the bus stop, I asked if what she’d said was true. 

“You kidding? I cheated death. I fear nothing!” She punched a fist at the sky. “She just seemed bitchy.” 

The number 7 bus—which stopped at both our places—pulled up, but I suggested we walk instead. The light was seeping over the hills and I was full of clean blood. 

***

Shawna asked me to cut her hair. I offered to do it at her place so she wouldn’t have to come all the way to the salon. In truth, I thought she’d weird out my co-workers. She was a bit much since getting into Vibrance Healing College, laying hands on everybody, wanting to feel their essence. After work I packed up my gear and took the bus over to her apartment. The first downtown snow was falling earlier than expected. Cars skidding all over.

She answered the door with a towel wrapped around her head. “Come in, come in!” There was a vegan lasagna in the oven so the place smelled delicious. “I’ll light some candles,” she said, but I told her I was going to need more light than that. She relented with a sigh—atmosphere was important for her studies apparently. Something called light language.

We pulled a chair into the bathroom. It was clear that this was more of a rescue mission than a cut. She’d been at it with blunt craft scissors, trying to do layers. I ran a brush through her hair and she shivered. “I’ve always found it interesting that you do this for a living, there’s so much touching.” 

“Touching…hair? It’s fine.” 

“Well you have to wash it too, do you give those conditioner massages?” 

“Of course.” This isn’t exactly true. I use the conditioner the way we’re supposed to, which includes rubbing it into the scalp. But I don’t lay it on thick like some of the stylists, digging in, rolling my thumbs over the client’s temples. It seems creepy to touch someone that way. And I imagine it would feel overwhelming to be of the receiving end—all that tingling. 

She leaned back in the chair and looked up at me. “We learned about touch aversion today in class.”

“I’m not.” 

“My prof says it’s a root chakra imbalance—

“—I’m not.” I took a breath. She had already diagnosed me with Pica, Aquagenic Urticaria, and Alien Hand Syndrome although I have no symptoms for any of these conditions. Any defence only strengthened her conviction. So I put down the scissors and massaged around her temples, trying to keep my fingers firm but not locked, the way we were taught at the salon. 

“Ohhhhhhh.” She relaxed her neck and leaned back, eyelids fluttering. This is what I mean, creepy. Like trying to seduce her, instead of cut her hair. But it shut her up, so I committed—for better or worse—until my fingers brushed over a long bump on her scalp. 

“That’s my scar,” she said. 

“From the accident?” I wasn’t sure if massaging a scar feels nice or not. I remembered her story about the rescue team chopping off her tangled hair—surely not at the scalp?

She sat back up, uncomfortable for once. “My brain swelled so much they had to cut in to let off the pressure.” 

“Right into your skull? How?” I sounded stupid asking all these questions, but I’d never imagined having your skull sawed into—not in any scenario beyond a horror film. 

“You don’t want to know.” She smiled. 

The scar was thick and braided. It felt like something was under the skin, like the surgeon had left a hankie inside. Imagine opening up a human who’s barely on the precipice of adulthood, to fix the most mysterious organ in their body. All eyes on you, all expectations on your dexterity. A thought like that should have loosened me up—this was only a head massage, after all. But it didn’t. 

Shawna intercepted my hand, “thanks for the massage.” If she was disappointed she didn’t show it, or maybe I don’t know what disappointment looks like. 

“You’re welcome.” I went back to work. She wanted an asymmetric bob—longer on the scar side. She dropped the talk about touch aversion. When the oven buzzer went off she went to the kitchen and I swept her hair into the trash.

“Tell me more about your school,” I asked, over dinner. 

“It’s going to be amazing,” she said. “We heal people from their core energies.”

“So no medicine?” 

“Guiding the light inside people is medicine.” 

“Where?”

She grinned. “Wherever it needs to go.” 

After dinner I walked home in the snow, which had been falling for hours but wasn’t sticking. The roads were empty. A wrapped chunk of Shawna’s lasagna warmed my hands. Nobody had ever explicitly pointed out my non-touchiness before—aside from my parents, who weren’t particularly touchy either. Sometimes my mom would come out of nowhere demanding a hug, and she always laughed at my stiff back. Shawna was so dramatic—it wasn’t an aversion. I just preferred to keep my distance. It’s not like people were lining up to touch me. There were plenty of other ways to enjoy someone’s company. 

***

Web MD said that not being all touchy-feely had something to do with past trauma. That didn’t seem possible in my case, since I’d never been held at gunpoint or dropped from a helicopter. It also said that exposure therapy was a good way to reverse it, if that was something a person wanted to do. There were times I’d been fine with hugs—after a few drinks for example—and I’d even instigated a few myself, maybe at a Christmas party or something. I went to college with a girl from Quebec City who used to kiss me on both cheeks, and I liked that, it felt chic. But that was ages ago, and I guess in the years of being mostly alone, going to work all week and snowshoeing with strangers on weekends, I’d talked myself back into feeling like it wasn’t necessary. But the last thing I wanted to do was get touchy with Shawna, she’d be such a smug brute about it. Tell her new friends at Vibrance Healing College how she cured a weirdo. So I asked a few of my regulars if they wanted a massage with their wash. Some said they were fine without, and one told me she liked the fact that I didn’t do it. My three o’clock, Kelly, happily agreed. She said she’d always wondered why I didn’t but the cuts were so great she kept coming back.

Kelly had natural curls that made her shag hard to cut, but so voluminous. Lately we’d been working in some pastel pink streaks. Something about that muted colour gave me an ASMR-like tingle. Anyone could do flamboyance—we chose restraint. In some lights they looked almost natural, to anyone with an imagination anyway. Once I watched her walk out of the salon and some doofus on the street literally tripped over himself as she passed him. She was like a contemporary Stevie Nicks, ethereal from the shoulders up but rooted to the ground like an oak. It was just a trim that day though, no colour.

She laid her head back in the sink, eyes closed. “I’m excited.” 

“Me too.” A professional lie. Completely forgivable. I know all my clients’ preferred wash temperature by heart, Kelly liked it on the cool side. She smiled when the spray hit. I tried to stay focussed while thinking about heads—where the nerves were, what felt good. Yes, we’d been taught how to massage clients but in my panic I thought maybe a reinvention of the wheel was in order. I always liked the feeling squeezing the cartilage part of my ears gave.

I tried a few positions out during the shampoo. Digging my thumbs into her crown—she liked that. Her mouth opened a little when I got in there around the nape, but then it opened a little more and she said, “ouch,” so I toned it back. Rinsed out the shampoo and pumped a handful of conditioner from the bottle. Took a deep breath and tried to think of my fingers as sensory conduits. Small circles. Careful not to tangle the hair. Her neck relaxed, head rolling from side to side with my strokes and for a moment I got the strange impression that we were glued to each other. This wasn’t entirely uncomfortable. Her chest rose and fell with a dramatic exhale. Only when I saw a co-worker looking at me strangely did I realize the whole thing had probably gone on too long. I cleared my throat and rinsed again, upping the warmth just a touch when she shivered. 

Back in the chair, she asked if she was my first. 

“Sort of,” I said. “Was it okay?”

Her smile was indulgent. “Amazing.” 

She left with a few extra lavender streaks I couldn’t resist trying out. Kelly was always up for experiments. I under-charged, hoping she’d tell her friends about the amazing head massage she got from her totally normal stylist, and praying they wouldn’t come in expecting one of their own. How did my co-workers do this every day? It would get easier, that was the whole promise of exposure therapy. I had to believe. 

At the end of the shift Shawna dropped by with some veggie samosas. 

“You haven’t called in a while.” I hadn’t called her since the touch averse night. I didn’t feel like it. She looked deep into me and I asked if she was moving my energy around. 

“Not without express written consent.” She pouted, and I considered giving her a hug but she’d probably make a big deal out of it. Shawna was becoming tiresome—all this esoteric talk about healing. It was hard not to judge her for buying into it all. She really believed that drinking kale smoothies had fixed her brain. Maybe they had. I didn’t see anything wrong with believing that, but what if she told somebody she could cure their cancer? And now she’d started doing yoga so everything was “blissful” and “Zen-like,” an absurd state of mind that required willfully ignoring the awkward, the uncomfortable, the ugly. These things were all necessary to keep a person grounded. Like an oak. Like Kelly.  

I went on the next singles snowshoeing trip without Shawna. Kept my eyes in a book on the ride out to avoid any new friendly discourse. When the van pulled up to the lodge I hoofed it to the trail and strapped in, well ahead of the others. It felt good to just trudge around in silence, feeling the icy top layer drop under my feet. Breathing out fog. I walked right past the cabin, where a bunch of fools were chattering away about nothing important, and hauled ass up to the first peak where you can look out over the whole city and right to the ocean. The sky was clear all the way down that day, no cloud cover, and sun glinted off so many glass buildings. A person could go blind from all that light. And how bad would that be, really? All the other senses do a perfectly adequate job.