James Patterson: Woman of God

A few minutes later, Gilly’s finger was washed and bandaged, the glass shards were in a box in the trash; and now I was focused again on the time.

Gilly wriggled into her second-best dress, a blue one with a sash of embroidered daisies.

“Gorgeous,” I said.

I stepped into my clean, white surplice, and, peering into a small mirror propped on the bookcase, I finger combed my unruly ginger hair.

“You look beautiful, Mom,” she said, wrapping her arms around my waist.

I grinned down at her. “Thank you. Now, put on your shoes.”

“We’re not late, you know.”

“Not yet, anyway. Let’s go, silly Gilly. Let’s go.”

I BRACED myself, then Gilly and I stepped out onto the stoop.

The shifting crowd filling the street roared. Communicants, neighbors, people who had come here to catch a glimpse of me, ordinary people of every age and description, reached out their hands, lifted their babies, and chanted my name.

“Bri-gid! Bri-gid!”

I’d seen this outpouring of passion before, and still I wasn’t sure how to act. Sometimes the mood of a crowd turned dark. I’d seen that, too.

Gilly said, “Mom. You’ll be all right.”

She waved, and the crowd went wild again.

And then they pushed forward, toward the stoop. News broadcasters, megabloggers, televangelists, and entertainment-TV hosts pointed their microphones toward me, asking, “Brigid, are the rumors true? Have you gotten the call? Are you ready to go?”

I had answered their questions in the past but was always asked for more, and by now, I didn’t have any more. Gilly was too small to walk through this groundswell, so I hoisted her up, and with her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist, I stepped carefully down to the street, where the crowd was at eye level.

“Hey, everyone,” I said as I waded into the river of people. “Beautiful Easter Sunday, isn’t it? I would stop to talk, but we have to get going. We’ll be late.”

“Just one question,” shouted Jason Beans, a reporter from the Boston Globe who liked to be called Papa. He was wearing a button on his lapel, the single letter Y, which stood for the all-inclusive, universal question about everything: the heat waves, the long, frigid winters, the eerily brilliant sunsets, and ever-warming, rising seas. Why?

“We can walk and talk,” Beans was saying. He was standing between me and other reporters who were angling for their “just one question.”

I kind of liked the somewhat annoying Jason Beans, but Gilly and I couldn’t risk getting swallowed up by this crowd. We had to move.

“Have you gotten the call from the Vatican?” Beans asked.

“Aww, Papa. It’s a rumor, nothing more. And that’s the really big scoop. Now, pleeease pardon me. I have to go to church. I have a Mass to say.”

“Bri-gid! Bri-gid!”

Flowers flew at me, and hands grabbed at my skirts, and Jason Beans stepped in front of us and wedged open a path. Gilly and I drafted behind him. We crossed the street, and there, midblock, stood the grand brick church that had anchored this neighborhood for a century.

People crowded us from all directions, calling out, “We love you, Brigid. Brigid, will you remember us when you’re living in Rome?”

“I remember you right here and now, Luann. See you in church.”

By the time we reached the entrance to St. Paul’s, thousands were being funneled through the narrow streets, toward the entrance, and they understood that only a few hundred would fit inside the small neighborhood church. The panic was starting. They all wanted to see me.

Gilly was twisting in my arms, waving, laughing into the crook of my neck. “Mom, this is so great.”

With Beans acting as the tip of the spear, I entered the sacristy with my daughter still in my arms. I thanked the reporter, who shot his last, desperate questions at me.

I told him, “I’ll see you after Mass, Papa, I promise,” and closed the door.

I let Gilly down, and she fed our pet tabby cat, Birdie. Then my little girl ran out to the nave and squeezed her way into a front pew. I crossed myself, and, hoping that I would find the right words, I walked out to the altar.

The air was supercharged with expectation.

I looped the stole around my neck and stepped up to the altar. But instead of beginning the Mass in the traditional manner, I spoke to the congregation in the most personal way I knew how.

“That was a pretty rough scene out there on the Street,” I said to the congregants. “But I’m glad we’re all together now on this momentous Easter Sunday. We have a lot to reflect upon and much to pray for.”

A bearded man jumped to his feet at the rear of the church and called my name, demanding my attention.

“Look here, Brigid. Look at me.”

Did I know him? I couldn’t make out his face from where I stood, but then he walked up the aisle, crossed himself, and slipped his hand into his jacket.

In front of me, Gilly shouted, “Mom!” her face contorted in fear. But before I could speak to my precious daughter, I heard a cracking sound and felt a punch to my shoulder. I reached my hand out to Gilly.

There was another crack, and I staggered back and grabbed at the altar cloth, pulling it and everything on the altar down around me.

I fought hard to stay in the present. I tried to get to my feet, but I was powerless. The light dimmed. The screams faded, and I was dropping down into a bottomless blackness, and I couldn’t break my fall.

South Sudan, Africa

JEMILLA WAS beside my bed, yelling into my face, “Come, Doctor. They’re calling for you. Didn’t you hear?”

No, I hadn’t heard the squeal of the P.A. calling doctors to the O.R. I had only just fallen asleep. I pulled on my scrubs and splashed cold water on my face, saying, “What’s happening? Who else is on duty? Got coffee?”

Jemilla answered my questions. “Got new wounded, of course. You’re the last one up. How do you want your coffee? Cream? Sugar? Or the usual, we have no coffee at all?”

“You’re tough,” I said to the young girl standing right there.

She grinned and kept me in her sights while I stepped into my shoes. Then she ran out in front of me, yelling, “She’s coming, she’s coming now,” as I trotted down the dusty dirt path to the O.R.

We were in South Sudan in the drought season, in a hospital outpost in a settlement camp in the middle of a senseless and bloody civil war. The hospital was the product of an NGO organization called Kind Hands, and we were doing what we could in a desperate situation to keep bucking the tide of hopelessness.

The hospital compound was made up of eight shoddy concrete buildings roofed with corrugated tin or tarps or hay. The female staff lived in one building, the men in another. We ate and showered in the third when it wasn’t filled with the wounded and dying. We had the most primitive operating theater possible, a laughable closet of a lab, and three wards: Isolation, Maternity, and Recovery.

The professional staff was constantly changing as doctors went home and new ones came, and we were assisted by local volunteers, many of whom were internally displaced persons, IDPs, themselves.

Our current roster consisted of six doctors, a dozen nurses, and a dozen aides responsible for the emergency care of the eighty thousand residents of this camp. Yes, eight zero, followed by three more zeros.

All the doctors here had had to compete for an assignment with Kind Hands. We wanted to do good in the world, and yet very few doctors signed up for a second tour. It took only a couple of weeks for the enormity and the futility of the job to set in.