CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It had been two months since the accident. It was Valentine’s Day, 1947. Connie was still in a coma, still in the intensive care unit in St. Agnes Hospital.
This day was much like the first sixty days of their visits. Ruby and Henry walked into her room. Connie was slowly healing. Her body cast had been removed the week before. The swelling was down. Her color had improved—from the purples and blacks to yellows of deep contusions to a ghostly pale, almost translucent white. There was now some resemblance to life, if one looked carefully. Scars ran like red zippers, creating a map-like patchwork across her face where the glass from the windshield had shredded her face. She had lost her left eye, and in its place, was a bulbous ping-pong ball sized dressing holding a place for the arrival of a prosthetic eye—although no one could be sure if that would even work.
Father Oliver was at her bedside, on his knees, holding her hand in one hand and his silver cross in the other, just as he had been doing since his first appearance. When he rotated his head to greet Ruby and Henry, was when his weight loss was most apparent. He had dropped about ten pounds from his slight frame since that first day at the hospital. The lay staff and the nuns of St. Agnes did their best to provide him with comfort during his Crusade. He asked for very little and professed a comfort level that he couldn’t possibly have felt, except for the fact that all of his attention these many weeks had been on Connie’s recovery and not on himself. He hadn’t given up hope; he just prayed even harder and spent even more time on his knees.
When they saw each other, Ruby greeted him first in almost a whisper, “Hello Father Oliver,” she said, speaking for Henry as well, as a habit they had slipped into. Henry just nodded.
“Hello Ruby. Hello, Henry,” he replied. It was evident from his expression that he had no news. “I wish I could share some good news with you,” he added, “other than that she’s still with us. And, we can be thankful that her healing continues.” He paused, wanting to sound upbeat, but Connie’s silence in her comatose state was almost oppressive. She was so still, alive on a support system, without a flicker of life, unless you could count the incessant hissing and beeping of the equipment in the room. Father Oliver turned to face Connie again and spoke to her: “Connie, we know you are with us and you will come back to us. God will answer our prayers, and I will stay with you every step of the way until you return to us.”
Ruby moved into the room and stepped to the opposite side of the bed from Father Oliver but closer to the head of the bed. Henry stayed at the side next to Father Oliver, head high and opposite Ruby.
Henry’s eyes locked with Father Oliver’s in an exchange of many human emotions, not the least of which were sympathy, gratitude, pain, compassion and, of course, love. “Thank you, Father Oliver, thank you,” he said. “It means a lot to us, a lot,” he repeated, “that you’re here. I’m sure you know that.” Father Oliver looked Henry in his sorrowful eyes and nodded. He understood perfectly. Henry had thanked him in this manner every day.
Ruby leaned over into the space above Connie’s face, tears in her eyes, gazing with that special kind of love that is only and truly motherly. She slowly moved her left hand to Connie’s face and, with the gentlest of touches, stroked her forehead and then her cheeks over and over again and talked to her. “Connie,” she began, “please, Connie, come back to us.” She paused, so choked up with hope, love, and what she fought off as despair. The odds seemed to be so much against her little girl. She didn’t know how anyone could get through this ordeal. “Connie,” she continued, “you’re getting better every day, and you will make it through all this suffering. I know you will.” She paused again before continuing with her soothing words, mindless of anyone else’s presence. It was surely a most private moment between a mother and her daughter. Both Henry and Father Oliver were deeply moved by this expression of such great love, as they watched this maternal communication.
“Connie,” Ruby whispered, “you remember how much your father loved you, don’t you?” she asked, as if having a conversation. “Remember what he said to you whenever you fell down and scraped your knee? He told me how he had to hold himself back from picking you up in his arms when tears were streaming down your little cheeks and you looked to him for comfort… He didn’t come to you right away so that you’d know you had the strength in yourself to stand up and get through a bad moment. He loved you so much, and he’d tell you right now if he could… You can get through this bad moment, Connie. You can do it, but you have to do it yourself.” For a full minute, in the silence of the room, Ruby gently massaged Connie’s face and then carefully pushed Connie’s blonde hair back from her face, leaned over, and let a soft kiss linger on her forehead.
For the next hour, Ruby and Henry sat in the two chairs in the room while Father Oliver continued to pray on his knees. All three of them prayed, and Connie never moved.
Father Oliver’s commitment to spend his conscious hours on his knees at Connie’s bedside, holding her hand and praying for her recovery for as long as it would take was a remarkable expression of faith, which was evident to all who entered Connie’s hospital room. It was a commitment that he had made to God and to Connie that was unbounded with respect to time. Surely, he had no idea how long she would be unconscious, lost in a coma, when he first dropped to his knees. Was he thinking her condition would change within a day or two and she would move back into life or into the afterlife he believed in? That cannot be known. Had he realized that she could be in a coma for years, which would require an unfathomable personal commitment on his part? That cannot be known. What was his state of being, as week after week and month after month passed? That cannot be known. What was he thinking in regard to the other responsibilities he must have had elsewhere in his duties as a Jesuit priest? That cannot be known.
There’s so much about life that is beyond our knowledge and understanding, so much beyond the known. But he made this commitment and stuck to it. What a truly remarkable statement about faith! He held onto his faith. And he held onto my mother’s hand. Maybe that’s why she never let go of life.
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A Love Story with a Little Heartbreak Page 23