The stench of death fills my nostrils. It is sweet, cloying, overpowering. But it is not from the woman I am laying my hands on. The cancer that has been eating away at her liver is almost gone; I have been drawing the blackness up inside me, transforming it into light. I can feel her body working now to repair the damage. No, the smell of death is from someone else. Someone nearby.

Even as I send my mind out, searching the crowd, the pain begins, the way it always does when death is near. It starts at the soles of my feet and rises up my body, tearing at me, drawing the pain inwards, stretching upward until it fills my head, until my skull is throbbing with it. My skin tightens, my veins shrink, my mouth goes dry.

I have never told anyone how much it hurts me when death is close, never told anyone how I want to scream, how I want to do anything I can to end the pain. Never told anyone how it makes me want to wrench the dying back to the side of the living. I have never told anyone, because I'm afraid they'll think that's why I heal people. I am afraid they'll think I'm just selfish. I heal people because I have to. Because I can't bear to let anyone die--not like I did my sister. I heal them because I wouldn't like myself if I didn't try.

My hands are hot and trembling over the woman, the energy transforming from me to her. Death is piercing at my skull, but I can't let the woman go, not yet. I have to make sure the cancer doesn't return.

Waves of grief pass through me, but I shut them out and focus. I draw up the light from inside me and pour it into the woman's abdomen, giving one last surge. My skin feels like it is cracking all over. Death is near, very near, and it is in someone small.

I let the woman go and stagger backward.

"Thank you!" the woman cries, her cheeks rosy, her eyes bright with happiness and relief. Her face is so different now, the lines of pain smoothed out, the gaunt look gone. I feel myself grinning at her, warmth filling my whole body. There's nothing so good as the feeling of saving someone's life. It's brief moments like this that I feel glad for my talent. Blessed, even.