Live to Tell - Lisa Gardner [124]
“Focus on the light,” he intoned. “The warm glow of light, of love. Feel it expand your rib cage, filling your lungs. Then push it up. Push it into the chambers of your heart. Love is in your heart. Love is pulsing through your veins, pushing out the negativity, filling your limbs with a great weightlessness. Light is love. Love is light. You are flooded with it. You feel it beating in your chest. You feel it pulsing beneath your skin. Your arms want to rise on their own. They are alight with love, weightless with joy.”
Sure enough, around the room, several pairs of arms began to rise up. Not Danielle’s, D.D. noticed. And not Karen’s. The nurse manager had abandoned the meditation. She was studying Lightfoot instead.
“Warmth,” he intoned. “Love. Light. Heat. Joy. I release all judgments. I understand I am responsible for all corporal actions and I forgive myself for my sins. I forgive others. I am a being of light. I call upon that light. I call upon the love in this room—” A sudden spasm crossed his face, peeling his lips back from his teeth. Lightfoot caught the grimace, soldiered on. “I seek the love of my friends, companions, coworkers—” His voice broke off again. Both shoulders twitched, his left arm bouncing up from his knee. Then his eyes popped up, and he winced sharply, abandoning all pretense as he brought up a hand to shield his face from the overhead lights.
The break in rhythm caught the attention of others. Danielle opened her eyes. Greg, too. They eyed Lightfoot uncertainly.
Karen was already on her feet, returning her wire-rimmed glasses to her face. “Andrew?” she asked as a fresh spasm shook his body.
D.D. pushed away from the wall, starting to understand that this was no longer business as usual.
Lightfoot raised his head toward the ceiling, shut his eyes, and bore down, as if fighting some kind of internal war.
“I call upon the LIGHT!” he boomed. “I am a being of LOVE. I am filled with JOY and PEACE and CONTENTMENT. I release negativity. I cast off all judgment. I feel the love of my friends and community. Their LOVE gives me the strength to PUSH the darkness from this building. There will be no NEGATIVITY. There will be no anger, no PAIN. We are united in the light, filling this space with LOVE, holding this space with LOVE. I call upon THE LIGHT, THE LIGHT, THE LIGH—”
His rising voice broke off. Both hands gripped his face. The next instant, the healer pitched forward, rolling off the edge of the table and flipping onto the floor, where his body convulsed wildly.
“The light, the light!” he screamed. “It’s burning my eyes, my eyes, my eyes!”
“Code blue!” Karen bellowed, sprinting toward the fallen man. “Call downstairs. We need a crash cart, stat!”
She was already on her knees beside Lightfoot, trying to secure his head in her hands as his body flailed and he beat at her with his hands.
“Bite stick!” Karen demanded, working to peel open one eyelid, check his vitals.
“Don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch. It burns….”
The staff sprang belatedly into action. The nurses, Danielle and Janet, made a beeline for medical supplies. Greg grabbed a phone, while the other MCs pushed back tables, cleared the area. Lightfoot’s neck and back arched, muscles coiling and uncoiling rigidly beneath the tan sheath of his skin. Karen finally got his eyelid open. His eye was not rolled back up in his head, as D.D. had expected. Instead, he peered directly at Karen, quite conscious.
“The light,” he moaned. She released his eyelid. He moaned again, this time in relief.
Danielle and Janet were back with supplies. Karen took a Popsicle stick and jammed it into Lightfoot’s mouth. He immediately tried to spit it out. “Don’t touch me!”
“Towel,” Karen ordered, rolling him onto his side. “Quick, over his eyes. Cecille, kill the overhead lights. We can work by the glow of the hallway bulbs.”
Cecille obeyed, darkening the common area as Ed raced down the hallway to grab a towel. The second the overhead lights winked out, Lightfoot seemed to relax.
“Hurts. Can’t