BETH ARMSTRONG PHONED that Wednesday, all excited and nervous, the words tumbling from her mouth, as she told Martha the good news.
‘She’s got a heart! Cass is getting a new heart!’
The transplant team from Children’s Hospital had confirmed they’d found a perfect donor match for her daughter and Cass was already being prepared for surgery.
‘I still can’t believe it! Can you come by the hospital and see her?’ Beth pleaded anxiously.
‘Honest, Beth, I don’t think that it’s my place to interfere. Cass needs the doctors and nurses to look after her right now and get her through her surgery. You know she’s in good hands. Why, I’d only be in their way.’
‘What about healing?’
‘Healing?’
‘Yes, I was hoping that you could lay your hands on her at the start of the operation.’
‘Beth, Cass has had healing, and now it’s time to let the medical team do their work.’
‘But it’s bound to help, Martha, you being there, and my little girl needs all the help that she can get!’
‘Beth, calm down. You’ve got to trust the surgeons,’ she advised her gently. ‘I’ll pray for Cass, I promise, but it’s not my place to be there, honest it’s not.’
‘So you’re saying that you won’t come when she needs you the most,’ argued Beth Armstrong.
‘No, I’m not saying that at all. I know how hard it must be for you all, I can imagine how I’d feel if one of my kids was facing such a big operation, but me being there isn’t going to help. I’m sorry,’ whispered Martha.
There was a stony silence on the other end of the line and Martha could almost sense the other woman’s desperation and fearfulness.
‘I’m sorry, Beth,’ she repeated.
A few hours later Martha found herself kneeling in a bench in her parish church, enjoying the peace and stillness that a visit to St John’s always brought her. She gazed up at the grey marble altar and the ornately carved cross; light slanting in through the stained glass windows above her sprinkled dashes of purple, pink, gold and blue along the wooden floor. A statue of Mary, the mother of Jesus, gazed down at her, opposite St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, in his green and gold bishop’s robes. This place was an oasis of spirituality in a busy world, removed from the traffic and noise and constant music and sound that assaulted daily life. A place to come and offer silent prayer.
In quiet contemplation, Martha closed her eyes thinking of Cass, wishing her to be strong and for the Holy Spirit to watch over her. She found consolation and support within the walls of this simple church, felt her prayers were being listened to and that God was considering her requests. If that was faith, she supposed she was blessed with it. She had always felt close to the spirit, close to God and was unafraid to ask things of him, challenge him. Now she was asking for the child, words of prayer filling her mind in the silence.
She heard footsteps, and turning around spotted Father Eugene. She would have liked him to join her, to have told him about Cass, and for both of them to pray for her together. The priest, recognizing her, stopped for an instant, before turning his face away and collecting a book he’d left up near the lectern, disappearing inside the safety of the sacristy.
The day dragged on, Martha’s thoughts constantly with Cass. She found herself barely able to concentrate all afternoon and was abrupt with Mary Rose when she collected her from piano lessons.
‘You OK, Mom?’ asked her teenage daughter perceptively.
She kept waiting for the phone to ring back home, and almost whacked Patrick when he tried to phone one of his football team-mates to discuss arrangements for the following Saturday’s game.
‘Get off the phone, Patrick, you know I’m waiting on news of someone.’
A look of bewilderment crossed his broad face and Martha knew her son had no comprehension of her involvement with people he considered just strangers.
Thoughts of the child haunted and disturbed her, in a strange irrational way that made her question her ability and the powerful call to healing. There was still no word by midnight and she paced the floor of her home wondering what she should do. Her repeated calls to the hospital had elicited zero information.
‘For God’s sake, will you relax and calm down,’ Mike implored her.
‘I can’t,’ she admitted. ‘I just can’t! I can’t put her out of mind. You should see her, she’s so sick.’
Her husband was a good and kind man; all right, maybe a little too wrapped up in his career and work, but he was a good father and had always been there for her and the kids.
‘Mike, imagine if one of . . .’
‘I’m not going to imagine, Martha. I don’t want to do that, and if you have any sense you’ll stop thinking of her too and concentrate on our kids. Patrick told me you almost bit his head off today when he tried to check if he was playing in Saturday’s football team.’
‘Oh Mike, I didn’t mean it. Patrick knows that.’
She moved towards her husband, wanting to make things right between them, and was hurt when he turned away and began to read the newspaper, the conversation ended.
She couldn’t sleep and stayed up late watching an old Hollywood musical on the TV. When she came upstairs, her husband rolled to one side of their bed, anger and confusion radiating from the hunched curve of his neck and spine as he turned away from her. Instead of undressing and lying warm beside him, Martha took a heavy sweater from her drawer and her purse. Beth hadn’t bothered to phone and since there was no reply from her home phone number, it meant she was still likely to be at the hospital. Surely the operation was over by now.
Getting into her car and switching on the headlights, she pulled out onto the road and drove up on to the Mass Turnpike, her instinct leading her towards Children’s Hospital. The road was quiet as it was after midnight and listening to David Gray, she tried to keep herself awake.
The night receptionist was reading the newspaper when Martha enquired about Cass, and he directed her to the nurses’ station on the third floor. Martha, feeling a knot of anxiety in her stomach, had only just got out of the elevator when she spotted Beth Armstrong. She looked utterly worn out and wretched.
‘How is she?’ she asked, rushing over to Beth, noticing the red-rimmed eyes.
‘She didn’t have it, Martha! She didn’t have the operation,’ sobbed Beth, grabbing hold of her jacket and beginning to weep. ‘That bastard! Dr Rourke, the anaesthetist, said she’d a slight chest infection and it was too risky to go ahead with the transplant. He cancelled the operation. Stopped her getting it!’
‘What!’
‘What harm would it have done? They could have pumped her up with antibiotics.’
‘Oh, Beth, I don’t believe it! I’m so sorry.’
Beth Armstrong was at breaking point.
‘Tom took the boys home. My mother’s staying the night and he’ll come straight back.’
‘Maybe they can operate on Cass tomorrow or the day after?’
‘They sent it to Texas! A boy there about two years older than Cass, heart’s a perfect match for him too.’
Beth began to shake from top to toe, Martha holding her in her arms. ‘That’s her chance gone! She’s not going to get another chance like that again. Not ever. There’s just not enough signed-up donors.’
‘You don’t know that! You can’t say that for sure, Beth.’
‘I do know that,’ she said huskily. ‘I fucking do.’
Martha held Beth in her arms. The other woman clung to her as if she was a life saver, letting tears of anger and disappointment fall. Tom Armstrong eventually took over from her on his return. Martha said goodnight to the both of them, and taking a quick peek at the sleeping child through the glass panel on her room door, decided it was time she was back in her own bed. The temperature was well below freezing and the snow ploughs were out on the streets as she left the car park.