by Hubert Furey
Here the doctor paused, his face saddening, before continuing.
“This last attack was the fatal one, and there is nothing that can be done. She had no defences left. She just had time to phone me. When the ambulance arrived, she was beginning her first seizure.”
Rachel walked in step with the doctor, engrossed in what she was hearing. That explained the hasty departure, the frantic telephone call, the low voice, Kit Stevenson’s garbled explanation.
The doctor turned into a room across from the nursing station. “In here,” he whispered. “I’ve told her you were coming, so she is prepared for you. You’ll have to bend down and listen very closely. She doesn’t have a lot of strength left.” The doctor led Rachel to the far corner of the room, which was enclosed in a drawn curtain. A nurse parted the curtain to permit them to pass through. The doctor bent over, obscuring the figure in the bed, and addressed her in a very low, gentle voice.
“Sarah, Rachel Kearney is here now.” The doctor drew back and nodded to Rachel to come closer. He then stepped in the direction of the aperture in the curtain, pausing to address Rachel prior to leaving. “I’ll leave you alone for a minute or two. I’ll just be outside if you want me.”
The doctor left, and Rachel looked disconsolately at the woman lying silently and without movement in the bed before her. In spite of all that the doctor had told her, she was neither prepared for the appearance of the dying woman nor for the feelings which the appearance of the woman conjured up in her.
All thoughts of coarseness and anger and vindictiveness had disappeared, and she could only feel compassion and pity for the emaciated form which was suffering before her. Sarah lay there, her arms resting on the outside of the sheet, her eyes barely opened, her features drained and sallow. Her breathing was raspy and irregular, and she tightened her face and drew up her legs as attacks of pain came in sporadic intervals.
Still, when her face relaxed, it exuded a quiet beauty that had not been entirely destroyed by her suffering. Her eyes were kind, and her hair still retained a freshness of colour that was surprising in one who had obviously suffered so much. When she became aware of Rachel’s presence, she opened her eyes wider and slowly inclined her head in Rachel’s direction, limply raising her hand in a gesture of acknowledgement.
She did not smile, however, as Rachel expected. Instead, her eyes looked anxious and pleading. Her voice came in low, almost inaudible tones as she drew upon her remaining strength to form each word carefully. Rachel bent in over the bed as the doctor had done and inclined her ear toward the voice.
“I’ve prayed for you to come. Oh, how I’ve prayed. And now you’re here. Don’t be angry with me, or with him. I want you to forgive . . .”
Rachel wanted to reply, but the unformed words sounded trite and meaningless in the face of the suffering and courage that was being displayed before her. The woman continued in the same slow, barely audible pace.
“I didn’t know he was married. When I found out, it was too late. He was suffering terribly. You were never to find out. You weren’t supposed to be hurt.”
The effort to talk seemed to have exhausted her, and she closed her eyes again, clenching her teeth as another spasm of pain raced through her already racked frame. Rachel wanted to pour out everything she was thinking now, that it didn’t matter, that she could forgive, that . . . but she couldn’t speak, choking with the myriad of feelings which were competing with each other for expression.
She sat on the edge of the bed, then reached down and took the woman’s hand in hers, gently caressing it. The woman opened her eyes again and continued, but her words were lower and more inaudible than before, the phrases coming in shorter, more forced gasps.
“All I wanted Aaron to do today was take Becky. To a foster home I had picked out for her. Why I called. Couldn’t take her myself. Had no warning. Didn’t want her to see me like this. Didn’t want her to be taken by the . . .”
Rachel watched, horrified, as the sudden seizure tore through the woman’s body. In an instant she was convulsing uncontrollably, her face wrenching in silent agony. Rachel grabbed the alert buzzer by the head of the bed, pushing it feverishly, praying desperately for the second time in her life.
Within seconds the doctor and the nurse came bursting through the screen, but the form of the woman had become still, and their movements inside became quiet and restrained. The nurse put her arm around Rachel’s shoulders and led her gently to one side, while the doctor adjusted his stethoscope and carefully sounded the woman’s chest, shaking his head sadly in their direction. He removed the instrument and placed his hand on Sarah’s head, gently stroking her hair. He was silent for a long time. When he spoke, he spoke with difficulty.
“I knew this one would be the last one. She couldn’t go on much longer.”
He then softly lifted the bedsheet, pausing again before gently covering the woman’s face. Rachel gazed at the blanket-enclosed form from the distance by the window, her mind swimming with images and feeling.
“I wanted to say so many things to her. Now it’s too late. Before I knew her, I wanted her dead, in my thoughts, and now she is, and it’s just not the way it’s supposed to be. She asked me not to be angry with her, and I’m not, but she’ll never know that now.”
She didn’t know how to continue. The doctor spoke, his eyes never leaving the covered form in the bed.
“I don’t know. I think her prayers were answered today. She wanted to see you, more than anything, to ask your forgiveness. Now I think she has died in peace. You’ve done a wonderful thing by coming here today, by being with her just as she died.”
Rachel remained standing by the window, her bent head resting on her clasped hands, praying softly for the woman who, only moments before, had been her most vicious enemy. She looked out the window, gazing out over the parking lot beyond the ordered rows of houses, beyond the hills to the horizon enclosing the city. Remorseful thoughts tumbled over one another in an effort for release, the woman’s name forming inside her mind.
“Sarah! It’s such a beautiful name. And I never once called her by her name. And I never brought in her child. I should have brought in her child.”
The doctor looked at her with understanding, shaking his head.
“You may have gone terribly against her wishes if you had done that. She never wanted the child to see her during the seizures, and she wanted the child to be able to go on after her death, remembering her mother as living and loving and caring. Knowing that her own death was imminent at any moment, she had been preparing Becky for this day for a long time.”
The words of the child came back to her: Mommy was going to a nice place, and she would see her again. And all the while she’d been thinking . . .
The doctor was forcing her attention again.
“She was an incredible woman. She didn’t have the best start in life, but she had so much energy, such a tremendous capacity for love. She so much wanted to help, to do something really good.”
The doctor turned to leave, motioning Rachel through the screen. As they both walked back toward the receptionist’s desk, the doctor returned to his reminiscence.
“I remember the day I gave her the results of our tests, seven years ago, seven years ago this month, in fact. It was the hardest thing I ever did. There was no easy way I could spell out degenerative and terminal. It was an especially cruel blow for somebody like her. She wanted to give so much of her life to people—the suffering, the beaten, the incurably ill—and that’s how she was repaid.”
The words were strangely familiar to Rachel, but she walked on, listening. The doctor paused to glance briefly at a chart held by a male nurse, nodding his approval before continuing.
“Her faith was shaken to the core, and she was frightened. And terribly depressed. Strange how depression and shock affect people. The only way to describe it i
s that she went crazy. She just threw it all up and started drinking and smoking—for the first time in her life. She hung around the bars, getting more depressed and drunk by the day. I guess she figured the other way of life hadn’t brought her much good, she might as well go this way. From what I can gather, she attempted suicide, but she never told me that.”
Rachel pondered the story, matching the events to another story of a person who had gone crazy, when his world was turned upside down by tragedy. Seven years ago! It was seven years ago that Mikey had been killed—seven years ago that Aaron had fallen apart. In their tragedy, in their hopelessness, these two people had found each other, almost as if it had been fated. Perhaps that’s the way it had to be.
The doctor paused again, to smile a greeting at another doctor who stood by the elevator, before resuming his narrative tone.
“She came to me when she suspected she was pregnant, and the tests confirmed it. She sat there looking at me for a long time, and it was like in that time she changed back to the person I knew before the diagnosis. She asked me different questions about behaviour during pregnancy, diet, that sort of thing.
“She didn’t exactly say it, but it was like she had made the decision to live again, for the child. She smoked her last cigarette, right there in my office, and walked out. The religious order had given her some money when she left, so that carried her through the pregnancy, and the child was born without any problem.
“She didn’t know how much time she had left. The seizures were beginning to show up, in mild form, but enough to be disconcerting, so she didn’t get a job. Instead, she went on welfare. It was only a pittance, but she managed. She got herself a little apartment, on Logan Street, I believe, and she devoted the rest of her life to the child, what life she had left. It was like in the Bible: she had set out to destroy her life, and instead found it. While she was waiting every day for her death, Becky was giving her a whole new life.”
They had arrived back at the reception desk, where the receptionist was awaiting his return.
“Excuse me, Dr. McCready, but Dr. Murrin wants you on C Ward. It’s not really urgent, but he wants you to come as soon as possible.” Dr. McCready nodded his acknowledgement of the message, and his tone became mildly professional, signalling his intention to leave.
“Well, Mrs. Kearning—Rachel—it’s been very nice meeting you, although I would have preferred under happier circumstances, but I do have to go now.” He was again looking past Rachel to the child, still sitting contentedly in the chair, still clutching the teddy bear. He appeared reluctant to leave.
“If there’s anything else . . . ?”
Rachel took no notice of him looking at the child, or of the meaning in his question. Sarah Donahue’s death—and her life—had shaken her in a way she could never have imagined prior to this day, and her mind was now brimming with a whole new range of thoughts.
She had become caught up in this woman’s life, as she had become caught up in her death. She couldn’t explain it, but somehow it didn’t seem finished. The thoughts inside her fought for expression, and she blurted the question out, heedless of the peremptory tone which accompanied its utterance.
“What about her funeral? I haven’t seen any other people about, and I couldn’t help noticing that the hospital is not taking any steps to contact anybody.”
The doctor seemed puzzled, not so much at the question as at its source of origin. Rachel simply stood there, awaiting his response. When he answered, his tone was one of curiosity.
“That will all be taken care of by the Social Services people, since she was a recipient.”
“Aren’t there relatives? Parents? Doesn’t she have anyone belonged to her?” It was almost a plea.
The doctor sighed in response.
“None. I thought for a moment back there I should contact the order, but it’s been seven years since she was with them, and anyway, their headquarters is in Belgium, and I’m not sure I would achieve much success. She has no relatives, to my knowledge, at least none that can be contacted. As near as I can gather, she was an only child, and the parents split up when she was three or four, and she never heard from them—or of them—again. She spent her life banging around from one foster home to another until she was seventeen, then she joined this order.”
Rachel’s tone was firm, decisive.
“I’d like to arrange for the wake and funeral. I’ll contact a funeral home, make the arrangements.”
She thought of Sarah, and Becky, and Aaron, and she knew she had to do this for them It was something she was feeling strangely compelled to do. The doctor didn’t seem in any way surprised by her response, as if he had been expecting such a decision all along. He gathered a group of files as if to leave, addressing the receptionist directly.
“That shouldn’t be a problem, should it, Mrs. Conlin? You put Mrs. Kearning in touch with the people in Social Services, will you?” The doctor again directed his gaze at Rachel.
“Mrs. Conlin will get in touch with you sometime tomorrow morning, after she’s had a chance to telephone the department. You don’t have to worry. She’s very good at her job.”
The receptionist smiled in acknowledgement of the compliment and reached for a telephone directory. Rachel remained where she was standing, watching Dr. McCready prepare to leave, her eyes absent-mindedly following the student nurses farther down the corridor as they, too, gathered their binders and textbooks under the eyes of the senior nurse.
Was there anything else she could do, had to do? The funeral arrangements were being taken care of, for now. She searched her mind, in her systematic way, to light upon the remaining tasks to be confronted. Aaron! The sudden confronting of the child had completely shut him out of her mind. Then her absorption with finding the mother. And now Sarah’s death.
It had been such a whirlwind rush of events and emotions that Aaron had never entered her mind. When he wasn’t at the apartment, she half-expected him to be at the hospital. Her thoughts were chaotic as she posed each question to herself.
Then there are the children! And Sarah’s child! What about the child? The child is now my responsibility, at least for the moment, until we find that home. Okay! There’s the children, the child, and Aaron! Let’s see how fast we can do all three. Take the child back home—she could stay there until she found Aaron. And she could reassure her own children at the same time. Maybe Aaron would be there. No, he would never come back home under the circumstances he had left. Okay! She would leave the child, find Aaron, get the address of this foster home, take the child where she rightfully belonged. And then . . . whatever.
She looked at her watch. It was after six-thirty. She didn’t have a lot of time. By the sound of the wind, it may not be that easy to drive around the city, and if Aaron was drinking, she might have to do a lot of driving.
As she adjusted her gloves and looked toward the child, she had a sense that her old self was back—the confident self, with the easy direction, the indefatigable energy. It had come back somewhere in the car or on the steps or in the apartment, and gotten stronger with the decision to supervise arrangements for the funeral, something she would never have been able to do just hours ago.
Rachel had been struck down, but she had stood up to it. She had gotten help. She knew that now. Somehow it had turned in the little church, before the crib, and she had carried it through. Tragedy had not destroyed her, and she was finding her way back, with things unfolding in a way she would never have anticipated just moments before. She felt her old strength returning—or was it a new strength? It didn’t matter.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the angry tones of a voice bearing down on her from the opposite end of the corridor, and it didn’t take her long to divine the intent of the woman who was its author, the harsh beat of her words keeping time with the angry stomp of her feet as she bore down on Rachel.
The loud, abrupt entrance of the woman and her harsh, demanding tone startled the group around the desk into instant attention. The leaving nurses exchanged furtive glances. Dr. McCready stopped in the motion of pushing a door ahead of him to turn back to the scene of the commotion, and the child, as if sensing danger, slid down from her chair and ran to grasp Rachel’s hand, clutching the teddy bear even more tightly.
Only Rachel remained unperturbed, strengthened by an inner resolve that was slowly forming itself within her consciousness. Of course they knew. They were watching, hovering like vultures, waiting to descend to snatch the child into their abominable system.
She studied the woman before her with the set, contemptuous look on her face and the anger in her eyes, spitting venom through her well-polished flashing teeth. She looked at this hard, coarse woman, her voice strident and shrill, and she pictured Sarah—courageous, gentle, loving Sarah—and she understood.
In that one single moment, she understood. She understood the evil that could be and the evil that had to be fought, that she alone was capable of fighting. She had understood the helpless man in the storm and met the woman racked with pain, and now she understood the child surrounded by rejection and abandonment.
Sarah didn’t want Becky taken, to spend her life beating from foster home to foster home as she had done. Her last desperate, dying wish had been for her child to find a good home, something she had only been able to give her for seven short years. Sarah had prayed for her to come, and she had.