POWERS
Thom is a healer. He heals others and can heal himself using the same method - through his hands.
It's both physical and mental and thus he can deal with the mentally ill as well as the physically hurt. The way he goes on with those who are mentally unwell isn't clear in canon, but he has been seen finding the emplacement of some villains at one point by sensing where the mentally hurt/crazy was coming from. He can probably help with some mental illness but that part of his powers isn't as intense as the way he can heal physical injuries. He can also tell by touching someone of their mental state, if they're stressed, scared, unstable, and others.
About physical healing - he can heal anything from a scratch to regrowing someone's limb. He can also replace bones, regrow or heal internal organs, and generally can heal a lot.
He has been seen, in canon, to be able to tell if someone was ill. He could tell that a man was going to die of a heart attack soon, and that a friend of his had cancer. The most interesting part here is that he can also cure said cancer. So he can cure illness as well as just fix physical injuries.
He can track the injured in the same way he can track the crazy, and thus go to it if he wishes to.
Something else Thom can do with his healing powers is to heal as the injuries would be happening and so he can stop blows by healing them as they're going on. He can also transfer that ability to the people he touches (or people touching people he touches, etc.). At one point in the book, everyone is linking hands because a building is about to fall on them and instead of all being crushed and die as they should have, Thom pretty much just transfers healing along and they're all okay because they were healed as the damage was happening and there are pieces of what fell on them lying around.
Also, he can give away temporary invulnerability. By touching someone, he can allow them to develop fast healing for a short period of time (it is limited fast healing, but it can still help) and thus help within fights.
On another note, he can store energy as he heals and use that stored energy to do things. If it had been a big fight and he stored a lot of it, he can develop temporary superpowers - superstrength, supersight, superhearing - for a while. When that happens in the book, his superstrength is enough to allow him to hold an 80-story building up and stop it from falling down.
He can also use the packed up energy to destroy every electronic device in a good radius easily. However, I don't think he can control that ability, he only used it twice, and twice it was by accident.
Finally, if he heals too many people at the same time, or deals with too many very difficult cases, he gets exhausted and can eventually collapse and have seizures. He can not keep on healing forever, although his limit is being pushed back every time he has to deal with a difficult situation.
All in all, Thom is the most intense healer I have ever seen. (PS: He can also heal plants and animals.)
EXTRA: A quote from the novel.
"I heal things."
They shared a look.
"What kind of thing?" Warrior Woman fired off.
"People mostly. I did save a plant once."
They shared another look.
[...] "If someone's hurt, I can touch them and my hands get really hot, and that's when it starts."
Spectrum scribbled some notes on a pad of paper and asked me a question without looking up. "And what happens when you absorb the injury?"
"What do you mean?"
"Where does all the pain go once you're done with the healing?"
I bit my lower lip. I'd never thought about it.
"Can you then teleport, convert your skin to diamond, fire beams of energy from your eyes, things like that?"
I swallowed and wished they'd left a cup of water for me on the table.
"Well, it used to trigger seizures after I was done, I guess."
It's both physical and mental and thus he can deal with the mentally ill as well as the physically hurt. The way he goes on with those who are mentally unwell isn't clear in canon, but he has been seen finding the emplacement of some villains at one point by sensing where the mentally hurt/crazy was coming from. He can probably help with some mental illness but that part of his powers isn't as intense as the way he can heal physical injuries. He can also tell by touching someone of their mental state, if they're stressed, scared, unstable, and others.
About physical healing - he can heal anything from a scratch to regrowing someone's limb. He can also replace bones, regrow or heal internal organs, and generally can heal a lot.
He has been seen, in canon, to be able to tell if someone was ill. He could tell that a man was going to die of a heart attack soon, and that a friend of his had cancer. The most interesting part here is that he can also cure said cancer. So he can cure illness as well as just fix physical injuries.
He can track the injured in the same way he can track the crazy, and thus go to it if he wishes to.
Something else Thom can do with his healing powers is to heal as the injuries would be happening and so he can stop blows by healing them as they're going on. He can also transfer that ability to the people he touches (or people touching people he touches, etc.). At one point in the book, everyone is linking hands because a building is about to fall on them and instead of all being crushed and die as they should have, Thom pretty much just transfers healing along and they're all okay because they were healed as the damage was happening and there are pieces of what fell on them lying around.
Also, he can give away temporary invulnerability. By touching someone, he can allow them to develop fast healing for a short period of time (it is limited fast healing, but it can still help) and thus help within fights.
On another note, he can store energy as he heals and use that stored energy to do things. If it had been a big fight and he stored a lot of it, he can develop temporary superpowers - superstrength, supersight, superhearing - for a while. When that happens in the book, his superstrength is enough to allow him to hold an 80-story building up and stop it from falling down.
He can also use the packed up energy to destroy every electronic device in a good radius easily. However, I don't think he can control that ability, he only used it twice, and twice it was by accident.
Finally, if he heals too many people at the same time, or deals with too many very difficult cases, he gets exhausted and can eventually collapse and have seizures. He can not keep on healing forever, although his limit is being pushed back every time he has to deal with a difficult situation.
All in all, Thom is the most intense healer I have ever seen. (PS: He can also heal plants and animals.)
EXTRA: A quote from the novel.
"I heal things."
They shared a look.
"What kind of thing?" Warrior Woman fired off.
"People mostly. I did save a plant once."
They shared another look.
[...] "If someone's hurt, I can touch them and my hands get really hot, and that's when it starts."
Spectrum scribbled some notes on a pad of paper and asked me a question without looking up. "And what happens when you absorb the injury?"
"What do you mean?"
"Where does all the pain go once you're done with the healing?"
I bit my lower lip. I'd never thought about it.
"Can you then teleport, convert your skin to diamond, fire beams of energy from your eyes, things like that?"
I swallowed and wished they'd left a cup of water for me on the table.
"Well, it used to trigger seizures after I was done, I guess."