In This Small Spot (19 page)

Mickey couldn’t respond. Her throat was
suddenly too tight. She squeezed Sister Anselma’s hands with one
last look and left them.

Lori showed her to the women’s locker room.
“Here are some scrubs, Doctor… I mean Sister…” she stumbled, not
sure how to address her.

Mickey smiled. “Just call me Mickey.”
Sitting alone in the locker room, Sister Anselma’s words kept
running through her head. “If it is your will…” Mickey had never
prayed like that when she was practicing, had never thought in
those terms. She hadn’t been praying for Danielle Wilson like that,
even now. It was her will that every patient would live. She had
never considered that it might be God’s will that some would not.
Quickly, she changed, hanging her habit in a locker. She pulled on
shoe covers, and tied on a cap and mask. Exiting the other end of
the locker room, Mickey joined Greg at the scrub sink. Cindy was
already in the OR, laying out instruments.

“So, what are you doing here, Greg?” Mickey
asked as she began scrubbing.

“Well, I’m from the Rochester area, so when
I finished my residency in family medicine, I came back up here. I
fill in here at the ER every now and then.” He scrubbed. “Um, what
about you?”

Mickey smiled. “You mean, what is one of
your old professors doing in a nun’s habit?”

He grinned. “Yeah, kind of.”

“I left Hopkins over two years ago to do
this. I didn’t plan to be operating again.”

“I can’t think of anyone better,” he said
sincerely.

She took a deep breath. “Ready?”

Five hours later, Greg found Father Andrew,
Sister Mary David and Sister Anselma praying in the hospital’s tiny
chapel. Anxiously, they looked up as he entered. He looked
exhausted.

“She’s stable for now,” he told them as he
collapsed into a pew. “Dr. Stewart had to remove her spleen – it
was ruptured. The liver had to be repaired and there were some
intestinal bleeds as well. We don’t have an ICU here, so we’re
going to keep her in the recovery room where we can monitor
her.”

At the looks of relief on their faces, he
hastened to caution them, “She’s not out of danger yet. She may
very well need more than one surgery to fix all the damage, and
even then...”

Father Andrew said, “Thank you, Doctor. Why
don’t we go back to St. Bridget’s and update the community?” He
glanced at his watch. “It’s nearly midnight, but I imagine everyone
will be up.”

“I’d like to stay,” Sister Anselma said.

Sister Mary David nodded. “We’ll be back
tomorrow to see how she is.”

When they had gone, Greg leaned his elbows
on his knees, his head resting in his hands.

“Are you all right?” Sister Anselma asked
solicitously.

He sat up. “I’m fine. Just tired.” He looked
at her. “I did one of my surgical rotations with her, but I never
saw anything like this.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

He shook his head. “There was so much blood,
I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Her hands, they moved so
fast, so certainly. She’d get one bleed under control, and find two
more. She was amazing. I can’t believe she’s not doing this
anymore.” He looked at Sister Anselma quickly. “Sorry, I didn’t
mean to imply –”

“It’s all right,” she assured him.

“Would you like to see them?” he asked.

“Yes, if I may,” Sister Anselma answered in
surprise.

He smiled. “Sure, come with me.”

He led her down a corridor, her eyes
squinting a bit from the harsh fluorescent lighting. He propped
open the door of the recovery room for her. Mother Theodora was the
only patient, a whole host of monitors standing like sentinels
around her bed. A bag of blood hung from a pole at the head of the
bed. Mickey was standing on the far side of the bed, checking a
monitor. She had removed her mask, but still had her cap and scrubs
on. She looked up as Sister Anselma entered, and came around the
bed.

“Hey there,” she said, but then suddenly
looked concerned. “Are you okay? You looked flushed.”

“No, I’m fine,” Sister Anselma hastily
reassured her. “It’s just that…” she looked over at Mother Theodora
lying in the bed.

“I know. It’s hard.”

Sister Anselma nodded, keeping her eyes on
Mother.

“Come and sit,” Mickey insisted, indicating
a chair next to Mother’s bed. She pulled another up for
herself.

“Dr. Allenby said she’s stable,” Sister
Anselma said quietly.

“For now. The problem with internal injuries
is it’s so easy to miss something, or new bleeds can develop as the
inflammation worsens, or the whole abdomen can become septic if
there’s even the tiniest nick in the intestines.” She watched
Mother’s pasty, greyish-white face. “There’s just so much that can
go wrong.”

“She looks so frail.”

“I know, but she is a very tough woman,”
Mickey said.

“And how are you?” Sister Anselma glanced at
Mickey.

Mickey expelled a deep breath. “I’m okay. I
had to stay focused on the details and not think about who the
patient was, or I’m not sure I could have done it.”

“Yes, you could have. I had complete faith
in you,” Sister Anselma said seriously.

Mickey looked at her quizzically. “Why would
you say that?”

Sister Anselma looked at her as if this
should be obvious. “Because you’re you, Michele.”

Mickey couldn’t meet her gaze anymore. She
got up and went to the other side of the bed, busying herself
checking monitors and lines. Nurses came and went as they continued
their vigil. Greg came to say goodnight.

“The nurses have my phone number if anything
happens and you need me.”

“Thanks so much for everything,” Mickey said
appreciatively.

He grinned at her. “Just a little payback
for all the extra time you spent teaching me surgical
technique.”

As the night crept by, Sister Anselma began
nodding off. Her head jerked a couple of times, and Mickey went to
her, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t you lie down
in this next bed?”

Sister Anselma protested, angry at herself
for having fallen asleep. “It’s all right. I’ll wake you if I need
anything. This is going to be a long night,” Mickey promised
her.

Mickey sat between them, two women who had
become such an integral part of her life. She watched Mother
Theodora closely for any change in her condition, but her gaze kept
wandering to Sister Anselma as she lay sleeping. She had never seen
her face this unguarded, and she watched, transfixed, aware of a
familiar, unwelcome stirring of her heart as she did.

Sister Anselma was startled awake by monitor
alarms going off and urgent voices.

“BP is dropping.”

“Call Dr. Allenby and the anesthesiologist
immediately.”

“Let’s go everybody.”

Sister Anselma leapt out of the bed, trying
to stay out of the way. She saw Mickey helping to push Mother’s bed
back into the OR. She looked at a clock on the wall, and saw that
it was just after four a.m.

Unsure where to wait, she went back to the
chapel, praying fervently, “please, please, please… don’t take
her,” but she knew she was praying just as hard for Michele’s sake
as she was for Mother’s. After a long time without word, she went
outside for some fresh air. Dawn was just beginning to break. It
was too cold to stay outside for long, and as she came back in she
saw that it was almost seven. She went back to the recovery room
and peered through the window in the door. She saw Mother Theodora
there with Dr. Allenby and several nurses. She went to the chapel,
and found Mickey standing in front of the altar, her head bowed,
one hand covering her face. Sister Anselma went to her and placed a
hand on her shoulder. Startled, Mickey turned. Her cheeks were
wet.

“We almost lost her,” she whispered.

Sister Anselma guided her to a pew and they
sat. “What happened?”

Mickey wiped her cheeks. “She developed a
bleed in the superior mesen – it doesn’t matter which artery. It
was bad. She actually flatlined on the table, but we were able to
get her pressure stabilized.”

Mickey closed her eyes and bowed her head
again, shaking it. “I don’t know what brought her back, but it
wasn’t me.” She clenched her hands together in her lap. All the
adrenaline of the last hours had left her shaky and weak. She
didn’t want Sister Anselma to see her hands trembling, but she
wasn’t really surprised to feel Sister Anselma’s hand reach over to
hers. “You’ve never been able to hide anything from her,” she
chided herself, “why would you think you can hide this?” She
clasped the offered hand tightly.

“Michele,” Sister Anselma said in her calm,
comforting voice, “don’t you understand by now that you are the
prayer? Whatever you do, whether it’s surgery or making a tapestry
or doing the laundry, if you do it with love and reverence, then
you and the prayer are indistinguishable.”

They sat in silence like that for several
minutes. At last, Mickey released her hand and stood, saying,
“Let’s go see how Mother is doing.”

Chapter 24

David Farley found Mickey in the doctors’
lounge. “Hey, Mick, can I speak with you for a moment?”

“Sure,” she replied, grabbing her coffee cup
and following him into a consultation room where a few medical
students sat, going over some x-rays.

“Guys, could you give us a minute?” he
asked.

They got up and left the room as David
tapped computer keys, bringing a series of MRI images up on a large
screen mounted on the wall. Mickey stepped closer to look at the
images.

“Holy cow, David. Look at the extent of that
spinal tumor. And look here,” she pointed, “it’s already spread
into the lungs, the liver…”

Her eyes flicked to the corner of the
monitor where the patient’s name was printed. Her coffee cup
crashed to the floor, and she felt the room spin. David grabbed her
and helped her into a chair.

“I’m so sorry, Mickey,” he said in a low
voice. “I should have ordered an MRI right away.”

Her white face was expressionless. “A few
weeks wouldn’t have mattered,” she waved her hand toward the
images, “not with all that.”

He sat miserably, not sure what to say
next.

“Have you told her?” Mickey asked.

“No,” his voice cracked, “not yet.”

She got up and walked over to the telephone
on the wall. She punched the numbers and waited. “Alice? Can you
meet me at the office?”

Chapter 25

When Mother Theodora finally regained
consciousness, Mickey was hovering. “You look terrible,” Mother
said in a weak voice.

Mickey smiled in relief. “You’ve looked
better yourself.”

When Father Andrew and Sister Mary David had
returned to the hospital the day after the accident, they brought
Sister Scholastica with them. Mickey had permitted them to come
into the recovery room, but warned them that Mother was not yet
conscious.

“I’ll stay until she is out of danger,” she
said firmly, knowing full well that she was speaking to the acting
Abbess, and that she should have asked permission. It barely
registered that Sister Scholastica didn’t chastise her.

When they left, Sister Anselma returned to
the abbey with them, leaving Mickey to her solitary vigil. She
stayed in the recovery room, sleeping fifteen to twenty minutes at
a time in the next bed before starting awake and rushing over to
check on her patient.

When she was finally stable, Mother was
transferred to a regular room. Greg Allenby stopped by two or three
times a day and someone from the abbey, usually Father Andrew, came
daily to check on Mother and provide updates to the community
where, Mickey was certain, a round the clock vigil had been held,
the nuns rotating through shifts in an unceasing prayer for
Mother’s recovery – “and for you,” they would tell Mickey later.
Greg introduced Mickey to Ian Zakovski, a general surgeon in
practice in Millvale. They discussed Mother Theodora’s continued
care, and finally, five days after the fall, Mickey felt
comfortable leaving her. She called the abbey to ask for a ride
home.

Sister Scholastica came with Sister Mary
David to the hospital. They visited Mother briefly, reassuring her
all was well at St. Bridget’s and conferring with her as to her
instructions for the abbey during her absence. By the time they
left her room, Mickey had changed back into her habit and was
waiting for them.

She sat silently in the back seat of the
station wagon. Sister Mary David watched her worriedly in the
rear-view mirror. Mickey looked gaunt, and there were dark circles
under her eyes. The habit hid much, but Sister Mary David was sure
Mickey had hardly eaten. “Mother said you are to go to bed for the
rest of the day, and tomorrow you are not to work or attend
classes. You may stay in your cell all day if you wish,” she said
to Mickey’s reflection. Mickey nodded but still said nothing.

When they got back to the abbey, Sister
Scholastica pulled her aside. “Sister Michele, you have done an
immeasurable service for the community.” Her sharp, hawkish
features softened a little. “I… I would like to apologize for my
earlier hostility.”

Mickey looked at her tiredly. “Sister, your
hostility was based on what you learned about my past. That hasn’t
changed. I’m the same person I was then. The only thing that has
changed is now I’m a lesbian who operated on someone important to
you. I will accept your apology for the sake of the community, but
unless it’s based on a change of heart, it doesn’t mean much.” And
with that she went to her cell where she undressed, fell into bed
and slept for over twenty-four hours.

╬ ╬ ╬

Two weeks from the day of her fall, Mother
Theodora was released from the hospital, but “what a weird two
weeks,” Mickey would tell her later.

She encountered Father Andrew in the garden
a couple of days after she got back, where he was rebuilding a
trellis that had partially collapsed the previous winter under a
heavy snow.