Small Gifts — Day 19

Genre: Drama

Premise: A transient woman, (a former prostitute in her youth), is suddenly granted a miraculous power: she can heal any affliction by laying her hands on a person—from blindness to cancer to down syndrome. But with each person she helps, she loses a day from her own life expectancy.

Her gift quickly becomes her life calling. Intoxicated with the limitless power of being able to heal and help anyone, and losing herself completely in the task, she shaves weeks off her life. Then months. Then years? She loses count as she wanders the country anonymously healing strangers.

Though she does not know how near or far her date of death is, she does not fret the shortening life span before her; She is fulfilled and addicted to her life of service. Until, one day, she becomes pregnant after a one night stand and decides to keep the child and raise it as a single mother. Now, each life she heals, takes away one day she will have to raise her child.

As her belly swells she begins to heal fewer and fewer people. And once her child is born, she feels regret—for the first time—of her spendthrift use of her power. How many fewer days will she have to care for her child? Which embrace of life is the less selfish?

She decides to stop healing strangers just as the world begins to trace the remarkable wake of healing she has already left in her path. With the media now closing in on her identity, and global celebrity a looming certainty, how will the woman balance the love for her child and the responsibility of single-parenthood with the burden of her unique gift?