BETH ARMSTRONG WATCHED anxiously from the corridor of Boston’s Children’s Hospital. Sue Lucas had been most definite that the woman who’d helped at the accident, the healer, was coming to visit her son today. Timmy Lucas had finally been moved, from the intensive care floor to the surgical one, his condition now considered stable. Fortune had smiled on her: she had got talking to his mother in the ladies’ rest room and discovered that the McGill woman was actually coming to see him. It was an opportunity too good to miss – she might actually be able to tell her about Cass. If she could work a miracle for one child maybe she could do it for another!
Martha was overjoyed to see Timmy again, so relieved that the child she’d almost believed dead was lying there, a metal cage over his bed protecting his leg which was in some kind of weird cast with metal bars and screws protruding from it, but otherwise far better than she had imagined. He looked pale and lost in the hospital bed, his black hair standing on end, his cheeks grazed and one eye still covered in a blackberry-coloured bruise. If he had any memory of the accident he made absolutely no mention of it and Martha decided to ignore the subject herself, as it wasn’t fair on the boy.
‘I asked your mom about dropping by, Timmy, and she said it was OK.’
He just nodded.
‘I wasn’t quite sure what to bring you so I asked Patrick my son, and he was the one picked out this robot game.’
She could tell he was real pleased with it by the way he let his hand slide over it. ‘Do you like games?’ she asked.
He nodded again and she knew that as soon as he was able he would be making use of the games console fitted under the hospital TV set.
‘You feeling all right?’ she asked gently.
‘Much better, thank you, Mrs McGill.’
‘That’s good.’
He still looked tired, she thought as she reached out for his arm, but the feeling was nothing like before. His body was trying to heal itself, renew and recover from deep trauma. It would take time but she sensed he was going to be fine.
She sat by his bed and made small talk about all the kids in the road, telling him that young Johnny Rynhart had already placed a pumpkin out on his front step, although Hallowe’en was miles away yet.
‘I think the sun will cook that pumpkin it’s so hot outside!’ joked Martha.
‘Rynharts are always first with everything,’ he said solemnly. ‘They always like to get a march on the rest of the neighbours. November 1 his dad starts getting ready for Christmas.’
Timmy yawned, Martha chatting away as his eyes became heavy and finally closed. His body was still in shock and needed much sleep and rest to recover.
She rode the elevator down to the ground floor and decided to stop off at the hospital cafeteria for a cup of tea before driving home. It was between meal times and was fairly quiet and Martha picked a spot overlooking the small paved courtyard.
‘Excuse me, Mrs McGill. I hope you don’t mind me interrupting you?’
Martha paused, cradling the hot tea in its polystyrene cup and wondering why she had bothered to purchase something she knew she would scarcely enjoy as the stranger slid into the seat opposite.
‘I’m Beth Armstrong,’ the other woman introduced herself. The name meant nothing to Martha.
‘I got talking to Sue Lucas the other day. She told me what you did for her son. My daughter is a patient in this hospital too, right up on the third floor.’
Martha held her breath. She was waiting for it. She could guess what was coming, see it in the other woman’s eyes: the flicker of hope, the silent plea for help.
‘I’m sorry,’ Martha sighed. ‘Sue shouldn’t have said anything to you.’
‘Please, Mrs McGill, my daughter is very ill. If anyone needs your help, Cass does. She’s spent more than half her life in and out of this hospital and she’s just ten years old. Do you have any idea what that is like, what it does to a family?’
‘No,’ said Martha quietly. ‘I can’t begin to imagine.’
The other woman ignored her and began to fill her in with the medical details of her daughter’s condition, her face livid with rage at what had happened to her child.
‘We found out when she was about three months old. She wasn’t like other babies, not thriving. Sometimes when I was feeding her, her little lips used to turn blue. We took her to the paediatrician and fortunately he sent us here. Children’s Hospital is the finest hospital for kids in the country. Multiple congenital heart defects, they told us, and they operated on her, then another surgery the following year and the one after. Cass has had that much surgery, you should see her chest – it’s like a stitch and sew pattern kit. They’ve been talking about a transplant, so now we’re waiting for a heart. The surgeons here have already done more than a hundred successful transplants.’
Beth Armstrong’s hands were shaking and, without thinking, Martha reached to console her.
‘Cass is getting weaker and weaker by the day. She can’t walk or run any more and some days it seems like she hasn’t even the breath to talk no more. We don’t know how much longer she can last out.’
‘I’m sorry. Truly sorry,’ murmured Martha.
‘Please – will you see her?’
Beth Armstrong looked stressed, adrenalin and fear raging through her gaunt frame. She looked as if she needed a few decent nights’ sleep to rid herself of the dark grey circles under her eyes and wire-sprung nervousness. Martha was at a total loss as to what to say or what to do in the face of such overwhelming fury and pain.
‘You could help her. I just know you could! The doctors are saying that there is nothing much else they can do. Please, Mrs McGill. You are a mother too. Please just come and see my child.’
Martha wiped her hands with the paper napkin. The other users of the cafeteria, sensing the distress of her table partner, were turning around, curious.
‘Just a few minutes of your time. That’s all I’m asking!’
‘You’re mistaken, Beth. I’m nothing special. I can’t do anything to help someone like Cass, honest I just can’t.’
She could tell Beth didn’t believe her and was choosing to ignore unwanted information.
‘Come upstairs and see her!’ pleaded Beth Armstrong.
Lifting her jacket, purse and newspaper, and against her better judgement, Martha rode the elevator upstairs with the child’s mother.
‘What room is she in?’ she asked.
‘Number 325.’
Upstairs a mural of Peter Pan flying over a pirate ship decorated one wall of the corridor of Boston’s Children’s Hospital.
Beth pushed in the door of her child’s room. A blond girl with a pretty face turned, curious about the new visitor.
‘Cass, this is an old friend of mine, Martha. We just bumped into each other down in the coffee shop, and she wanted to drop by and say hi and see what a beautiful daughter I got.’
Cass raised herself higher in the bed, letting go of the book she’d been desultorily glancing at.
‘Hello,’ she said shyly.
‘Hello, Cass.’ Martha introduced herself.
‘How you doing, Cass?’ her mother asked anxiously. ‘Did you eat the nice lunch the nurse brought you?’
Cass stuck out her tongue.
Martha couldn’t help but notice how frail and undersized the child was.
‘Maybe there’ll be something nicer to eat later on!’ Beth encouraged her.
Cass sighed. Food and how it tasted or looked didn’t mean a thing to her any more.
‘Martha, please sit down!’ said Beth, and pulled another chair up beside the narrow hospital bed. Martha was perusing the handmade cards that adorned the windowsill and locker top.
‘They’re neat!’ she said.
‘The kids in my fourth-grade class did them. Mrs Marshall my teacher makes them all do stuff like that every time I’m in the hospital.’
‘But they’re really beautiful,’ smiled Martha, noticing that the drawings and colourings of kids running and jumping and skipping and cycling were the ones that Cass kept closest to her bed, while the ones with pictures of stick-thin figures lying in giant beds looking pretty miserable were banished to the further corners of the small room.
‘Your mom tells me that you are not doing too good.’
Cass studied a puzzle book abandoned on her bed.
‘Cass, I think that Martha might be able to help you to feel a bit better.’
Cass looked disbelieving, suspicious even.
‘You a doctor or something?’ she asked.
Martha laughed. ‘Something, I guess.’
The child was puzzled and looked towards her mother for reassurance.
‘This lady, my friend, she sometimes helps people who are sick, honest she does!’
Martha tried to quench her annoyance with the parent, for already Beth had said far too much and compromised her position with the child.
‘I’m just a friend, Cass.’
‘Can you touch her, Martha, lay your hands on her?’
Martha tried to make a silent plea to the mother to at least give herself and this sick child some time and space to weigh each other up and decide on things. ‘Your mom tells me that you got problems with your heart, Cass,’ she said.
A scared look filled Cass’s eyes.
‘The doctors said I need to get a new one, they can’t fix this broken one no more,’ she told Martha matter-of-factly, her gaze travelling in the direction of her mother, looking for a response. Martha was trying to appear relaxed in the face of such knowledge. This child already had enough to cope with.
‘Cass, honey, will you let Martha put her hands on you and try and help to make you better?’ suggested Beth, her face contorted with concern.
‘You can do that?’ quizzed the child.
‘She can! She helped a boy on the floor below and lots more people besides.’
Cass looked doubtful, almost afraid. ‘Does it hurt?’ she asked.
Martha shook her head.
‘I don’t think so. My hands may get warm, hot even, but that’s all.’
‘What do you do, how does it work?’
‘I’m not sure,’ she declared honestly, ‘but it seems that sometimes when I touch people and lay my hands on them it helps.’
The small girl looked sceptical as if Martha was some kind of hospital worker about to play a trick on her. Subconsciously she began to push back against the pillow and retreat from her.
‘I won’t hurt you, Cass, I promise.’
This was foolish and stupid, Martha thought to herself as Beth leant forward and began to unbutton her daughter’s pretty pastel pyjama top.
‘What do you want her to do?’ she whispered.
‘Just relax, that’s all.’
Martha rubbed the tips of her fingers and palms together to warm them as the child’s skinny scarred chest was revealed, leads with sticky circular pads attached to it from the monitor hooked up beside the bed. Martha sighed. Cass was staring right at her, her elfin chin pitched forward. Martha held her hand first. She was like a small wounded bird. The energy level was low, even lower than she had expected. Running her hands up along her arm she could sense the battle to move blood and oxygen through her system. She stroked Cass as she would a small baby, feeling the ribs and the telltale erratic flutter and pattern of her dysfunctioning heart, willing it to steady and fall into a more defined logical gentle rhythm than the staggered one she was picking up. She moved her hands slowly, gently, hoping some of the warmth and effort would pass through into Cass. It was like running up and down a maze of circuit paths, hoping that one or two were free and clear to work, trying to hide her dismay at what she was picking up and realizing the precariousness of Cass’s grip on life. Silently she prayed for strength and energy for this child. Cass’s eyes followed her own, understanding as Martha finished.
‘Well?’ Beth’s skinny face was full of expectation.
Martha took a deep breath, trying to compose herself.
‘Thank you, Martha. Thank you so much.’ The mother’s voice was choked with appreciation and hope.
Martha had no idea how much or little she had done.
‘Well, Cass, how do you feel?’ urged Beth.
The small girl was busy re-buttoning her pyjamas, concentrating. ‘I could feel it! As if something was moving inside me, I don’t understand it,’ she said.
Martha laughed nervously.
‘To tell the truth, Cass, neither do I! But when I’m laying my hands on I ask the good earth and sky and the Holy Spirit to help heal the person who needs it. I guess I’m just a sort of go-between, that’s all.’
‘Didn’t you feel anything more, Cass? Anything?’ insisted her mother.
Cass stared right over at her.
‘It felt real nice.’
Beth Armstrong looked triumphant.
Martha stood up to go, wanting desperately to be out of the room and extricate herself from this impossible position. ‘Listen, Beth, I have to go and pick up my youngest,’ she told her.
‘Thank you so much for coming up to see Cass, it’s much appreciated, Martha, and I hope it didn’t delay you too much.’
‘Martha!’ said the small voice. ‘Martha, will you come visit me again?’
She sighed. It had been inevitable. The child needed help, needed support. The path of her illness was such that it would be too much for her to deal with on her own.
‘Yes, I’ll come again, Cass. I promise.’