The Patron Saint of Butterflies
Page 10
“Don’t be a fool, Leonard!” Her voice is breaking. “Don’t let him go! Benny might die if he doesn’t get the right medical care!”
I can tell by the momentary shift of panic in Dad’s eyes that he is considering Nana Pete’s words. But then he blinks and the look of panic disappears.
“The only fools in this world, Mother,” he says slowly, “are the ones who refuse to believe. That is why we are Believers.” He takes Mom’s hand in his and begins to walk alongside Veronica toward Emmanuel’s room. “‘Blessed are the ones who have not seen and yet still believe,’” he says. Listening to him, the crowd now surges behind, individually murmuring their own verses of faith and belief.
“ ‘Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”’ “
“ ‘Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light.’ “
I stop as a familiar voice echoes in my ears. “‘He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases!’”
It’s mine.
HONEY
Nana Pete, Agnes, and I keep watch, sitting on one of the couches just outside Emmanuel’s door, but the hours tick by and no one emerges from Emmanuel’s room. There is no way to tell what is going on in there, since the three of us have been forbidden to enter. Even when I stand up and press my ear against the door, I can detect no sound at all from inside. All around us, the rest of the Believers buzz silently, cleaning and sweeping and washing the windows, as if nothing has happened. Mr. Murphy even goes back to finishing his breakfast. When the phone rings, Mrs. Winspear picks it up and blinks, saying the same thing she always does: “Hello and God bless you! How can I help you today?” as if a little six-year-old kid is not clinging to life just fifty feet away from her. These people make me want to mess someone up.
Nana Pete does not look at anyone or say anything as the morning light fades outside the windows. She just stares into the ashy mouth of the dead fireplace across the room with a vacant expression on her face. Every once in a while, she reaches into her purse, pulls out a pink handkerchief, and pats her upper lip. Agnes, who is sitting on the other side of her, rocks back and forth in her seat, reciting Bible verses about faith and ticking off the beads on her consecration beads. I feel like I’m going to start screaming. Instead, I get up and start walking toward the bathrooms.
I almost miss Benny’s glasses, which are lying in a heap just inside the Great Door, forgotten amid all the excitement. Picking them up, I stare for a moment at a tiny drop of blood on the left frame. Fear grips me as I think of Claudia’s words: “He should get to the hospital before he loses any more blood!” How much blood has he lost? Is it too late? I wipe the glasses gently with the hem of my robe, fold the stems, and insert them back inside the robe’s wide sleeves. Then I go back and sit down on the couch next to Nana Pete and wait.
Finally, after four and a half hours, Mr. and Mrs. Little emerge from Emmanuel’s room. All the Believers in the room rush over, surrounding them like a horde of bees. Benny is in Mr. Little’s arms. His eyes are closed and his mouth is hanging open slightly. Nana Pete and Agnes and I have to struggle to get through the crowd.
“Is he dead?” Agnes cries. Mrs. Little’s face is a weird bluish color, as if all the blood has gone out of it. She reaches out and puts an arm around her daughter.
“Of course not, Agnes. He’s just sleeping.” She reaches around and lifts Benny’s bandaged hand gently. “And you should see his fingers.” Now she is addressing the crowd. “They’re as good as new. Emmanuel sewed them both back on, inch by inch. He’s going to be just fine. As good as new.”
“He sewed them back on?” Nana Pete says, but her voice is drowned out by the crowd.
“It’s a miracle!” someone says.
“He’s more than a healer,” says another, clearly awestruck. “He’s a miracle worker! We are so blessed!”
Dad nods, beaming, and then starts walking toward the exit. “Let’s get back to work!” he says over his shoulder. “The excitement is over and we still have much to do.” The crowd begins to disperse accordingly.
Nana Pete presses her fingers against her lips and rushes up alongside Mr. Little, as Agnes falls into step next to her mother. “Leonard, did he really sew them back on? How is that possible? There’s no way he could have done it correctly!” I walk behind the two of them closely.
Mr. Little looks at his mother out of the corner of his eye. “We’re going down to the Field House to put Benny to bed, Mother. He’s probably going to sleep through the night, which will be incredibly convenient, since we still have a lot of work to do for the Ascension March.”
“The march?” Nana Pete repeats. “Y’all are going ahead with the march, with all of this going on?”
Mr. Little looks genuinely perplexed. “Of course we are. Why wouldn’t we? Things are fine now. Everything’s back to normal.”
“Things aren’t back to normal, Leonard! Listen to me, please! At least just take him to the hospital to be checked out!” I follow behind Agnes and her mother, trying to keep out of Mr. Little’s line of vision. “What if he needs medicine, Leonard?” Nana Pete pleads. “Antibiotics, so he doesn’t get an infection?”
Mr. Little shakes his head, as if a fly is buzzing around it. “There is no need to take him to any hospital, Mother. When Benedict wakes up and starts to feel better, I’ll take the bandages off so you can see for yourself what kind of miracle Emmanuel performed.”
“Miracle?” Nana Pete shouts. She stops walking. “Leonard, you’ve lost your mind! You’re not thinking clearly!”
Now Mr. Little stops walking. “Enough!” His eyes are flashing. Nana Pete stares back at him, her face a pained question mark. “If you insist on continually questioning our choices as Believers, I am going to ask you to leave. Now.” And with that, he turns and continues walking down the hill. Mrs. Little hurries to catch up with him.
I watch as Agnes stares uncertainly at her parents, and then back again at Nana Pete. I take a step closer to Nana Pete, pressing myself against her side, and will her with my eyes to do the same.
“Come along, Agnes,” Mrs. Little calls suddenly, turning around. “It looks like you’re going to have to take care of Benny by yourself this afternoon.”
Agnes walks obediently behind her mother, but as they near the bottom of the hill, just past the lilac bushes, she turns her head and looks back at me. Her eyes are empty.
Nana Pete blots her face again with her handkerchief. She is sweating profusely.
“Are you all right?” I ask. She nods and then looks around the empty grounds. There is no one in sight.
“Change of plans, darlin’. We’re not going to wait for the Ascension March tomorrow night. We’re leaving in the next hour, as soon as Leonard and Samantha go back up to the Great House. We’ve got to get Benny looked at in a real hospital and we might as well split for good while we’re at it. Go get packed and meet me at the bottom of the hill in thirty minutes.”
I hold her gaze for a full moment before I realize she is dead serious. “What are you going to tell Agnes?”
Nana Pete looks away for a second. “You let me worry about that,” she says. “Now go.”
I’m in a dead run, halfway up the side of the hill leading to the Milk House before I realize that I’ll probably never see Winky or the butterfly garden again. The thought brings me to a screeching halt, as if someone has just yanked me backward with a length of cord. For a brief second, I consider turning back around and telling Nana Pete to go ahead without me, that I can’t do it. But that’s crazy. I’ve never wanted anything more than this in my life. There’s no way I’m turning back now.
Still, when I come over the rise and see Winky’s outline hunched over the butterfly bush, I feel like I might faint. There’s no way I can face him. Instead, I sneak back down the other side of the hill so I can get inside the house from the opposite side. I try to move quickly, but my legs feel stiff, like wood.
I don’t have any kind of suitcase or carrying case, so I just empty the trash can and cram as many clothes as I can fit inside the liner bag. George and my butterfly notebook are the last two things to go in. I stuff George inside the toe of my sneaker and push my notebook all the way to the very bottom of my bag, where it won’t get crinkled or ripped. There. Done.
I tiptoe over to the window and press myself flat against the wall, leaning over just a bit until I can see Winky. His back is to me, and he is on his hands and knees, tamping down more of the new compost from Mr. Schwab under the butterfly bushes. My head races with possibilities. Should I tell him the truth? Or maybe just part of it, that we’re taking Benny to the hospital, but that we’ll be back? If I told him everything, would he tell someone eventually? I close my eyes. Oh my God. What should I do? Maybe I’ll just go out and pretend like nothing’s going on at all. He’d ask about the garbage bag full of clothes probably, but I could toss that on the side of the house so he wouldn’t see it and then go back for it afterward. I glance down at my watch. Only ten minutes left. I can’t afford to waste any more time.
And then, all at once, I know what to do.
Reaching into my bag, I pull out my butterfly notebook, sit down on the edge of my bed, and start to write.
When I’m finished, I tiptoe back downstairs, creep over to Winky’s bed, and stick the note underneath his TV. My eyes sweep the inside of the house slowly, taking in every last detail. I know this will probably be the last time I am ever inside it.
“I love you, Winky,” I whisper.
Then I turn and run.
“We can’t just leave,” I hear Agnes saying as I creep back inside the Field House. Her voice is trembling. “Believers aren’t allowed to leave the grounds unless they work in town. And Benny’s sleeping. Mom and Dad said that I was in charge of him for the rest of the night. I have to—” She stops as I push my way into the room and then looks at me, annoyed. “What, you know about this?” I nod.
“We’ll be back in a few hours, Agnes,” Nana Pete says, pulling a cardigan sweater off the back of a chair. “No one will even notice that we’re gone. But I’m taking your brother to a real hospital to be looked at by a real doctor. God only knows what kind of damage Emmanuel did to his poor fingers.”
“But Dad said he healed him,” Agnes protests. “He said it was a miracle.”
“Agnes.” I take a step toward her, trying to keep my voice calm. “Listen to yourself. This is the real world we’re talking about, not some martyr story out of your saint book. Your brother could really be in trouble.” She cuts her eyes at me.
“Actually, darlin’,” Nana Pete says, moving around the room now with startling speed, “the only miracle here is going to be if your brother survives through the night without losing his hand altogether.”
“It’s true,” a voice behind us says. Claudia is standing in the doorway, her dark hair framing lips white and thin as paper. “And when you get him to the hospital, make sure to let the doctors know that Emmanuel used ether to knock Benny out. They’ll need to check his blood count.”
Nana Pete claps her hand over her mouth. “Ether! Where in God’s name did he get his hands on a bottle of ether?”
Claudia shakes her head. “I don’t know where he got it. Ether hasn’t been commercially available for years. But what really worries me is how much he may have used. I don’t know too much about the effects of it on children, but it’s not something I would fool around with.” Claudia looks at Agnes steadily for a moment. “Your brother might never be able to use his hand again, Agnes, if he doesn’t get real medical attention. Listen to your grandmother. She knows what she’s doing.” Agnes has a skeptical look on her face.
“This isn’t about anything except Benny, Agnes,” I say, taking her hand. “Claudia’s a doctor, for God’s sake! She knows what she’s talking about.”
But Agnes pulls away from me and goes over to the bed to sit next to Benny. We watch her in silence as she takes his good hand in her own. “We’ll just be gone for an hour?” she asks. Nana Pete and I exchange glances.
“Definitely,” I answer. “Just a little while, Ags. Just so he can get checked out.”
Agnes runs her fingers over the top of Benny’s hand. “And I can stay with him the whole time?”
“Of course,” Nana Pete says.
Claudia steps forward. “You’d better get going, Petunia. I really don’t think you have much time to waste.”
Nana Pete looks at Claudia beseechingly. “Please don’t let on that you know we’re leaving.”
Claudia squeezes Nana Pete’s hands. “I just came back here to get a change of clothes for Andrew.” She looks Nana Pete directly in the eye. “I didn’t see a thing.”
PART II
AGNES
I stare at the space of windshield between Nana Pete and Honey from the backseat of the Queen Mary, where I am sitting with Benny’s head on my lap. The sky is a pale, underwater blue. In the rearview mirror, I can see the ball of sun turning golden and then orange. The clock on Nana Pete’s dashboard is broken, but I know it must be close to six. We have been driving for over an hour and Nana Pete is showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Twenty minutes ago, when we passed the sign for the Fairfield hospital, I asked her why she wasn’t stopping.
She tightened her hands on the wheel and stepped down harder on the gas pedal. “We’re going to a different hospital,” she said. “Claudia told me about one a little ways from here that has surgeons who specialize in amputations.”
I shift carefully in my seat, so as not to disturb Benny, who is still out cold. “Where is the other hospital?”
Nana Pete glances into her side mirror and swerves, passing a car on her left. “We’re almost there. Try to relax, Mouse.”
But I can’t relax. Every nerve ending in my body is standing on end, like split wires. I am so nauseous from fear that every time Nana Pete changes lanes, I have to choke back the bile rising in my throat. All I can think about is the amount of trouble we are going to get into when we get back. It is nearly unfathomable. Forget leaving Mount Blessing without permission, which, aside from defectors, no Believer has ever done. The real crime is our obvious lack of faith in Emmanuel. Taking Benny to a hospital to be checked out by “real” doctors after Emmanuel spent four and a half hours performing a miracle on him is like spitting in his face. No one believed Saint Bernadette either, I think to myself, when the Blessed Virgin appeared to her. People even laughed when she told them of the miraculous spring of water the Virgin told her to dig out from the ground. But it turned out to be true. Later, these same disbelievers had brought their sickest relatives to the spring to be healed. And the miracles—countless numbers of them—had begun.
“Please, Nana Pete, let’s just turn around, okay?” I ask for maybe the hundredth time. “Please? We’ll get back before Mom and Dad’s meeting ends, and I bet we can even convince them to take Benny to the hospital in the morning.”
But Nana Pete shakes her head. “No can do, Mouse. You heard what Claudia said about the ether and Benny not being able to use his hand again. We’ve got to get him checked out. Right now.”
I look down at Benny. His face is very, very white, like snow in winter. The edges of his lips are tinged blue and under his eyelids I can see his eyeballs moving back and forth, as if he is having a bad dream. I try to not to think about the last thing I said to him before he got hurt, but it echoes in the back of my head: Fine, be a pain. But when you get called into the Regulation Room, don’t expect me to go in there with you. My eyes fill with tears. How could I have said such a thing? I don’t even know where to begin to atone for this sin, it’s so big.
Honey, who has been unusually quiet until now, turns around. She looks down at my little brother with a serious expression. “I have his glasses,” she says. “Just so you know.”
Her statement startles me. How could I have forgotten about Benny’s glasses?
“Where were they?”
As if on cue, Benny’s lashes flutter and his lids slide open heavily.
“Hey,” I whisper, leaning over him. “Hey, Benny. It’s me.” Benny blinks several times without seeing anything, and then, disoriented and frightened, starts to scream. He thrashes violently until he slides off my lap onto the floor of the car.
“Benny!” I screech.
“Oh my God.” Nana Pete nearly swerves off the road. “Get in the back, Honey! Help Mouse get him off the floor before he hurts his hand even more!”
Honey is over the seat in a flash and in ten seconds my brother is stretched out tightly between us. I have both of his arms pinned carefully to his sides, and Honey is hanging on to his legs, which are still flailing.
“It’s okay, Benny!” I shout, trying to make myself heard above his still-piercing shrieks. “We’re going to the hospital! You’re going to be all right!” I start to cry along with him. I’d give anything to take the pain for him. Anything at all.
“We’re almost there,” Nana Pete says grimly, eyeing the three of us in the rearview mirror. “Hang in, guys.” She gives the car another surge of gas. “Hang in.”
The Queen Mary finally screeches to a halt in front of a wide blue building with EMERGENCY glowing above the doors. Nana Pete rushes inside, carrying Benny, who is still wailing. Honey and I are close at her heels. Within seconds, a flurry of white-clad medical personnel appear, as if from the woodwork. The next moment, they vanish into a small room behind a glass door and stretch Benny out on a silver table.
Somehow Honey and I manage to slip into the room behind everyone. We hover at the room’s periphery, trying to stay out of the way as nurses run in and out. Suddenly a tall man dressed all in blue strides into the room, snapping on a pair of thin rubber gloves.