In This Small Spot (18 page)

“Your butt looks so good in scrubs,” Alice
said as if commenting on the weather.

Mickey looked over at her, one eyebrow
raised. “What kind of mood are you in?”

“What kind do you think – after that kiss?”
Alice grinned.

Mickey laughed. “Let me turn the computer
off, and then I’ll feed you so you’ll have plenty of stamina for
all the love-making we’re going to do tonight.”

“I can’t wait,” Alice laughed. She started
to rise from the sofa and caught her breath as a sharp pain hit her
unexpectedly, but by the time Mickey turned from the computer, it
had passed and she was smiling again.

Chapter 23

Abbey life continued, flowing seamlessly from
one season to another, but “It doesn’t matter what season it is,
we’re still the cleaning crew,” Tanya complained as the juniors
took down all the decorations they had put up in the Chapel for
Christmas.

“Think of it as the gift of youth,” said
Sister Teresa unsympathetically.

Mickey grinned as she carried the extra
candle sconces to the sacristy where they were stored. She stopped
as she saw Father Andrew sitting in the chair there. She couldn’t
help glancing toward the cabinet where the communion wine was kept
in a locked cabinet, the key one of many dangling from Sister
Teresa’s belt.

“Don’t worry,” he said when he saw her. “No
matter how bad it gets, I’ve never touched that.”

Mickey squatted down, carefully placing the
sconces in a waiting box. “Are you okay?”

He nodded, leaning forward to rest his
elbows on his knees. “I just had to get out of that house. Some
days are just – shaky ground. You know what I mean? And Ray is
driving me crazy,” he admitted.

“Is he here permanently?” Mickey asked.

“Oh yes,” Father Andrew said bitterly. “If
not him, someone else. I will never live alone again.” He looked
down at his hands which were tremoring slightly. “But that’s
probably a good thing.”

Mickey noticed the tremor as well. “There’s
nothing – I mean, you didn’t receive any Christmas bottles of
anything –?”

“No,” he said. “All visitors and gifts now
have to be approved by Mother Theodora and my abbot, and I’m sure
they are warning people not to bring any libations.” His tone was
light, but there was a tightness about his mouth as he spoke.

She gestured out toward the Chapel. “We
could use some help if you’re bored,” she suggested.

He exhaled. “Why not?”

He spent the remainder of the morning work
period helping clean and undecorate the Chapel, and seemed to be in
lighter spirits by the time the bell rang.

“Thank you,” he murmured to Mickey as she
headed toward her stall.

January passed into February, and before the
nuns knew it, Ash Wednesday and Lent were upon them. The season of
Lent was always a time of greater introspection and prayer for the
nuns. They fasted – “in the old days, we really fasted,” sniffed
the older nuns. “One meal a day, not two like we do now,” but “much
of our work is too physical for us to get by on one meal a day and
not fall ill,” Mother Theodora reasoned. “Two meals a day is enough
of a sacrifice.”

In addition, they were permitted to make
additional Lenten sacrifices. “Small ones,” Sister Rosaria always
warned the postulants. “You may give up coffee, or music during
Recreation, but we already live such stringent lives that anything
in excess is ostentatious. A nun who creates a spectacle of her
piety is not nearly as pleasing to our Lord as the one who goes
about her business, perfectly cheerfully, so that no one notices
her at all.”

Mickey felt as if she were doing this for
the first time – “well,” Jessica said when she mentioned this
aloud, “last year, you spent almost all of Lent on your retreat,
didn’t you?”
Was that just a year ago?
Mickey wondered as
she watched the postulants wandering the enclosure in prayer as
they began their own retreats. It was like one of Sister Anselma’s
vestments, each woman adding a different color thread to the piece,
but the whole making a fabric held together by the flow of the
Church year and the Divine Office and the daily work of the
abbey.

For Mickey, the dark winter days were
brightened considerably when Mother Theodora at last sent for her
to tell her that the legal charges were being dropped.

“Really?” Mickey asked, feeling as if spring
had come early.

“It has been an extremely drawn-out process,
but, yes,” said Mother.

“Thank goodness we’re done with them, once
and for all,” Mickey said with a heartfelt sigh.

She went straight to her stall and knelt,
offering a prayer of thanks, and then continued with prayers for
Danielle, who was in the middle of a horrible round of combined
radiation and chemotherapy. Mickey had kept a prayer card up on the
board, and knew that a number of the sisters wrote to the Wilsons
regularly, as she herself had done. “Please spare her,” she prayed
fervently. “She has so much to offer, so much to do; don’t take her
from her parents.”

Easter came and went, with Sisters Christine
and Miranda now under simple vows and no longer in the Novitiate.
Mickey, Tanya and Jessica, as second-year novices, were getting to
know the newly Clothed first-years: Sister Kathleen Dawson, Sister
Nancy Seaton and Sister Alison Youmens. Mickey quickly grew to like
all three of them, but Tanya, for some reason, did not.

She scoffed sarcastically during one of
their discussions of the vow of obedience, when Sister Nancy
commented that she thought this was the hardest vow of all. “I
agree with her,” Mickey said, ignoring Tanya’s surly expression.
Obedience, the vow most expected to be the easiest, was often the
greatest stumbling block, “at least it is for me,” Mickey
admitted.

“I could have predicted that,” Jamie said
later when Mickey discussed this with him.

“What?” she asked.

“What?” he repeated in astonishment. “You
never did anything without an argument! I could get my chores done
five times over and you would still be trying to bargain with Mom
that you would do yours later, after whatever else you were all
wrapped up in.”

“It’s not enough to simply do what is asked
of you,” Sister Josephine had told them often, “you must do it
cheerfully, completely, without holding back or resenting it,” and,
“there’s the rub,” Mickey could have said. It took a tremendous
amount of discipline to stop what she was doing and immediately
respond to a request from a superior, “without grumbling or sighing
or muttering under your breath,” Sister Josephine with one slightly
raised eyebrow and a half-glance toward Mickey.

Just a couple of days previously, Mickey had
been working with the other juniors, helping to clean the
classroom, “from top to bottom,” said Sister Stephen
enthusiastically. “Move desks and tables and chairs, take down
curtains and blinds, wash the windows.” Mickey was up on a ladder,
wearing a work apron and sleeves over her habit as she reached for
cobwebs “no one else can even see,” she grumbled, when Sister
Josephine came to the classroom and called up to her.

“Sister Michele, weren’t you supposed to be
in the infirmary five minutes ago to schedule your check-up?”

“But I’m almost done –” Mickey protested,
glancing down and seeing the look on Sister Josephine’s face. With
an exasperated sigh, she climbed down from the ladder, shaking her
head and grumbling to herself.

“Obedience is way harder than celibacy,”
Mickey admitted now to Sister Josephine who gave her a droll
smile.

“Speak for yourself,” Tanya grumbled, but so
quietly that only Mickey and Jessica heard. Mickey looked at
Jessica quizzically, but Jessica just shrugged, equally puzzled by
Tanya’s bad temper.

It seemed the theme of spring cleaning had
spread from one area of the abbey to another, “and we’re cleaning
again,” Jessica sighed as, one Saturday afternoon in late April,
the juniors were cleaning the library. The books, some of them very
old, needed dusting, as did the shelves. Mickey was once again on a
ladder, handing a stack of books down to Sister Alison when Sister
Mary David ran into the library, her face white.

“Sister Michele, will you come?” she asked,
gasping for breath.

Without wasting time asking questions,
Mickey climbed down immediately, nearly knocking Father Raymond off
his feet as he tottered by with an enormous book in his hands. Nuns
never ran, but they were running now, Sister Mary David trying to
explain between gasps for air.

“Mother Theodora… has been sick… bad ear
infection… wouldn’t stay in bed… went to vestment room… got
dizzy…”

When they got to the vestment room, Mickey
saw in a glance that Mother Theodora lay in a heap at the base of
the stairs. Sister Anselma, Sister Catherine and Sister Paula were
all kneeling around her.

Mickey rushed down the steps to Mother’s
limp body. She felt for a pulse and found it weak and rapid. Taking
off Mother Theodora’s veil, she said, “We’ve got to get her turned
over.” She quickly palpated for fractures as she straightened
Mother’s arms and legs. “I’ll take her head,” she said as she
positioned herself. “Everyone else get on either side.” On the
count of three, they rolled her to her back. Quickly, Mickey
assessed her condition. Gently palpating Mother’s abdomen, her
heart stopped for a second.

“It feels as if she’s bleeding internally,
maybe with damage to the liver and the spleen.” Thinking quickly,
she muttered, “We don’t have time to call an ambulance – it would
take too long to get here and then get her to Millvale.” She looked
up at the others. “Who can drive?”

“I can,” Sister Mary David volunteered.

“Good, get the abbey’s station wagon, put
the back seat down and…” She saw the outdoor entrance – the one she
had come through on that windy day she had first met Sister Anselma
– and said, “Back up to that door.”

To Sister Paula, she said, “Go get Father
Andrew. Tell him to bring everything he’ll need for… for the
worst.” Sister Paula put her hand to her mouth, but Mickey barked,
“GO!”

She looked at the others. “We need a board
of some type that we can use as a stretcher.”

Sister Catherine brought a layout board made
of plywood. “Will this do?”

Together, they rolled Mother Theodora to one
side and slid the board under her. In just a few minutes that felt
like twenty, Sister Mary David was back with the station wagon.
They picked the board up and carried Mother Theodora to the car,
sliding her in through the tailgate. As they got her positioned,
Father Andrew came running up. Mickey and Sister Anselma climbed in
the back. Mickey instructed her in how to stabilize Mother’s head.
Father Andrew knelt on the passenger seat, facing backwards and
administered the sacrament while Sister Mary David drove as quickly
and as carefully as she could. Mickey monitored Mother’s heartbeat
and respiration. And prayed.

╬ ╬ ╬

Fortunately, someone had thought to call the
hospital and tell the ER they were coming. The station wagon pulled
into the ER drop-off fifty minutes after leaving St. Bridget’s.
Nurses came running out with a gurney. They laid the board on the
gurney and wheeled Mother Theodora inside and into a cubicle.

“She’s bleeding internally,” Mickey said
authoritatively as she accompanied the gurney into the cubicle. “We
need a surgeon right away – it’s already been over an hour.”

The nurses looked at each other.

“What?” Mickey snapped.

“We only have an orthopedic surgeon on call
this weekend,” one of the nurses explained. “The only other doctor
we have is Dr. Allenby, and he’s a GP.”

Just then, a tall, thin man came into the
cubicle. “What’s the situation?”

Mickey looked at him. “Greg?”

He stared back for a moment, then his eyes
widened in surprise. “Dr. Stewart? Is that you?”

“It’s me. Listen, Mother Theodora is – how
old?” she turned to Sister Mary David, suddenly realizing she had
no idea of Mother’s age.

“Seventy-two.”

“She fell down some steps, internal
injuries,” Mickey continued. “Haven’t been able to get a BP, pulse
is one thirty-four and weak, no idea yet if there are any
fractures. I understand there’s only ortho on call. Can we get a
Medivac out here?”

He shook his head. “I just heard them on the
scanner. They got called out to a multi-car pileup on I-90.”

“God help us,” she groaned. “Think…” she
muttered to herself.

“Dr. Stewart,” Greg said hesitantly, “I
don’t think we have a choice. You’re the only one here who can do
this.”

She stared at the floor. “Will you assist?”
she asked at last, looking up at him.

He nodded. She turned to the nurses. “Lori,
Cindy,” she said, looking at their name tags, “I’ll need one of you
to scrub in also. Has someone called the anesthesiologist?”

There was a tremendous amount of activity as
everyone went into motion. Mickey gave orders for Mother Theodora
to be prepped for surgery and the nuns and priest were politely
ushered out of the cubicle. Mickey came out to where they were
waiting.

“This could take several hours,” she told
them. “I don’t know if you want to wait here or back at the
abbey.”

“We’ll wait here,” they replied in
unison.

She glanced at Sister Anselma, then quickly
looked away, certain that her fear and uncertainty must be showing
in her eyes. Never a good sign in a surgeon about to operate on
someone.
How many times did I tell my residents that?
She
turned to go.

“Sister?” Sister Anselma’s voice stopped
her. “Could we pray before you go?”

She took Mickey’s hands in hers. Father
Andrew placed a hand on one shoulder and Sister Mary David the
other. “Father,” Sister Anselma prayed, “guide these hands in their
work. If it is your will, please allow them to heal our dear Mother
and return her to us. Amen.”