Miracle Woman (2 page)

Running her hands along the small chest and ribs she felt the pain his body had endured: unbearable. She gasped with it. It was too much for a child. She wanted to lift the pain from him, ease it, she wasn't prepared to let him die, not here like this: she wasn't going to let him go.

‘Timmy, you just got to stay with me,' she ordered in that voice that all parents reserve for their children. ‘I know you can hear me,' she insisted. ‘You
cannot
go! I won't let you go. Your mommy and your daddy and your brothers need you! Do you hear me, Timmy, you have to stay right here. You have to stay.'

The pain was intolerable; as she laid her hands on him she could sense it. The searing sharp agony, the intense pressure on his organs.

‘Here, lady! Give us some space!'

The paramedics had arrived and were anxious to move the public out of their way. Martha refused to budge from Timmy's side as they matter-of-factly checked him.

‘It's too late,' one of them said softly, looking over at the driver.

A murmur went around the crowd. Martha was conscious of Mary Rose's pale scared face, and of the driver of the car breaking down, hysterical, only a few feet away.

‘I didn't see him! As God is my judge, I didn't see him! I had the air on to cool the car down for the kids.'

‘We'll transfer him to Children's Hospital, but there's nothing more we can do,' declared the chief paramedic, a forty-year-old family man who tried to disguise his dismay at the death of a child.

Fury filled Martha as she realized they had already given up on Timmy and were just going through the motions for the sake of the shocked huddle of people standing around. God couldn't do this, shouldn't do this. Silently she prayed.
God, let him live. Come on, Timmy, hang on in there! Fight! Don't give up. Come on, Timmy, live! You've got to fight and not give up
.

There seemed no response.

‘Please, lady, I have to ask you to move out of the way, we got to try and move him from under these wheels.'

She couldn't let go of him, there was such pain in his heart and chest and stomach, inescapable pain, Martha could feel it as her hands rested on him, she wanted to take the pain away from him, draw it out, release the fear of taking a breath or moving that was killing him, making him want to run away and hide from it and leave his small broken body behind.

‘I'm here, Timmy,' she said slowly. ‘The pain is going, I can feel it going, leaving you. You must be able to feel it too!'

The heat was burning through the palms of her hands, running up the bones and veins of her arms as she reached that hiding place; her own breath caught in her throat with the impact.

‘Lady, I told you already. We've got to move him,' insisted the senior paramedic as he gestured for a few of the men to step forward and help raise the heavy vehicle. Hal was organizing them as the ambulance team tried to lift Timmy on to the gurney.

Martha kept her hands on him.

‘You his mom?'

She shook her head.

‘I'm a neighbour, that's all. His name's Timmy. Timmy Lucas. He lives down on Sycamore, just off Mill Street. I know him, know the family.'

She held her breath as the front end of the
Jeep was lifted, the grimacing faces of the lifters testament to the enormous weight of metal and rubber that had crushed the boy. There was such pain in his heart and chest! It was unbearable.

She had to untangle it, ease it. The energy was passing between them, pulsing from her to the child, like jump-starting a flat battery; she could feel the shudder of response, the faint flicker of life. There it was! A breath, so slight you would barely notice it, a breath!

‘Timmy!' It was Timmy. The real Timmy, she could feel him. ‘He's breathing.'

‘Oxygen, get the mask on him quick!' ordered the driver, pushing her aside as he slipped it over the boy's nose and mouth. ‘He's back.'

A low gasp went up from the swelling crowd of onlookers, and Martha noticed Hal, the security officer, wipe tears from his eyes.

‘You want to ride with him to the hospital?' offered the attendant.

‘Is he going to be all right?'

‘He's got a lot of injuries . . . who can say. It looks pretty bad.'

Martha scanned the crowd, looking for Mary Rose. She noticed the older boys who'd been with him standing silent, holding their bikes at the back.

‘I think that's his brother.' She motioned to a tall gangly fourteen-year-old standing just a few feet away, misery and guilt etched all over his
skinny face. Ralph Lucas clambered into the back of the ambulance at the paramedic's request and hunched worriedly over Timmy.

‘You next of kin?' asked the driver.

Martha shook her head. She wasn't family, and besides she wanted to go fetch his mother quickly and bring her to the hospital. That's what Timmy needed most, to see his mom and hear her voice. Tearful and shocked, Mary Rose stood in the sunlight waiting for her. Martha hugged her daughter close.

The crowd did not move: silent, as if waiting for something else to happen. One or two people patted her on the back.

‘Hey, lady, you saved that boy!'

‘Only for you he was a goner!'

‘I ain't never seen anything like it, never.'

Two cops were taking a statement from the driver and some witnesses. Martha gave them her name and number. She looked over, pitying the traumatized driver with her two small kids, her hands still shaking. One of the girls from the store was bringing her out a glass of water as Hal began to take charge and clear that part of the front lot. The ambulance turned and headed out of the slip road and the shoppers returned to their tasks, while the young mother sat stunned in the front seat of her Jeep as her baby roared and a police officer made notes.

She and Mary Rose were both still upset when they got into the car, but Martha was filled with a
deep sense of gratitude and immense relief that the boy had survived.

‘Mom! If it wasn't for you that kid would have died.'

‘Hush, Mary Rose, don't say such a thing.'

‘But I was there, I saw how you touched him. We all thought he was dead and then you just laid your hands on him and he began to breathe again.'

Martha didn't know what to say. It was the strangest thing. She remembered touching Timmy, wanting to take the pain away from him and praying to God not to do this, not to rob this child of his life, and feeling the immense heat and power come into her hands and the knowledge that somehow or other she was able to help lift some of the pain from him.

‘I don't know, Mary Rose.'

‘Mom, I saw it! You just put your hands on him and I don't know what happened but you saved him. Everyone around saw it.'

‘I prayed, Mary Rose.'

‘Prayed?'

‘That's all I did. I prayed and asked God to help and I don't know but I could feel my hands get hot, tingly, the strangest feeling, like there was electricity or something in them, and I was just sure and certain that Timmy was meant to live.'

This seemed to silence her daughter as they drove, both lost in thoughts of the boy and crazy explanations of what had happened. Turning into
the bottom of Sycamore Street, Martha pulled up outside the Lucas house, noting the neatly mowed lawn and the tub of creeping roses in the porch and wondering what she should say to his mother. She jumped out of the car and quickly ran up towards the front porch.

‘She ain't there,' the old man from next door informed her, busy tying up a cascade of magenta petunias that tumbled from a basket on his front step. ‘Had to go to the hospital in a hurry as one of her boys got hurt.'

Martha turned around, relieved at being spared the onerous duty of being the bearer of such bad news.

‘Shall I give her a message?'

‘No thanks, it's fine.'

Pulling into her own driveway minutes later, she felt sapped of energy, depleted. She couldn't take this heat and promised herself the luxury of a cool shower before the evening, as she and Mary Rose carried in the things from the car.

THE McGILLS AND
the Kellys gathered around the table that night and Martha's mind was still haunted by the thought of the injured child as she crushed garlic and juiced lemons, automatically going through the motions as she prepared the chicken dish.

Mike and the children had made a great fuss of her seventy-two-year-old mother when she arrived. Frances Kelly passed her overnight bag to Patrick, their eldest, to carry up to the guest room. Her brother Jack and his wife Annie and their eight- and five-year-old boys were making themselves comfortable as they first presented their grandmother with her birthday gifts.

‘You shouldn't have! You just shouldn't have gone and spent money on gifts! You all know I've got everything I need already,' she protested.

Annie's eyes met Martha's. Both of them knew how hard it was to buy for the ageing Irish matriarch, who was now unwrapping the fine
knitted lamb's-wool cardigan in a delicate heather colour that would show off her eyes and skin tone perfectly, and a bottle of lavender perfume.

Frances sprayed a mist of it across the room.

‘It's beautiful, Annie. You know I don't hold with those fancy expensive French perfumes at all. The simple fragrances of nature are much better.'

Martha could see Annie blush almost as if her mother-in-law had been at the counter of Neiman Marcus when she had chosen the inexpensive bottle over the classic French Nina Ricci one. Frances Kelly still had her wicked way with words.

Alice was hopping up and down with excitement and Martha watched as she clambered on to her grandmother's lap with their gifts. The specially wrapped and matched paper with its Celtic motif was torn and tossed unnoticed to the wooden floor.

‘I'll help you to open them, Granny,' offered their eight-year-old daughter with her green eyes and winning ways.

Martha had bought a new Anglepoise reading lamp for her mother.

‘It'll go beside your bed, Granny, and help your tired old eyes,' said Alice.

Martha bit her lip trying not to laugh as Jack winked at her.

Then there was the new housecoat in a soft pink, which would be snug and warm in the winter, and a hell of a lot better than the tattered
tartan one her mother had worn for about ten years.

‘And I suppose this is if I have to go to the hospital or suchlike. Between you all I'm gathering up a fine collection of night attire, a fine one!'

Lastly was a book of
Irish Country Dwellings
, which Martha had managed to unearth in a small bookstore the last time she'd been to Cambridge. Her mother turned it over appreciatively, glancing at the photo spreads.

‘Look here, Alice, there's an old farmhouse like the one where I lived with my mammy and daddy before we came to live in Boston.'

Frances Kelly slowly flipped through the book filled with images of stone cottages and whitewashed farmhouses, and simple dwellings with thatched roofs, and slates and tiles. There were kitchen gardens, straggling floral borders, hen-houses and gateposts and warm pine dressers. All a reminder of her girlhood, spent watching out those tiny squared windowpanes, wanting to see the world.

‘Thank you, Martha love, and all of you for such a thoughtful present.'

Martha busied herself in the warmth of the kitchen as Mike served drinks. Uncomplainingly he'd run out and gotten the remainder of what they needed. Now Jack and he were busy discussing the Boston Wolfhounds' coming rugby
season. Checking that all was ready, Martha smoothed down her pale blue Liz Claiborne soft denim skirt and co-ordinating round-necked shirt, before getting them all sitting down around the old cherrywood table talking. Lemon chicken and baby roast potatoes, a big dish of mixed salad and minted peas – even the kids were happy with the meal.

The temperature had dropped outside and she'd been tempted to move the party to the wooden table and chairs out back, but knew instinctively her mother wouldn't hear of it. Barbecues and insects were all very fine for Fourth of July, Labor Day and beachside gatherings but not for her mother's birthday. Frances Kelly, if she was to sit and enjoy a birthday meal, wanted to sip her chilled wine from Waterford Crystal, and fold an Irish linen napkin on her lap and feel the weight of traditional Newbridge cutlery between her fingers. ‘Small things, but a part of who we are,' she'd insist.

Martha could remember a few glasses with a mishmash of patterns that had been called ‘the crystal', when she was a girl, as well as a tablecloth and a few off-white almost beige starched napkins which her mother produced at Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and other festive days, but otherwise she had no idea where her mother got her notions from. Fiercely proud of their heritage, Martha and her brothers had been raised to celebrate their Irish roots, not in a shamrock
and shillelagh way, but in the quiet knowledge of who they were and the people they had come from. Her mother had been more delighted by the news that her new son-in-law Mike McGill had some Irish in him than that he was an honours graduate from Boston College.

‘Go and get your granny's birthday cake,' Martha said to the children.

Alice and Mary Rose were up in a flash. That was one thing that kids never outgrew – putting the candles on the cake and carrying it in. She hoped they wouldn't overdo the candles.

‘Mom, you look great! Annie and I were just saying you'd never guess you were seventy-two – never!'

Only her eldest brother Jack could get away with it. Her sister-in-law cast her a despairing glance.

The candlelight highlighted her mother's good complexion and softly tinted fair hair which made her look years younger than she actually was. Frances Kelly had always taken a pride in her appearance. Mike passed her mother a measure of Bushmills whiskey – only the best – adding water from a small crystal jug.