In This Small Spot (31 page)

“Kind of,” he grinned. “Sour apples. I like
them early before they’re ripe.” He fell in step with her. “You’ve
been going out to the farm almost every day. I thought you had been
rotated elsewhere.”

“I was, but I like the farm work,” she said.
“Makes me feel more productive than whiling away my Recreation time
doing nothing.”

“Hmmm,” he intoned. “And it has nothing to
do with… say, needing to tire yourself out or distract yourself
from anything?”

Startled, Mickey halted. “Why would you say
that?”

He looked at her. “You forget. You’re
talking to an expert at denial and running from personal demons. I
recognize the signs.” He smiled when Mickey just stared at the
ground. “It’s okay. We all go through this.”

“Do we?” but she didn’t say it aloud.
Instead, she said, “I really should go. Sister Regina is waiting
for me.”

“All right,” he said, turning back toward
the abbey. “But if you ever need to talk…”

Mickey didn’t look back as she descended the
knoll separating the abbey from the farm buildings. “Damn,” she
muttered as she walked. If others were noticing…
maybe I should
request to be transferred from the vestment room,
she worried
as she neared the barn.

“Oh, there you are,” Sister Regina said. She
already had the rear-end of the trailer up on jackstands, both
wheels off so they could get to the rear axle. “We need to re-pack
these bearings with grease,” she said, holding a can out to Mickey.
“Roll up your sleeves. This is a messy job.”

An hour later, the wheels were back on and
the trailer pronounced fit to go. “Thank you so much,” said Sister
Regina gratefully. “This would have taken me an extra day or two on
my own.”

“You’re welcome,” Mickey said, using a rag
to wipe her hands clean of excess grease.

The bell rang for None. “We’d better get
back,” Sister Regina said, pulling a tarp over the trailer.

Together, they walked back to the abbey.
They topped the knoll and their eyes were caught by movement below.
Black smoke was billowing into the sky from the roof of the
vestment wing.

“Call the fire department,” Mickey shouted
over her shoulder as she took off in a sprint down the hill. She
went to the back entrance to the vestment room and wrenched the
door open to find the interior already filled with thick, black,
choking smoke. She could see flames against the far wall, running
vertically up to the roof timbers where more flames blazed. The
wiring. She took as deep a breath as she could and ran to the
circuit box on the wall. Sparks kept bursting from the overhead
lights, raining down and starting smaller fires below as cloth and
fibers were set ablaze. When she got to the electrical box, some of
the breakers had actually melted. She grabbed a wooden shuttle from
the nearest loom, and used it to whack the main breaker to the off
position. Coughing and choking, she made her way back to the door
and slammed it shut to find Mother Theodora and several others
hurrying over.

“Has the fire department been called?” she
gasped.

“Yes,” said Mother. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Mickey answered, still
coughing. “I think that bad wiring may have started it. Is the rest
of the abbey safe?”

“For now,” said Mother. They were both
thinking the same thing – it would take the engines over fifty
minutes to get out to the abbey.

Suddenly, Sister Catherine ran up to them,
crying, “Where’s Sister Anselma?”

“What do you mean, where is she?” Mother
Theodora demanded.

“When she heard about the fire, she said she
was going to get the tapestries. She never came back up the stairs.
I thought she must have come out this entrance.”

“God, no,” Mickey groaned. She pulled loose
from Mother Theodora’s restraining grasp and ran back in, ignoring
the shouts behind her. She immediately realized she couldn’t
breathe and wouldn’t last more than a minute or two. Dropping to
her hands and knees, she scrambled to the dye sink where she tore
her veil off, soaked it in water and wrapped it over her face to
better filter her air. Staying close to the floor, she crawled to
the work table where the large tapestry had been. She couldn’t see
more than about two feet in front of her. Squinting through tears
caused by the acrid smoke, her hands felt Sister Anselma’s limp
body before her eyes recognized the black form.

Mickey transferred her wet veil to Sister
Anselma, quickly wrapping it around her head. As she grabbed Sister
Anselma under the armpits and began dragging her toward the door,
she could hear timbers groaning and cracking overhead. Showers of
embers rained down through the smoke and hit them, smoldering and
burning through the cloth of their habits. Mickey felt like she was
drowning – each breath she took seared her lungs. “Help me,” she
prayed desperately, tugging, stumbling backwards, hoping to God she
was going in the right direction. Everything looked different as
she fought to keep from panicking. Where was the door? The smoke
was so thick she couldn’t see any hint of daylight, but she should
be near it by now. An enormous crack sounded overhead. Mickey
heaved with the last of her strength, throwing Sister Anselma’s
body as hard as she could, just before a heavy burning timber
crushed her to the floor. The last thing she remembered was black
skirts coming out of the smoke, pulling Sister Anselma away.

Chapter 38

“Why won’t you tell me where you’re
going?”

Mickey looked over at Susan as she brought
her suitcase out to the living room.

“I did tell you,” Mickey reminded her. “I’m
going to visit Jamie.”

“Uh huh.” Susan clearly didn’t believe her.
“You’ve visited Jamie more this year than in all the years I’ve
known you put together.”

It was true. Mickey had been going up to New
York for weekend visits every month or two. What no one, not even
Jamie, knew was that she was going to visit with Mother Theodora.
Jamie thought she was off fishing. Mickey just wasn’t ready to tell
anyone else about the abbey yet – she wasn’t even sure what all
these visits were leading to.

“And what about all the other strange things
you’ve been doing lately? Going back to that church? Selling the
house on the bay? Getting rid of Alice’s car?”

“I don’t need two cars,” Mickey explained
patiently, “and Jennifer’s had broken down for the fourth time. The
church, I go to mainly for Christopher – he always made us feel
welcome. As for the house, I haven’t been there since – in months.
Why hang onto it?”

She had been slowly selling off extra
things. Without Alice to go to the bay with, she had felt
absolutely no desire to be there. It actually felt good to be
“lightening up her life,” as she had come to think of it. She had
asked her financial advisor to invest the money from Alice’s life
insurance and the sale of the bay house for her.

“Are you seeing someone?” Susan was like a
terrier.

Mickey laughed. “I promise you, if I ever
start seeing someone, I’ll let you know.” She looked into her
friend’s knowing eyes. “I’ve just needed to get away – away from
this house, away from work. These visits have been good for
me.”

She was telling the truth. Mother Theodora
was very skilled at drawing her out of herself while seeming to be
carrying on casual conversation. Slowly, Mickey had discovered –
“no, re-discovered,” Mother Theodora would have pointed out to her
– that what seemed to be missing from her life, now that Alice was
gone, was some kind of spiritual anchor, something to ground
her.

“I don’t think I could talk about this to my
brother or my friends,” Mickey had said to Mother at their last
visit. “Not yet.”

Mother shrugged. “If you did, they would all
try to help, and in the clamor, it might be hard to hear the
whispers.”

“Whispers?”

Mother Theodora smiled. “Sometimes God
knocks us off our feet with something dramatic, but, in my
experience, more often, he simply whispers and waits for us to be
quiet enough to hear.”

Chapter 39

“How are her vitals?”

“We need to change the dressing.”

“Mother, may I have permission to stay?”

Snatches of conversation filtered through
the haze. Accompanying them were other sounds: beeps, rhythmic
wheezing, bed rails being raised and lowered. Vaguely, Mickey felt
like she could come up out of the haze if she wanted to, like
choosing to wake up from a dream, but it was comfortable in the
haze, and so she chose to sink back in whenever she got too near
the surface.

Some of the voices were familiar – Jamie,
Mother Theodora. She thought she heard Alice’s voice sometimes.
“Take me with you, I’m ready,” she tried to say to her.

Then, in her ear, was Sister Anselma’s
voice. “Michele, please don’t leave me.” She didn’t respond at
first… not until that plea was repeated, and then reluctantly, she
broke through the surface into harsh light.

Blinking, her eyes had difficulty focusing.
Sister Anselma’s face was the first thing she recognized. She tried
to speak but couldn’t. Sister Anselma saw the fear in her eyes and
said in a calming voice, “Don’t try to talk. You’re hooked up to a
ventilator.” Slowly, Mickey realized the ventilator tube was
inserted into her trachea with a feeding tube running through her
nose as she lay on her side.

Sister Anselma smoothed Mickey’s hair. “I
can’t believe you’re awake,” she murmured, her eyes filling with
tears. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t wake up.”

Mickey tried to lift her hand, but couldn’t.
Again, her eyes widened in fear. Sister Anselma held her hand,
saying, “They have you restrained. They were afraid you might panic
when you woke and start pulling at tubes.”

Mickey saw then that her hands were tied to
the bedrail by soft, padded straps. She mouthed words, hoping
Sister Anselma would be able to read her lips.

“How long?” Sister Anselma interpreted. “Six
days. Do you remember what happened?”

Mickey frowned. “Some,” she mouthed.

“You came to rescue me from the fire. When
you got me near the door, a roof timber fell on you. Some of the
sisters carried me out while others got the timber off you and
pulled you free.” Her voice cracked as she tried to continue. “Your
spine was… your spine was broken in several places and you have
serious burns on your back.” She was crying so hard she had to
stop. Frustrated by her own inability to communicate, all Mickey
could do was squeeze her hand. When Sister Anselma could speak
again, she said, “You’ve had two surgeries to fuse your spine,
although the doctors argued over whether to do it now because of
your burns and the risk of infection.”

Mickey pointed to the ventilator tube.

“Your lungs and airways were damaged by the
heat and smoke.”

For a moment, the only sound was the
asthmatic pumping of the ventilator. Mickey mouthed more words.

“How am I?” Sister Anselma’s eyes filled
with tears again as she laid a gentle hand on Mickey’s cheek. “I’m
all right. I was in the hospital for a couple of days for smoke
inhalation and a few small burns, but I’m fine. You saved my life,”
she finished in a whisper in between ventilator gasps.

Just then a nurse saw that Mickey was awake
and called for a doctor.

“Would you wait outside?” said a sixtyish
man in a white coat as he entered the room accompanied by three
younger men, also in white coats, in addition to the nurse. Pushing
their way to the bed, the oldest man said in an overloud voice,
“I’m Dr. Atwood. You’ve been injured in a fire and we have you on a
breathing machine.”

“She’s a physician,” Sister Anselma said
from behind him.

“What?” he asked, irritated that she was
still there.

“She’s a physician,” she repeated. “You
don’t have to speak to her as if she were an imbecile. And you
don’t have to shout at her,” she added with clear disdain.

The medical students smirked at each other
as Dr. Atwood responded with a lame, “Oh.” Raising his bushy
eyebrows, he said, “Well then, Doctor, you suffered severe
respiratory damage from the fire as well as comminuted fractures of
T10 to L5. We’ve done two procedures to internally fixate the
fractures and stabilize your spine. We don’t yet know the extent of
the neurological damage.”

He moved to the foot of the bed where Mickey
could no longer see him. “Can you move your toes?” She wiggled
them. “Did you hear me? Move your toes,” he repeated. Angrily, she
wiggled them again.

“Well,” he said, more to the students than
to her, “it’s very early. We’ll have to wait and see.”

The rhythmic wheeze of the ventilator was
the only sound in the room as they left. Sister Anselma came back
to the bed and gently wiped away the tear rolling from the corner
of Mickey’s eye.

╬ ╬ ╬

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but we need to do a
dressing change,” said a pleasant-looking nurse as she brought a
tray of supplies into Mickey’s hospital room.

Jamie and Jennifer had come for a visit,
along with Mother Theodora, Sister Mary David and Sister Anselma
who had been making the trip to Syracuse from the abbey two or
three times a week for the past month.

“May I assist?” Sister Mary David offered.
“I’m the abbey’s infirmarian, and I may be doing these dressing
changes when Sister Michele returns to St. Bridget’s.”

“We’ll wait outside,” Mother Theodora
said.

“When did they start the grafts?” Jamie
asked as they walked down the hall to the solarium.

“Just last week,” Mother replied. “They
wanted to start them earlier, but the doctors had to be sure she
wasn’t going to need any further surgeries on her spine first. It’s
a slow process. Apparently, they can only do small areas at a time,
as new skin grows back to take for the grafts. Harvesting, they
call it.”