Happy endings
Stacey helps ease people’s aches and pains. And she loves it! Massage therapists share a certain trustworthy anonymity with barbers and bartenders. In just a few sessions, your clients tell you their deepest secrets, their personal problems, and all their juicy gossip. She enjoys her relationship with most of her clients and usually contributes just enough to conversations to suggest interest and keep the client relaxed. They bare their souls and leave the sessions feeling better in body and spirit. But lately she has to bite her tongue with a particularly unpleasant customer. Steve is a big, vulgar, middle-aged businessman who can’t resist telling Stacey about all of her sordid encounters with prostitutes when he travels on business. He prides himself on how well he keeps his womanizing a secret from his wife. Tonight, the explicit descriptions of his latest sexual exploits are too much for Stacey. Disgusted, she ends the massage with no intention of allowing Steve to return to his clinic.
Feeling especially tense and, yes, dirty after getting rid of the show-off, Stacey decides to crash the nightly yoga class upstairs at his clinic. Yoga is a phenomenal aid to relaxation and coping with stress. And right now, this idiot has filled her with stress. Already extremely in tune with her body, she quickly picks up on the philosophy and techniques of the discipline. She is pleasantly surprised at how calm and centered she feels coming home later.
Before long, nightly yoga sessions become an integral part of her routine several days a week. He is soon reading about the history and philosophy of the ancient discipline. He comes across various references to different forms of meditation, yoga of the mind, as one writer called it. Practitioners claim that the benefits of meditation are evident in all aspects of their lives: increased productivity at work; greater personal satisfaction, greater sense of identity; even a more rewarding sex life. She contemplates signing up for one of the meditation classes, but her readings emphasize personal goals and achievements, so she decides to do it on her own. She is soon delving into advanced techniques. She feels changing. She is less stressed, more satisfied with life; she sees the world and her role in it more clearly, and she is happier than she has been in years.
One night, an advanced meditation exercise takes her deeper than ever, into a realm unknown to her. So unprepared for the strangeness of the experience that she is temporarily knocked unconscious. When she wakes up, her body tells her that she’s been out of it for a while, forty-five minutes by the clock, though she has no sense of time passing. She is several feet from the mat she sits on to meditate, the coffee table and loveseat are out of place, and the lamp that was on the end table lies broken on the floor. She has several bruises on her shin and her right arm, evidently from her violent contact with the furniture. Her hair and her sweatshirt are wet and matted with a white foamy substance.
Afraid that she had a seizure, she goes to her doctor for a medical checkup. Everything seems fine. She takes the week off at the doctor’s request, but Saturday arrives early and she agrees to an appointment with one of her regular patients. Sylvia requires regular massages to control her migraines. She’s in terrible shape because Stacie wasn’t available for her usual appointment on Wednesday. Halfway through the treatment, Stacey senses that something strange is going on. As she massages Sylvia, her fingers begin to tingle and a cool sensation travels up her arms, she crosses her shoulders and up her neck to her head. She is momentarily dizzy, but manages to shake herself off. Although she is a little worried, expecting other strange sensations at her hands, the rest of the massage is uneventful.
The strangeness of the day is not over yet. Stacey’s dream tonight is interrupted by a terrible nightmare. She is being abused and beaten by an angry man, her husband in the dream. The man punches her in the face, and just as her head hits the kitchen counter, she wakes up in her bed. Sleep is elusive the rest of the night.
Sunday is spent walking around and wondering, ‘What the hell is going on?’ On Monday afternoon, Stacey is massaging another regular, Diane, when the strange cool feeling returns. But this time, the sensation begins at her forehead and travels up her neck, shoulders and arms to her fingertips. She again feels disoriented, dazed, but she quickly recovers. As before, nothing unexpected happens the rest of the day. But the next day…
Diane calls Stacey to let her know that she’s been having severe headaches since yesterday’s session, headaches that are unlike anything she’s ever experienced. Could the massage have caused such headaches? Stacey admits the possibility, but she emphasizes that such occurrences are rare. She recommends that Diane drink plenty of water to rid the body of toxins released during the massage that can cause flu-like symptoms, including headaches. A few days later, Diane isn’t feeling better and plans to see her doctor.
The next day, Sylvia returns for her Wednesday massage in high spirits. She has never felt better. She hasn’t had a migraine since Saturday, not even a hint of a headache. Being pain free, she feels like a new person. Overwhelmed by the possibility that her life may be changing, she cries and hugs her therapist.
After Sylvia has left, Stacey sits quietly staring at the wall, trying to make sense of the events of the last few days. Time passes unnoticed; when she returns to the here and now, she’s late for her afternoon yoga class. Later, Ella Stacey apologizes to the instructor for interrupting the class because of her late arrival and asks if she has time to stay. She needs some advice. When they are alone, she tells the instructor about her meditation experience, the strange nightmare, and what happened with Sylvia and Diane. She has come to the conclusion that she absorbed Sylvia’s migraine symptoms and transferred them to Diane. Is it possible, she asks, that something happened to him during her meditation experience that could have caused this new ability?
The instructor points out that his hypothesis is far from proven, but he will accept the premise for now. He explains that the brain is a powerful but mysterious organ. Brain activity can be measured in all areas of the brain, but all functions of the human body can be assigned to a small portion of the brain. The rest are active, but we have no idea what he’s doing. Many scientists have postulated that some of these brain areas might harbor metaphysical abilities that we have not yet figured out how to use, or perhaps have forgotten how to use. It is quite possible that, through some rude meditation, you have opened up a corner of your mind that the rest of us are denied access to. Perhaps this newly opened chamber has given him the ability to collect memories, emotions, and physical sensations from one person through his hands, and then transfer them to another. The real problem is its apparent randomness at the moment. Stacey must learn to control the absorption/transfer process. If she doesn’t, the consequences could be disastrous.
The next few days Stacey experiments. She tries different amounts of pressure, using more palm and less finger pressure, and then vice versa. She works first fast, then slower. She tests the effect of various types of lotions and different types of hand movements. She finds that if she quickly lifts the clients hands when her fingers start to tingle, the sensation dissipates. She is relieved that she can control the absorption with such a simple movement. She hones the skill by transferring minor sensations from one client to another, and vice versa during subsequent sessions. For a week or so, she’s getting quite adept at it.
Steve calls on a Friday morning. He’s in dire need of a massage because he strained a muscle while he was entertaining a friend at a Las Vegas convention, if she reads. Stacey can almost hear the *wink wink* over the phone. Her first impulse is to claim that she has everything in store, to hang the weirdo. But a perverse but satisfying idea crosses her mind. She schedules Steve for 4:00 pm and then makes a call.
Diane arrives at the clinic at 3:00, as scheduled. She thanks Stacey for offering to help with her migraines. They come every two hours and, despite the medication prescribed by her family doctor, they are unbearable. She is desperate; she cannot go on living on such bread. Stacey assures her that the migraine will be a thing of the past after this session. She uses some of her yoga techniques to help her relax. A minute or two into the massage, Stacey’s fingers begin to tingle. She smiles and thanks the cool streak that runs down her arm.
An hour later, Steve struts into the clinic. Stacey invites him in with a smile and the promise of something special today.
‘Oh yeah! Does it imply a happy ending? Steve asks, suggestively.
“I guess you could call it that,” Stacey replies, smiling.