MARTHA TRIED NOT to think of the frantic tone of Beth’s call as she drove immediately over to the Armstrongs’ once they got back to Easton. Pulling up outside Cass’s home, she took a deep breath, trying to pull herself together before going inside.
Tom’s broad face was puffed and strained, like a punch drunk boxer clinging to the ropes, as he opened the door to her.
‘The doctor says the end is near, that she can’t go on much longer.’ He swallowed hard, trying to mask his dismay as she followed him up the stairs. Billy and Jay stood at the bedroom door looking scared and miserable. On the landing Beth was arguing with Linda O’Hara, a tall blond young woman in nurse’s pants and a white sweatshirt.
‘God damn you! Phone for an ambulance and get my daughter to hospital immediately! They’ve got equipment there, they can revive her, stabilize her! They’ve done it before! It’s her only chance!’
Martha could read the pity in the nurse’s face as she tried to talk to the distraught mother, reason with her. Out of the corner of her eye Martha could see Cass lying in the bed looking for all the world as if she was really tired and was falling asleep. Only as she stepped nearer did she notice the rapid movements of her narrow chest, like a small bird fighting for its life, the lungs sounding like they were heavy with two bags of water.
‘Hi, Cass,’ she said softly, hoping the young girl could hear her. She reached for the small pale hand and squeezed it, noticing that the bruising from all the intravenous drips she’d been on had only now begun to fade. The child moaned two or three times as if in pain. Martha softly stroked her skin.
‘Cass, I think you can hear me. It’s Martha. I’m here beside you. If you are in pain I will try to help you.’
She leant over, barely touching the child’s skinny frame, letting her hands absorb the dulled pain and sending gentle healing waves through her fingers. She was conscious of waves of tightness, fear, confusion: these were the emotions the child was feeling in her last moments.
‘Don’t be scared, Cass,’ she hushed. ‘I’m right here beside you and the pain is going, going, going. Can you feel it leaving you?’
Cass seemed to try and murmur something.
‘Don’t be scared, Cass honey.’
Tears ran down Tom Armstrong’s face as he reached for his daughter’s other hand.
‘Remember what I told you about my daddy . . . well, Cass, I think soon you are going to leave the shell of the old Cass behind. You are not going to need this body much longer.’
A tear slid down the beautiful face.
‘It’s all right, Cass, don’t be afraid.’
Beth Armstrong had stopped arguing. Sensing the change in her daughter’s condition, she rushed back into the room.
‘Please, please, Tom, I’ll get the ambulance!’ she sobbed, trying to punch the number into the phone.
Tom Armstrong never budged. He sat where he was, staring at his only daughter. The crowded bedroom was stuffy, a sickroom smell, so Martha got up and walked across and opened the white window. Fresh air wafted in, the sound of birdsong and distant traffic filling the silence. Beth, now silent, came over and lay on the bed beside her child, pulling her gently into her arms. Martha beckoned for the boys hiding at the doorway to join them. Billy’s eyes were raw and red with grief.
‘Jay, sit up beside your sister,’ she suggested.
He looked doubtful but Tom patted the spot up beside the pillow, Billy climbing in near him, careful not to disturb his sister or hurt her.
Beth was fighting to control her grief, her body shaking with the effort. Martha stood behind her and placed her hands on her pain-filled shoulders.
‘Cass, everyone who loves you is here, pet, your mommy and daddy and Billy and Jay and Nurse O’Hara. You don’t need to be afraid. It’s a lovely clear blue bright day outside with a hint of breeze, can you feel it, the air, the wind? I have never seen a sky like it!
‘Your daddy and mommy and brothers are all going to talk to you now, Cass, they know you can hear them.’
Martha stepped back from the bed, stepped back from the family. Cass’s breathing was even more irregular now as she struggled for air. In her heart, Martha wished her God speed.
She went downstairs. In the small cluttered kitchen she watched the plants out back in Beth Armstrong’s neglected yard dance as the wind tossed them, hearing the cry of grief almost twenty minutes later that racked the house as Beth realized her daughter was gone. Martha was glad in her own mind that Cass was finally free of all that she had suffered during her short life.
Tom Armstrong came downstairs, his face swollen and tortured with grief.
‘It’s over, finally over,’ he said, breaking down. Martha wrapped him in her arms, wishing she could remove even a tiny portion of the pain and anger he was feeling. He sobbed and cried, Martha doing her best to comfort him.
‘Tom, will I go upstairs to Beth?’ she offered.
‘No, Martha, no.’ He shook his head vehemently. ‘Beth just wants to be left alone with Cass.’
‘Of course.’
Martha was concerned for the child’s mother, knowing how absolutely tragic and awful it must be for her. Perhaps it was time for her to go. The doctor was on his way to certify Cass’s death and the nurse had told her she was going to ask him to write up some kind of sedative for Beth.
Linda answered the door when the doctor came and showed him up to the child’s room. Beth came downstairs a few minutes later. Martha moved forward to console her, offer her sympathy, but was totally rebuffed.
‘Tom, what is that woman still doing in our house? Ask her to leave immediately!’ she shouted hysterically.
‘Please, Beth, I’m so sorry about Cass, truly I am.’
‘Bitch, get out of my home. You are not wanted here. My daughter thought you were her friend. Some friend!’
‘Beth,’ pleaded Tom, trying to reason with her. ‘Don’t go blaming Martha.’
‘I am blaming her! If that bitch had not come into our lives with her promises of healing and miracles Cass might still be alive.’
‘Cass was sick, dying,’ her husband reminded her. ‘She was a very sick little girl.’
‘If Cass was still in hospital she would still be alive, Tom!’
‘She was dying, Beth,’ he insisted.
‘We might have had another month, a week or two – a few more days with her. Another hour with her, even.’ Beth’s voice broke down and Tom reached forward and grasped his wife, both of them locked in that inconsolable grief of a parent who has lost a child.
Heartbroken for them, Martha gathered her jacket and purse and slipped outside to her car. She turned the key in the ignition, glad of the instant response as the engine started. Who was she to interfere and tell parents what was the right thing to do? Perhaps Beth had been right: if Cass had stayed in the hospital, surrounded by machines and monitors she might still be alive. Tears slid down Martha’s face as she drove and she was forced to pull off the road and stop in a lay-by as she gave way to the torrent of emotions she could no longer control.