ENERGY HEALING Andrew has the ability to channel healing energy into a patient, and effect positive results. He does this by the laying on of hands, pouring energy into the patient. This does, however, tend to drain him. He's working on being able to heal people without giving up all of his own energy



HISTORY

• Childhood + Manifistation of Ability
  Andrew was a very quiet little boy, and he kept to himself for the most part. At first, his parents were worried that he wasn't socializing enough at school, but the kindergarten teacher reassured them, telling them that he wasn't antisocial, and that many children preferred the company of themselves at first. He was probably just shy, and he would grow out of it. He was sweet as honey, and so well behaved that jokes were often made amongst the adults in his life that he must be a super evil genius, and the goodness of him was only an act to throw people off his trail.
  
  When his parents found out they were expecting again, they were thrilled. Because clearly, the children they produced were pretty perfect. His mother's pregnancy was difficult this time, however, and she spent most of it laying in a dark room, which scared Andrew a little. And when Nicole went into an excruciating labour a month and a half early, Drew's world became a little bit darker, and a little bit quieter. Everyone spoke in whispers, and he wasn't allowed to meet the baby, whom he'd been excited about since his parents had first told him he was going to be a big brother. His mother stayed in the hospital for a week after the baby was born, and Drew was just beginning to think that maybe she was never coming home again, when his father picked him up early from school. Very early. His face was unshaven and solemn, and he told Andrew that they were going to the hospital so that he could say goodbye to the little brother that he had never met. Because, it turned out, his baby brother Lucas had been born too early, and in distress. He had been put on a ventilator, but the resulting pressure had caused a tension pneumothroax. Lucas, who was already weak from being born too early, was given the grim diagnosis of not surviving.
  
  They didn't want to let Drew touch Lucas at first, telling him that he would have to say goodbye to him through the plastic walls of the incubator. But he had been promised for months that he would be able to hold Lucas as long as he was careful, and he wanted to experience that at least once. So he begged tearfully until the doctors agreed that at this point, there would be no additional harm in letting the boy hold the baby to say goodbye. And so, wearing an oversize yellow gown and seated in a rocking chair, Andrew was handed his tiny infant brother for the first, and assumedly last, time. And when Drew held him, and felt how the little body struggled to breathe, he was overcome with the grief that a child should never have to feel. He tightened his arms around the dying infant, and proclaimed that he would give his brother his own healthy lungs, and die, if it meant that Lucas could live.
  
  Unknowingly to anybody, Drew had been born with a latent psychic ability; he could heal people. And the turmoil of emotions the little boy was feeling caused the ability to manifest itself. As soon as he made the proclamation that he would rather die himself than see his premature brother die, it was like a tap was opened, or a hole burst in a dam. Healing energy flooded from him into the baby he held, giving the infant a healthy pink colour as his little lungs inflated properly for the first time, the burst air sacs mended themselves, and the pressure on his heart lessened enough to relieve the stress on it. Lucas gave a healthy, chesty cry just as Andrew slumped against the arm of the rocker in a dead faint, his own energy completely drained.
  
  The doctors couldn't figure it out. The baby had one ridiculously tiny foot in the grave already, and suddenly it was robust and healthy. And Drew, so pale he was almost translucent, slept in a hospital bed for nearly two full days. His vital signs were all healthy, he just had no energy. They kept him for nearly a week, trying to figure out what had caused his collapse, but after countless tests on both boys, the family was sent home with a collective bill at health equivalent of a clueless shrug.




• Adolescence
  After the scare with Lucas, and Drew's resulting hospital stay, it was safe to say that Drew's parents were a little protective over their kids for awhile. To say that the boys were sheltered would be fair. They weren't tethered to their parents, but there was a little less freedom than 'normal' kids their age might experience. The first time Andrew went to a party that wasn't strictly chaperoned was when he was fifteen, and his mother called him twice to make sure he was okay. Drew was always a good sport about it, because he genuinely enjoyed the company of his family. His brother was his best friend, the two of them sharing an unspeakable bond that neither could ever find the right words to describe.
  
  Through his youth, Drew's unknown ability kept coming up. It was never as massive as when he saved his brother's life, of course. But there were occasions where he would hug his mother tightly, and the symptoms of the flu she was experiencing would mysteriously vanish. These healings were always involuntary, and they always left him drained, often to the point where he would need to spend the rest of the day in bed.
  
  Aside from these occasional fits of unexplained fatigue, Andrew's youth was a happy, uneventful one.




• (Young) Adulthood
  By the time Drew turned eighteen, he began to connect the dots. He would touch someone who was hurting, and they would no longer hurt. He would touch someone who was sick, and they would feel better. He had heard the story of when Lucas was dying more than a hundred times, and he realized that constant of physical connection was there too; Lucas had been in his arms when his health had improved, seemingly out of nowhere. Andrew was an intelligent man, and he had always been a bit dreamy. This combination of the intelligence it took to connect all the occurrences, and the dreaminess to realize that things may not always be exactly what they seemed on the surface, was enough to stir up a curiosity. The kind of curiosity that was like a deep thirst. It had to be quenched, and it had to be quenched now.
  
  The first thing he did was research. Treating his curiosity like a science project, he looked up everything he could about healing someone with your touch. There were a few religious sites, a few super hoaky ones, and a few that basically talked about how the best thing to make someone feel better was to give them a hug. It wasn't until he was deep into his Google search that he found something relevant. What he was doing was apparently called energy healing, and it wasn't as uncommon as he thought it was. The fact that he had been doing it subconsciously for almost his entire life seemed to be a common tale.
  
  Now that he knew exactly what it was that he was doing, the next step was to learn how to control it. Because now that he knew what he could do, he couldn't imagine not using his gift to help people. He had visions of himself healing everyone he could, putting a stop to the spread of disease. Saving babies in the NICU, the way he had saved his own little brother. Saving the world from immeasurable amounts of pain. There had to be a way. He began posting on message boards an forums, any sites that talked about energy healing, and asking people if there was any way to learn how to consciously use his ability. A week later, a woman showed up on his doorstep, telling him about The Bennet Institute for Psychic Research and Development. Or, more simply, The Institute. She explained to him that The Institute had been founded by a great man many years ago, and was exactly what he was looking for. Someplace where they would teach him how to harness his gift, to use it as he wished. It was in Louisiana, a place he'd never even thought about living, and she was ready to take him there now. He didn't hesitate; he withdrew his acceptance to the local college he'd been planning on attending, kissed his parents goodbye, and left with Dawn an hour after meeting her.




• Present
  Drew is currently living on the Bennet Estate, undergoing testing and experimentation, and working at a local youth center's after school program, and co-runs a dance class for underprivileged children in the neighbourhood.