KATHERINE

“He’s gone, Stuart.” Katherine’s voice was flat, dead, devoid of absolutely everything.
“Danny’s gone.” She was bone-weary and numb, beyond tears; she wished she was beyond caring.

She had come to Stuart’s office to – oh, hell, she didn’t know why she’d come here. What was he going to say that every other doctor before him hadn’t? What was he going to do that could possibly make any difference? Nothing could fix this; nothing would bring Danny back. With absolutely no emotion, she said, “I hate this damned disease.” She might have been more vehement, even vulgar, if she’d had more energy, if she hadn’t been so exhausted. But no, exhaustion was better. Less pain.

She was curled up in an oversized upholstered chair with her head in her hand, not focusing on anything in particular, except maybe that tiny scrap of paper on the Persian rug. Now that was something worth staring at. At least it couldn’t dredge up any agonizing thoughts or memories. Her breathing was slow and even. Her long, sandy-colored hair hung limp and dull across her shoulders and back, around her arms and chest. Outside a horn blared as tires squealed. In the outer office, a phone rang and a woman’s voice said, “Dr. Barrelli’s office, may I help you?” A strong gust of wind rattled the windowpanes. Katherine reacted to none of it; she just kept breathing.

It was two months since Danny had walked out. At first she could not stop crying; now she couldn’t feel a thing. She’d curled herself into a ball on the living room floor, just next to the spot where the sofa, which never did arrive, would have been placed, and there she rocked herself, hour after hour, hugging her knees, acknowledging the enormity of her loss in great wracking sobs of grief and anguish. And when she had finally cried her last tear, when her housemates were practically beside themselves with worry, she made her way to Bolton University and Stuart Barrelli’s office. Stuart had been a dear friend since college. He was also a psychiatrist. Not hers, but a psychiatrist nonetheless. Danny’s suggestion. Katherine doubted it, but Stuart thought he could help.

The thought crossed her mind that perhaps she should be saying some­thing, but she had no heart for it. She felt Stuart watching her, waiting for her as the silence lengthened, but she just let it. And she breathed. Finally she inhaled as if to speak, but emitted only a sigh and continued to stare at the floor. Danny was gone and it was her fault, all because of her illness. What else was new? What else was there to say?

“Kath,” Stuart spoke her name gently, almost reverently, “There’s some­thing I want to say to you.” No response. “But not here.” She stirred, slowly raising her eyes to meet his. “Let’s go get some coffee.” She shrugged, acqui­esced, uncurled her legs, and rose.

They left his office and then the building, walking shoulder to shoulder in silence. Inside the luncheonette, Stuart chose a corner table away from everyone else and ordered two regular coffees. Katherine maintained her silence. After the waitress left, Stuart placed both forearms, palms down, on the table, leaned forward so he could keep his voice low, took a deep breath, and said, “I have an alternate theory.” He paused for another breath, “I don’t believe you’re bipolar. I think there’s another explanation.”

That got her attention; she raised her eyes and peered at him through the fog.

“First,” he continued, “and I want to be very clear about this: You are absolutely, positively, without a doubt in my mind, not mentally ill. Second, and I feel just as strongly about this, you should explore the possibility – now don’t flip out when I say this—you should explore the possibility that you’re an Empath.” He stopped speaking and held his breath just a few seconds to let that sink in. “A particularly strong, highly evolved one, in fact.”

The fog began to lift. She shook her head as if to clear it.

“What did you just say?”

“I know, it’s not mainstream, and ...”

“Not mainstream …!” she interrupted.

He interrupted right back, “… and it’s certainly nothing you’ll ever find in a textbook or medical journal, but it exists. I’ve seen it, Kath, that’s why I recognize it. I’ve been researching and studying this for a while. I don’t claim to know everything, but what I do know is that anyone who categorically denies its existence is showing off their arrogance and ignorance. I believe you possess abilities that are so far beyond the reach and comprehension of most, no wonder they pegged you wrong. You’re not sick, Kath –you’re astounding.”

“What are you talking about?” barely a whisper, but spoken with such intensity that even she was taken aback. But even in her disbelief, something rose up inside her, some small still voice, some tiny spark of recognition, something that reached up to grab onto his words.

“It all fits,” he leaned a bit closer, his voice a bit more forceful. “The dramatic mood changes, the way you relate to people, spectral visitations – communication with ghosts –which you’ve convinced yourself are hallu­cinations. Kath, I’m so sure of this. It all fits.” His words came faster and his tone intensified as he counted off his points on his fingers: “You avoid crowded places. The meds you’ve been given all your life have never done a damned thing for you. There are bipolar symptoms – classic ones – that you’ve never exhibited, primarily that your cycles – your mood swings – are way too frequent and dramatic. You seem to sense when something is about to happen or when someone is sick. People – strangers – are drawn to con­fiding in you like you’re some kind of priest or something ...”

Katherine’s eyes were huge and they were riveted on Stuart’s face. A bomb couldn’t have drawn her attention away. The beginning of a sob was welling up from somewhere deep inside her. She had no idea what he was talking about, only that every statement he’d made so far was so. Wordlessly, she reached forward and lightly poked his hand, an indication she wanted him to continue.

“Kath, that’s why the meds never worked, because you were never sick to begin with. You’re not sick,” he said again, as if he couldn’t emphasize it enough. “You’re an Empath,” and he grinned as he said, “And there’s no cure for it. It would be like trying to cure someone of their ability to think or feel, like trying to cure someone of their humanity.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded, pulling her hand back, as tears threatened just behind her eyes. She knew she sounded angry and she didn’t mean to. She wasn’t. Her heart was pounding wildly and her mind was racing, searching her inner databanks for memories, for confir­mation of this outrageous claim. She wasn’t angry; in fact, she desperately wanted to hear more, and Stuart did not take offense at her tone. He was frankly delighted that some of the old Kath was showing through again.

He took a few deep breaths, took a few moments to look into her face, into her eyes, and then he continued, a little slower. There was no longer any rush to get the words out. Katherine appeared to be receptive to the idea. Now he could take his time and make his case – he still had a few surprises for her.

“Take yourself out of the equation for now, Kath, and just imagine I’m talking about someone other than you,” he thought this would be the best way to begin, to put the focus somewhere else. “Imagine what it must be like to be an Empath when you don’t know you are. Empathy’s not at all like being psychic or telepathic. There are no words or pictures. It’s all about feelings and sensations, no information.”

“I don’t get it,” she said, “everyone has emotions.”

“Exactly. Which is why it’s so hard to differentiate between being an Empath and not.”

“Stuart ...”

“No, wait. Think about it: If someone has a hallucination or hears voices, they can clearly identify what’s wrong, but when you’re an Empath, all you get is feelings. The problem is that Empathic events involve other people’s feelings, not yours, and untrained Empaths don’t know this. They have no tools to distinguish between their own feelings and the sensory output of others.”

He paused to gauge her reaction. So far, so good. Then he asked, “Are you with me so far?”

Katherine swallowed and nodded slowly, saying nothing, so he continued.

“No one is supposed to hear voices, but everyone’s supposed to have emotions, so there’s nothing to grab onto, nothing unusual to describe. What could you say? ‘I had a feeling?’ Everyone would respond with ‘Great – glad you can do that.’ Hell, if a male Empath told a woman he’d been walk­ing down the street and started crying for no apparent reason, she wouldn’t be alarmed – she’d run right out and start shopping for engagement rings! ‘Momma, I found me one who cries and admits it!’”

Katherine laughed out loud at that, and the sudden, unexpected release felt good. She hadn’t had a reason to laugh in what felt like a century.

The waitress came over and refilled their cups, offered them menus, and Katherine reached to accept one. She actually had an appetite for the first time in months. Peripherally, as she read, she saw Stuart smile, apparently relieved that she wanted to eat. Hunger was a good sign. Katherine shifted and tucked her left leg under her – her favorite position – a sign she was relaxed and comfortable. Stuart noticed that, too.

“So,” he continued, “Imagine this Empath is experiencing this, receiving other people’s feelings – usually just the most powerful ones – as he walks down a street. Imagine he walks past a man who is very angry. And for just a few moments, while they’re in close proximity to each other, the Empath receives the other man’s feelings – and for that limited amount of time the Empath feels outrageously angry. Then the man is gone and it’s over. Except that now the Empath is approaching a woman who is desperately sad, she’s been crying all day. So the Empath’s mood swings as he picks up her sadness, and suddenly he wants to cry, when in reality, there’s nothing to cry about. Now she passes and she’s gone and along comes someone who just got the job of his dreams and he’s so happy he’s over the moon, and the Empath’s emotions slingshot from intense sorrow to euphoria. Can you imagine what that must be like?”

Of course she could – she’d lived it her entire life. But no one had ever even attempted to attribute it to something outside herself, something com­pletely reasonable and rational (if one could consider the paranormal rea­sonable and rational). She’d known all her life that her “all-over-the-place” emotions and inexplicable behavior were proof positive of her unfortunate illness. And she had gone along with it, meekly accepted it, just as her family had, no arguments, no demand for further investigation, no possibility that they just might be wrong. But an Empath? Good Lord!

Stuart paused for emphasis, and when he was certain she would grasp the full impact of what he was about to say, he finished his thought: “Now imagine doing that at the mall at Christmas time! Thousands of stressed-out people running all over the place, emitting all kinds of powerful feelings as they go. Can you imagine how confusing that must be? It’s got to be terrify­ing. And exhausting. And psychiatrists, lacking the necessary knowledge of, or belief in, Empathy and, absent any other ‘logical’ reason they can find, call it being bipolar.”

He was right; she got it. He wasn’t just giving her a lesson in paranormal psychology. He was telling her her life story, providing her with empiri­cal evidence of her mental health and sanity. But she was still hesitant, still doubtful. And why not? This was pretty way out there. As much as she wanted this, and she did, she could not let herself believe.
The waitress returned and they ordered a couple of sandwiches. Their menus were picked up and the waitress walked away. As much as Katherine hated her illness, as much as she would have loved for this to be true, she still could not quite accept it. It couldn’t possibly be this easy, that one day someone would come along and make all of the horrors of the past fifty-four years one big mistake.

“Stuart,” she began.

“No, Kath, wait. If someone has a sudden, powerful emotional event – no, wait – let me put that another way. If out of nowhere you get this feeling, a really strong one, with no obvious external stimulus, there’s a good chance it’s coming from outside yourself – IF you’re an Empath. Think about it. If you’re sitting at your kitchen table and suddenly, for no reason, you feel the need to call someone and ask if they’re okay, maybe it’s because they really aren’t. Didn’t anything like that ever happen to you? Think.”

So she did, and the first thing that came to mind was the first intuitive incident that she was consciously aware of. “Well, now, in fact, there was something ...” but then she dismissed it with an impatient wave of her hand.

“No ... tell me.”

“It was a million years ago.”

“Tell me anyway.”

She shrugged, sighed, and gestured acquiescence with her hands. “Okay,” she began, “When I was still in college, my friend Barbara and I were at the laundromat, and Barbara’s friend was there, too. I don’t remem­ber her name; I’d never met her before. We were just sitting there and talk­ing and joking and all of a sudden I started feeling ... I don’t know ... edgy, like I couldn’t sit still, like something was very wrong. I had this irresistible urge to call everyone I knew to make sure they were okay. Barbara and her friend thought I’d lost it, but there I was, feeding dimes into the payphone, calling everyone I knew, asking over and over, ‘Are you alright? Is everyone there alright?’ It’s just that I was absolutely positive something horrible had happened. Everyone I called was fine, but I just couldn’t shake that feeling.

“And then the next morning Barbara called to tell me that Mitchell, her friend’s husband – funny, I can remember his name, but not hers – had been shot and killed while the three of us were in the laundromat. Weird, huh? Is that what you’re talking about?”

“Yeah, Kath,” he answered quietly, awestruck, “That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Stuart,” she said, kindly, gently, almost as though she was about to cor­rect the misconception of a small child, “Maybe I could believe in feminine intuition; you might even sell me on a once-in-a-lifetime universe power surge or something. But Empathy? You’re a doctor, a PhD. And yet here you are, telling me you actually buy into all this. We’ve known each other for years ... I am so way beyond surprised.”

They paused again as their food was placed in front of them.

“Do you remember,” Stuart asked, “I told you my niece, Sandra, was doing a term paper on colonial New England? Something about tracing her ancestry?”

“Mm-hmm,” as she chewed.

“Well, as part of that, she got my brother to drive her to Weaver’s Bridge. Apparently the first settlement in Connecticut, in 1630-something. There was this family by the name of Nettleton, came over from England and founded Duncaster Brickmakers. Mega rich. Obviously this was when the town was still called Duncaster.”

He could see she was about to ask him what that had to do with anything. “My niece told me all this. She knows I’m researching paranormal psychol­ogy, so she knew I’d be interested. Anyway, the Nettletons apparently had a black sheep in their midst, deep dark family secret the whole town knew about. His name was Frank and, long story short, he was reputed to be an Empath. Only back then everyone just thought he was insane. Or bewitched. I think now he’d probably be diagnosed as bipolar. I suspect he escaped the Inquisitor’s noose because his family was the wealthiest in town.

“Folklore has it that this guy just about invented Empathy, which, of course, he didn’t really because Empathy has been around as long as people have, but he apparently ‘wrote the book’ on it – literally wrote a manual or bible or something, although no one’s ever been able to confirm or deny that because no one’s ever been able to find it. It’s supposed to have contained everything an Empath needs to know about learning and practicing and eventually passing on the craft. I know this sounds kind of ‘out there,’ but if you look at it with an open mind, it all makes sense.”

Stuart leaned forward for emphasis. “Kath,” he started, his food still untouched, “One of his theories, one that he apparently actually proved with his own personal experience, was that Empaths can see, hear, feel, and communicate with spirits as if they are real people, based on the premise that spirits are pure energy, and that Empathy is, by definition, a reaction to pure energy.”

Stuart stopped speaking. Rather than stare at Katherine in silence, await­ing a response, he picked up his sandwich and took a bite. He wanted to give her some time. She looked at him intently, fully aware that there was some­thing more, something of great significance he still wanted to tell her, but was nervous about doing so. It occurred to her that what he really wanted was for her to guess it, thereby saving him from having to say it out loud, just in case she might react badly. Some small part of her thought she might know what he was getting at, but she kept pushing the thought away.

After a few moments of silence, after he’d swallowed and taken a drink of water, it became clear to Stuart that Katherine was not going to ease his way, so he took a deep breath and a leap of faith. “Kath,” he took both her hands in his, “There is so much the human mind can do that we know noth­ing about. But Frank does – did. And by the end of his life, he was appar­ently considered to have been the ‘Father of Empathy,’ foremost authority on the subject and, Kathy ...” Stuart swallowed, looked into her eyes. He’d never cared so much, or felt so intimately involved with her before, “He’s the person most qualified to help you.”

“What?!” She jerked her hands away as if they’d been burned. “You’ve got to be kidding!” She leaned across the table, her voice low but intense, “Weaver’s Bridge hasn’t been Duncaster for two hundred and fifty years.”
“I know.”

“He’s dead, Stuart,” she said flatly, “for two hundred and fifty years.”

“Yeah, I know.”

She was dumbfounded. She was thinking, I can’t believe he’s saying this to me ... to anyone.

Out loud, she said, “He’s dead ... and he’s going to help me.”

“Yeah ... exactly.”

Katherine was rarely at a loss for words, but now she sat across the table from him, staring at him as if he’d just grown another head. She opened her mouth to speak, but could think of absolutely nothing to say. If someone had asked her “What’s the very last thing you would ever expect Stuart Barrelli to tell you?” she could never have come up with this. And, frankly, if anyone other than Stuart had said this to her, she’d have called him a charlatan, thrown her drink in his face for his gross insensitivity, and walked out the door. She was still trying to formulate some sort of response when he continued.
Stuart’s arms were still on the table. He turned his palms up, a simple gesture, a silent request to have her hands in his. She hesitated for just an instant, then reached out to him. He was looking directly into her eyes. “Just consider the possibility, Kath ... which would you rather be: an extraordinary woman with an incredible gift or mentally ill? I vote for extraordinary.”

It was at that precise moment that something shifted in Katherine. She was no longer incredulous. Well, maybe she still was, a little. But more than that, she began feeling the glimmer of something she’d long ago given up on, had long ago stopped believing in.
There are those who will try to tell you that love is the greatest motivating force in the world, that love is the one thing that could compel even the most prudent or the most cynical of men or women to lengths they would never believe themselves capable of under any other circumstances. And they’d be wrong. It isn’t love that causes people to throw all caution to the wind, drives them to acts of desperation, or persuades them to believe, beyond all reason, in the utterly impossible – it’s hope.