Proof of Heaven

by Mary Curran Hackett

  “Got it. I’ll meet you at St. Pat’s then—I’ll take him out for breakfast.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Sis?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m proud of you. I know this is hard. All of this sucks. I know that. But you’re a hell of a person.”

  “Thanks, Sean. So are you.”

  “Save it. I know my bag. It’s filled with shit right now.”

  “Sean, please . . .”

  “Seriously, Cate. Save that line for when you mean it. When I deserve to hear it. I’ve been a jerk for a long time . . .”

  Cathleen could tell he had already been to a meeting today; he was ticking off his twelve steps in speed-round style, making amends.

  “All right. Thanks for taking Dr. Basu home then.”

  “I’ll try to get home in one piece.”

  In the car on the way uptown, Sean wasted no time getting to his point.

  “Doc?”

  “Sean?”

  “You know what we talked about yesterday . . . on the phone?”

  “About Colm?”

  “Yes. No. Not exactly . . .”

  “Your drinking?”

  “You got it. I think I’m in a little over my head with this sober stuff. AA meetings aren’t cutting it. I feel real sick today. I don’t want to worry Cate. She’s got enough going on, and I want to be there to help her. I saw Colm today. He looks bad, real bad. To me anyway. I don’t think Cathleen can see it. I think she refuses to accept that he’s not going to get better. I have to be there for her. For them. I know that. And I know I have to quit drinking. I know. To be honest, the guys at work have been riding me pretty hard. Even threatened to suspend me. I didn’t want to worry Cate with all that. But I know I gotta do something. Something.”

  “There are treatment centers, Sean.”

  “I know. I did my twenty-eight days . . . a long time ago.”

  “And?”

  “Twenty-eight days isn’t enough. But I can’t just leave Cate and Colm hanging right now. I gotta get help soon . . . and there is this other thing. I think I effed up my esophagus. I’ve been puking up blood for a while . . . and I think I need a doctor.”

  “Sean, you certainly do. But I’m not the doctor for you. You probably destroyed your stomach lining. It’s probably just gastritis, but you need to go to a specialist to get it looked at in case it’s something worse. There are doctors that can help you. There are support groups. There are lots of things you can do. I’ll give you a name of a doctor at Good Sam—and a group that meets there. A friend of mine runs it. And whenever you go to the hospital, feel free to stop by and see me, too. Or you can call me anytime . . . as a friend. I’d be happy to help.”

  “Dr. Basu, you’re a good man. Thanks for doing all this—for my sister and my nephew and me. To be honest, I don’t even know why you do it. But I don’t even care. I’m just glad you’re here.”

  “Thank you, Sean. I am quite fond of Colm and . . .”

  “Cate?” Sean asked, smiling and winking.

  “Yes, she’s a very strong, bright, and beau . . .” Dr. Basu stopped himself.

  “Yup.” Sean nodded and laughed a bit. “That’s Cate in a nutshell.”

  Dr. Basu blushed.

  “It’s all right, don’t be embarrassed. I am so glad she has you. If you had any idea, any real idea how lonely she’s been . . .” Sean shook his head and trailed off. He didn’t want to betray his sister or undercut her. “I’m just glad she has somebody like you.”

  “Thank you, Sean.”

  “Hey, Dr. Basu?”

  “Gaspar. Call me Gaspar.”

  “Gaspar, what are you doing Sunday?”

  “Nothing. As far as work is concerned, I’m technically still in Italy.”

  “Do you want to join Colm and me for some breakfast and afterward hit the Natural History Museum with him and Cate?”

  “Why, yes, that would be nice.”

  After pulling up outside Dr. Basu’s building, Sean leaped out of the car and grabbed the doctor’s bags. Handing them to him, he said, “See you outside St. Pat’s, across from the Rock, around ten or so.”

  “All right then. I’ll be there.”

  Though Sean was the one who initiated Dr. Basu’s accompanying them on their family outings, it was Colm who asked him to join them whenever the doctor’s schedule would allow.

  On their first visit to the Natural History Museum, Dr. Basu explained the Earth’s elliptical orbit as they all walked through a special exhibit on their way to the planetarium. Dr. Basu explained to Colm how almost every planetary system had a sun. A center. A source. And how every cell in the human body reflected that order. And how all around the world, the entire universe, there was evidence of the same. “Energy begins from a single powerful source, Colm. Even your body is made up of tiny little solar systems. Millions of cosmos. Thousands of invisible stars. Bursts of electricity that keep your heart beating. Your blood pumping. Your brain working. It’s one of the great mysteries. The source of life.”

  Cathleen nodded and smiled and almost opened her mouth to say something about God—and how he made light out of the darkness. But something stopped her. She couldn’t say it, especially in front of Colm, who she could tell had found a kindred spirit.

  Colm was dazzled by the good doctor. As the doctor spoke, Colm imagined his body built out of stars, all of them glowing from within.

  Sean didn’t say anything. He just listened and thought of how it all worked the other way around too. He thought of the fires he fought, how a small spark from a frayed wire or a cigarette left unattended had the power to take down an entire building, consume a life—maybe two—an entire family. Or how a spark of religious fervor could explode within two buildings and take three thousand lives. Sean shook it off and he walked, listened, and watched as Dr. Basu taught the boy, his sister, and him about life—living it. Even if there was no known source, no known reason why.

  After their first visit to the museum together, Colm told his mother that he couldn’t imagine not asking the doctor to join them ever again. “He’s amazing, Mama.” Gaspar was part of them now. Part of their little universe. He was trapped in their elliptical orbit, and there was no escaping it.

  Cathleen enjoyed being with the doctor just as much as Colm did, but she didn’t know how to go back to their moment on the roof under the stars. Still, she kept that moment close to her heart, and she was much more kind to the doctor from that point on. Cathleen never mentioned it to the doctor, and he, ashamed to have taken her from her son that evening, never mentioned it either, so afraid to bring up a sore subject. Instead, he thought of it often, but only privately. Cathleen thought of it every day. She kept the doctor, his son, and his poor dead wife in her prayers every night; and she even lit candles for them at church and remembered them at Grace time. He had become, even when he wasn’t around, a part of them. He was, besides her son and brother, the only constant in her life. He was the only one who both believed her son’s godless version of the afterlife and at the same time, like her, wanted him to be miraculously healed. He didn’t seem to care if religion or medicine was responsible for the cure; he only wanted Colm to be better and for her to finally be at peace. She loved him totally for it.

  She didn’t need a reason why.

  Chapter 23

  Cathleen sat in the chair in Dr. Basu’s examining room and looked at her son. He was seven now. She wondered where the time had gone; the baby she knew had disappeared before her eyes. She was about to lament it and then remembered how grateful she was that Colm was there at all. She looked at the shirtless boy who sat with his bony legs draped over the edge of the examining table. His shoulders and collarbone jutted out of his emaciated frame, only loosely connected to the tight ropy muscles that stretched over his thin arms. The only thing that bulged out of his body was the silver-dollar-sized disc that sat under the skin below his left shoulder. His long auburn hair just about covered the faint scar at the incis
ion site, and it wouldn’t be long until the hair covered it completely. He was still wearing his wool cap. He looked so odd, half naked with a wool hat and gloves on. Even though heat radiated off Colm’s chest, he was unable to sweat, and his hands were still always freezing, especially after he ate. If he didn’t wear the gloves, his hands turned blue, and he had to be careful to keep a pulse in his hands and feet. Otherwise the pain was unbearable, and he was afraid he would end up losing all feeling. When he didn’t steady his hands against the table or stuff them in his pockets, they shook uncontrollably. He had little control over the rest of his body either. Lately, he had been unable to swallow. Cathleen saw him struggling to take his medicine one morning and asked him what was wrong. He said it was nothing, but she knew.

  Every day brought with it a new affliction. Ever since they had stepped off the plane from Rome several months earlier, the day they were greeted by a sober Sean, there were parts of her that wondered if she was being selfish by praying for Colm’s survival. She knew on a visceral level that if her son were a dog, they would have put him out of his misery already. But she wouldn’t let herself think that way for long. At some level she believed there was still a shred of hope. There was a way to heal him. Despite everything her brother, her son, and his doctor believed, she still went to church, she still prayed for another miracle. Because wasn’t he a living miracle already?

  All she had to do was look at him.

  Still, he was going downhill faster and faster. Colm spent most of his days feeling as if he were going to faint. But he always fought through it. He blacked out walking up the stairs to the apartment or just waking up. He had difficulty speaking. No one, not even Dr. Basu, was sure if it was because he had been gone so long during the last collapse, or if it was his central nervous system finally getting the best of him. His symptoms seemed to come and go and made no sense, one way or another. His schoolmates thought he was faking it, but it was no act. He sometimes mumbled, gasping for air in between words, and had no control over what he was saying. Larger boys who seemed to be maturing physically made fun of him at school, daring him to die and rise again. If his condition were real, they said, he would be able to do it again. One time, when Cathleen picked Colm up from school, she noticed some children mimicking his awkward gait, his rigid limbs, his trembling hands like he was some sort of sideshow circus freak.

  However, by Colm’s seventh birthday he hadn’t had any other near-death experiences after leaving Italy. To Cathleen it was a sign that God was answering some of her prayers. Colm may not have been physically healed, but at least he hadn’t died again. Perhaps the worst was behind them. Perhaps the miracle took, she thought.

  Colm sat quietly waiting with his mother for the doctor to arrive. Dr. Basu was never on time, even for Colm, his favorite patient. Colm could feel his mother staring at him, and it made him so uncomfortable. He wanted desperately to free her from her constant worrying. If only, he thought, his father were here with them. Over the past six months he had thought constantly of what the friar in Italy had promised him—that he would eventually meet his father. He still hoped it would be soon. He daydreamed about his father all the time. Colm imagined him coming through the door, like the stories of the soldiers who came back from war, the ones his mother talked about after seeing them on the nightly news. Every time he walked down the hall to his apartment, he imagined opening the door to his father there waiting for him, smiling at him. Sometimes at night, while lying in bed, he thought that perhaps while he slept his father would arrive, and he would be sitting at the edge of Colm’s bed when he woke. But it never happened, and he only heard his mother’s voice from the kitchen yelling to him to get up and get ready for school. He took his heartbreak out on his mother, by being grumpy or ignoring her. She had no way of knowing why he was angry with her, but she always thought it was something she had done or said. She was always feeling his head for signs of a fever and wondering if he was coming down with something, but the only thing Colm was coming down from was the hope that his father would come for him. He had heard the word forsaken once, long ago, in church standing next to his mother, and he leaned over and asked her what it meant. She had said to turn away from as if she were the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary itself. He thought of it every day, all day—why had his own father forsaken him?

  When Dr. Basu walked in, he did what he always did—greeted Colm first and then reached his hand out and said, “So nice to see you, Cathleen.” It was as if they hadn’t seen each other in years, even when they had all, in fact, been to the zoo together the week before.

  The doctor and his mother always spent a few moments smiling and making small talk. Colm knew it was what adults called flirting. He could tell the doctor was attracted to his mother just by the way he stared and gave her his full attention when she spoke. Colm never knew about Dr. Basu and his mother’s night together on the roof in Assisi. But he knew there was a connection—he had seen it in his hospital room in Rome. He was seven, but he wasn’t an idiot.

  “Hello, Dr. Basu,” Cathleen said, smiling. She was so happy to see him again, even though the last time they spoke, they had had another disagreement about Colm’s treatment, while Sean took Colm to the restroom at the zoo.

  “We have to put him on more nutritional supplements; his body isn’t able to absorb nutrients, and it may be a sign that eventually, perhaps . . .” Dr. Basu tried to explain what would happen as Colm’s body would break down.

  Cathleen stopped the doctor midsentence. “Don’t say another word. I know where this is going. Don’t you dare give up on him. We’ve come this far, Dr. Basu. You’ve seen him. You have. You have seen what I have. He has really good days. Great days. You saw how excited he was today. How do we know? How can we say for sure that this is the end?”

  “Cathleen, I understand. I really do. I don’t want this any more than you do. But we have to be realistic. He’s very sick. He doesn’t have a lot of . . .”

  Cathleen cut him off again, refusing to hear it. “I am the one here being realistic, Dr. Basu. I thought you and I were on the same page.” She was trembling now, and the doctor walked over to her and wrapped his arm around her and held her close as she wept.

  “I know, Cathleen. I know. I will do whatever it takes. I promise you. I haven’t given up on him yet. But I am worried about you, too. I am sorry. But I am having trouble here. I care so deeply for you both . . . and I . . . I . . . perhaps I am not the best doctor for you any longer. Perhaps I care too much for the both of you.”

  “What?” Cathleen pulled away from him. “Are you dropping us? Are you shoving us off to somebody else? Do I have to start all over?”

  “No, no. I am just worried. That is all. I am losing my objectivity here, I am afraid. You see, doctors are not supposed to treat their own family members, because they have a blind side. Sometimes doctors don’t want to see what they need to see in the people they love.” Dr. Basu couldn’t believe he said the word love to Cathleen. It slipped out so easily, and it stopped him from saying anything further.

  Cathleen wanted to state the obvious, that she and Colm weren’t technically his family. But she felt it too. She knew that Dr. Basu had loved and cared about her son like his own. She also knew how deeply he mourned Dhruv, and how all of this was becoming some sort of daily reminder of what he had already lost. Her heart broke for Dr. Basu. She knew it had to be just as painful for him as it was for her. And hadn’t they created an odd sort of family over the past two years, meeting regularly in his office, traveling abroad, visiting museums, zoos, and toy stores? Throughout it all, she saw Colm’s attachment growing toward the doctor and the doctor growing in affection toward Colm—and she could even feel him growing closer to her.

  Cathleen reached out and took Dr. Basu’s hand.

  “Dr. Basu, please, please, please don’t stop being Colm’s doctor. Please.”

  Dr. Basu pulled her close. “I won’t give up on you or Colm, Cathleen. You have my word. But, perhaps,
we could start taking Colm to a few other specialists, for some more opinions. I have been doing some research. There are other facilities that might be able to help. I will go with you, if you like.”

  “If you think it will help.”

  “I do.”

  Dr. Basu had so much more to say, but Colm had come out of the restroom and saw them standing close to each other and looked at them curiously.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, hon. Dr. Basu and I were just talking about how great you’re doing.”

  Colm smiled at her, but he could tell, like he always could, when she was lying to him.

  In the office after Colm’s checkup in the pacemaker clinic, Dr. Basu looked at Colm, who looked frail and like he had lost some weight since Gaspar saw him just a week ago. He quickly checked his chart to see his latest check-in weight, and it was as he suspected. Colm had lost another two pounds.

  “Well, how are things with our Dove today?”

  “Same,” Colm interjected.

  “Nothing new to report?”

  “No,” Colm said flatly. He was in one of his moods. He woke up hoping again, and his father had not come.

  Dr. Basu looked at the boy and then at his mother. He didn’t want to do this. He knew it would upset her, but he thought it would be best if he had a moment alone with the boy, so he asked her as politely as he could.

  “Cathleen?”

  “Yes, Gaspar?”

  “Would you mind waiting outside in the sitting room today? We’ll come and get you when we’re done.”

  Cathleen was stunned. He was just a boy. She had every right to know exactly what was going on with him, she thought.

  Dr. Basu opened the door and stood quietly, waiting for Cathleen to rise and leave.

  Cathleen looked back at him, about to have another fight in her head, Dr. Basu and Colm both knew. But the doctor thought he could talk to her later.

  When she was gone, Dr. Basu closed the door and jumped up onto the examining table to sit next to Colm. “Now, young man, what is it that you are not telling me?”