Healer (The Twilight Zone)

Ah, Jackie, Jackie. You're a small-timer, a roof-crawler, a poke pincher, a nickel-and-dime grifter with salt in your dreams and ashes in your pockets. Don't cut that wire, Jackie. Don't open that window. You won't be able to jimmy yourself out as easily as you got in. That's not the big score in there...it's the Twilight Zone.

Cat burglar Jackie Thompson breaks into a museum late one night and steals a rare stone from a display case. After tripping the alarm, he gets shot by a security guard, but is amazed to discover that the stolen stone heals him. Jack escapes and heads back to his apartment, where he studies the stone. Hearing a commotion in the hallway, he discovers that his friendly neighbor Harry is having a heart attack. One of the other neighbors is attempting CPR but to no avail. Thinking quickly, Jackie runs over and while grasping the stone touches Harry's chest and begs for healing. Harry makes a full recovery.

Harry tells Jackie everything he saw while he was unconscious--about floating over the neighbors and how he seemed to get pulled back into his own body. Harry tells Jackie that they could make a fortune with that kind of power, and Jackie soon becomes "Brother John," a healer on a TV ministry. Harry, who is only interested in the money, acts as his business manager, but Jackie truly feels altruistic and enjoys helping others. Duende, a Native American man, appears one day and states that his people loaned the stone to the museum and warns Jackie that he is traveling down the wrong path. While Jackie is inclined to return the stone, Harry disagrees and tells him not to do it due to their good fortune.

Living in a palatial house and having more money than he needs, it becomes apparent that Jackie truly wants to give back the stone, but Harry continues to convince him otherwise. One day, Joseph Rubello, a drug lord from Jackie's past, begs him to heal his terminal cancer. Because Rubello treated him horribly in the past, Jackie demands $2 million to heal him, and while Rubello agrees to his demands, they both find that the stone no longer works. Later at the TV ministry, Jackie fails to heal a deaf boy and his old bullet wound opens and begins bleeding profusely. Duende reappears and explains that the stone only works when used unselfishly. Harry refuses to help Jackie, and instead plans to take all the money for himself. The deaf boy follows Jackie outside and he hands the stone to the boy, who heals him in return. Jackie then gives the boy back his hearing and, with his redemption complete, gives the stone to Duende who will return it to his people. Duende takes the boy to his mother and Jackie smiles, knowing he did the right thing.

Now he is John, no longer Jackie. Perhaps not Brother John, brother to all men, but at least fit to walk among men who care. Because caring is part of the secret, the secret we all learn. That the heart cannot heal what the eye cannot see. Not even...in the Twilight Zone.

• List of The Twilight Zone episodes

• "Healer" on IMDb
• "Healer" at TV.com