James Patterson - Woman of God

“Ah, Brigid. I’ve been waiting to see you.”

I couldn’t say the same, but I hugged him. He was as substantial as ever. He smelled good. His eyes sparkled. He was so-alive.

I asked him, “Is this God’s plan for me, Father? The plan you were always rattling on about?”

“What do you think?” he asked me. He was grinning like a fool. “Brigid, get into the car. Do you know where we’re going?”

“I guess you’ll tell me.”

“You have a very dry sense of humor,” he said.

“And an enormous confusion about what the heck has happened.”

I got into the backseat with Gilly, and she turned her bright, always curious gaze to the countryside, the goats tied to trees, the meager shops lining the streets of the town. Beyond the town, the long dirt road cut through the open plains and over the dusty hills. It all looked solid and real.

I was hardly surprised when we pulled up to Magwi Clinic at sunset. The clinic was lit up from within, and I heard the loud hum of the generator. This had been a very good place for me. Perhaps Gilly could be happy here, too.

As I got out of the car and looked around, I took in the tent village under the red acacia trees outside the clinic, much bigger than it had been before. I heard babies crying and the braying of donkeys and saw a new structure beyond the tent city and opposite the clinic.

It was a church with the name Jesus Mary Joseph, Magwi, on a hand-painted board affixed to the siding. The doors were painted red, symbolizing the phrase To God through the blood of Christ.

My eyes welled up. Tears spilled over. And when I heard my name, I turned. I recognized her voice before I saw her, and there she was.

Sabeena, her hair wrapped in colorful fabric, was running down the steps from the clinic, and two tall girls were running right behind her. Sabeena, Jemilla, and Aziza all reached Gilly before they reached me, and they hugged her and danced her around as if she was a long-lost sister as well as my baby girl.

Sabeena screamed my name again, and when she got to me, she almost knocked me off my feet with her full-body hug.

“Oh, Brigid, I’ve missed you so much. Come inside. Albert has been cooking all day. Father Delahanty,” she called over my shoulder, “you come, too. Dinner is served.”

Were we all dead, living on a parallel plane alongside the living? I said, “Sabeena, I don’t understand.”

“Don’t worry. You are off duty, doctor.”

I began the climb up the steps to the long porch, my mind racing in circles inside my skull, my arm around Sabeena’s waist. We had just reached the old screen door when a horrible racket cut through the night sounds of babies wailing, young girls laughing, insects chirping.

“Dr. Douglass. You are needed in room four forty-one. Dr. Douglass. You’re needed-”

And that was when my reality split.

God. Are You here?

I was standing on the the long porch of Magwi Clinic, Sabeena’s arm around my waist and mine around hers.

And at the same time, I watched myself lying in a hospital bed. My eyes were closed. There were tubes in my arms, and a doctor was sitting on the edge of my bed, saying and repeating my name.

Sabeena was saying, “We’ll take the night shift, Brigid. Just like old times.”

I stopped on the stairs and looked out past the JMJ church, the cross at the top of the steeple silhouetted against the cobalt-blue sky. I saw long lines of people streaming toward Magwi Clinic with baskets on their heads, babies in their arms, their bare feet stirring up the golden dust as they made their way down the road. I couldn’t see the end of the line. There were so many people, and there was so much to do.

The doctor sitting near my feet adjusted the valve on the IV line.

“Brigid. Dr. Fitzgerald. This is Dr. Douglass. Can you hear me?”

God. What should I do?

There was a vibration inside my mind, the hum that was almost a voice. You know.

I was so warm, I thought I had a fever. A hot wind came up and blew at my clothes.

I opened my eyes and gasped.

I hurt all over.

I WAS in a hospital bed with needles in my arms and a cannula in my nose. I ripped that out and blinked.

“Okay. Good,” said the doctor. He looked to be in his sixties. The name tag on his white jacket read J. Douglass.

He asked, “How do you feel?”

“On a scale of one to ten?”

“That’s right,” said the doctor.

“Five. It hurts to breathe. What happened to me?”

“You took a couple of bullets, doctor. One passed through your left shoulder and your back and exited under your shoulder blade. The second bullet was a doozy.”

“New medical term?”

“Just coined.”

“You’re my surgeon?”

He nodded, told me to call him “Josh.”

“After you were shot in the arm, you dropped to your knees and put out your hand to stop the bullet. It didn’t stop. It went through your palm, traveled along your humerus, broke rib number three, missed your heart by a millimeter. After that, this misshapen lump of lead zigzagged as it hit several ribs and came to a stop at your right hip bone. Your major organs were spared. I call this both a doozy and a kind of miracle. I take it you pray.”

“I do.”

“Don’t stop. You came through the surgery beautifully. I’ve kept you moderately sedated in the ICU, and, although you’ve opened your eyes a few times, you didn’t want to wake up.

“I had you moved to this private room a couple of hours ago and turned down your Versed. I’m going to take a look at you, okay?”

Dr. Douglass examined me, and when he was finished looking at my wounds, listening to my heart and my lungs, flashing a light into my eyes, he said he’d be back in a few hours to check on me again.

Then he opened the curtain with a flourish.

He said, “Your friend has been waiting for you to come out of it.”

I stared around at the flowers around the room, enough of them to fill a flower shop. My quilt from home covered my bed, and there were balloons tied to the foot rail with a sparkly ribbon and a note reading Get Well, Mommy. The TV was on. I looked up. Baseball. Sox versus the Yankees. Fourth inning. Sox were up by two.

The TV went black.

That was when I saw Zach sitting in a chair against the window, backlit by sunshine coming through the glass. He had the remote control in hand and tears in his eyes.

“Welcome back, Brigid. You made it,” he said. “I knew you would.”

IT WAS coming back to me. Easter Sunday. The bearded man in the back of the church shouting, Look here, Brigid. Look at me, followed by Gilly’s scream. Lawrence House had shot me.

“Zach, where’s Gilly? Is she all right?”

“She’s perfect. Congregants are fighting to take care of her, and she’s been here to see you every day and twice on Sunday.”

I let out a huge sigh. Then, “What happened to House?”

“Three guys slammed him to the ground before he could empty his gun. He’s in jail. No bond. He’s not going anywhere.”

“Thanks for being here, Zachary.”

“Of course.”

He reached over and squeezed my hand.

“How long have I been out?”

“A week. You breezed through the surgery. Well, this wasn’t your first rodeo, was it?”

I laughed. It hurt. “No jokes, please.”

Zach said, “Okay, no joke: I’m sorry to inform you, you’re not Pope Brigid the First.”

I couldn’t help laughing again. Pain racked my chest and shot through my right arm. Even my head hurt. When I finally got my breath, I told Zach that I could not adequately express my relief that his reliable sources were wrong.