Her family awaits me, and I gladly stride across the dim room towards them. “She seems to be doing well, she’s healed.” _For now._

Relief washes over their faces, their gasps fill the small room. Another one freed from the weight of the plague. Another one able to continue their once normal life. And somehow, I helped them return to who they once were.

I pulled them back from death’s grasping arms, from death’s yearning calls to collect her life.

She sits upon the old, wooden bed. Her family collects her, tears spilling from their tired eyes. They leaves with many thanks filling the room, their gratitude shown in so many ways. My powers have healed another once again.

“It just felt like a little tug in my chest. That’s all her powers felt like mum.” I hear the girls voice as they leave my home.

A sit at my desk, feeling quite satisfied by myself. I always have been humble, after all, I had to be. But sometimes, I had to look at myself and smile, knowing I could be able to use my powers on so many people.

And then, a knock, shrill but half-hearted, sounds on my old wooden door.

_A new patient. _

I stand, dusting whatever I attempted to clean off of my clothes. Fixing my hair in order to look presentable, trustworthy.

I step towards the door, swinging it open with the brightest smile on my face.

Yet theirs don’t reflect the same ones back. The two figures in my doorway look at me with sorrow, their heads bent down, eyes trained on the cobblestone ground.

They are ridden with grief.

“Are…” my voice trails into nothing. “Are you two alright?” My voice is a whisper. We stand there awkwardly.

They shake their heads in undenied unison.

From years of helping these families, I know it could only mean one thing.

_Death_.

My face numbs at the thought, but it’s odd feeling so disheartened by a single death, especially after experiencing it with my own eyes. Yet this time, it feels different.

I gesture for them to step inside, and close the door behind them.

“He passed this morning,” the woman begins, her eyes welling with tears. “We don’t know what happened. He said it was like an off tugging feeling in her chest and…” her voice trails off.

“A…tugging feeling…?” My voice is full of concern. That’s what it’s supposed to feel like when I heal them._ So why is that feeling the last things that occurred before he died?_

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My face is red. What do I do? My powers have done more than heal, than fix the wounded that show up on my old, wooden, door step. What on _earth_ is happening to them?

Another knock sounds on the door. I open it to find a royal guard staring at me with anger, and also fear.

His next words will haunt me forever. If I will even be allowed to live and experience my forever.

“You are a fatal healer,” he begins. “born from unregistered healing parents and given a curse to sentence each patient you have healed to sudden death.” I blink at him.

_“What?” _I don’t dare look at the grieving patients family beside me.

“Yes,” he continues. “You have been summoned to the castle. I am ordered to bring you in.”

I stare in disbelief. _Cursed? Me?_

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Well yes, I am.

And I’ve known it since I was a child. Since my “unregistered healer parents” decided they would still allow me to perform my powers for the “better” of people.

Yet with every move I made, I could only save them for a week. Then, they’d pass to the next life, their loved ones blaming it on their once poor condition.

Most of them would have died anyways. Let’s just say…I helped them in the moment. My kindness should not be forgotten. At least in my eyes it isn’t.

And I knew what I was doing. Because in our eyes, my family’s eyes, power and dominance are above all. Because the death of one can lead to chaos. And to save one is to ruin many.

To spare one’s life for a week is to ruin their lives for the next.

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