Miracle (6 page)

Amy Miracle stirred awkwardly and then gazed up at him. He reeled from the open adoration on her face. “I’ll never forget what you did the other day,” she murmured. “Sticking up for me, I mean.”

Pleasure flashed through him along with bitter self-reproach. He was not like his father, not a self-centered bastard who put impulsive ideas ahead of responsibility. Sebastien knew what he could accomplish with this shy young woman, this strange little Miracle, if he wanted, but he wasn’t going to do it.

“I’ll leave you to enjoy your lunch,” he told her. “It’s been very nice meeting you.”

Disappointment dimmed her eager expression; then she looked down, becoming polite and withdrawn. “It’s been nice meetin’ you. Maybe I’ll see you again, if you come back to pick grapes.”

I’ll make certain not to do that
, he thought to himself angrily. “Perhaps. Adieu.”

“Adieu,” she repeated softly, drawling the word, making it both funny and sad. He gazed at her for a moment,
hypnotized, then shoved the disturbing response from his mind and walked away.

Pop was asleep when she got home from work, as usual, propped up on orthopedic pillows in his and Maisie’s bedroom with the door open and the window air conditioner running full blast. On one wall was his circus shrine—photographs of himself when he worked for Ringling Brothers, yellowing handbills from shows long past, and a 1952 movie poster advertising “the Greatest Show on Earth,” in which he had been an extra. There was a picture of him with Jimmy Stewart, and on it was an autograph that said, “To Zack, the greatest clown on earth.” And low on the wall there was one small, crinkled photograph of Zack with Amy’s mother.

Tall, redheaded, and gorgeous, Ellen Connery Miracle had been a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall before joining the circus as her brother’s assistant in a trained-dog act. Two years after she married Zack Miracle she died giving birth to Amy. Occasionally he liked to remind Amy of that fact.

Maisie sat in the living room watching soap operas from her favorite chair, a plaid recliner she’d bought at a flea market for a hundred dollars. She wore overalls over one of Pop’s white T-shirts. Her mostly gray brown hair was pulled back from her placid face by a dime-store headband. On her generous lap was a large grocery bag filled with green beans. She peeled strings from the beans, snapped them into neat pieces, and rocked contentedly, her attention riveted to the action on
The Guiding Light
.

Maisie was sweet and silent and not particularly smart or pretty, which were all assets as far as Pop was concerned. They were the reasons she and he had remained happy together for the past ten years. Maisie let Pop rule the world. She even made excuses for the marijuana plants he grew in the back rooms. He had a bad back. The dope was for medicinal purposes. Just like the booze. Amy understood all that and felt sorry for him, but it didn’t make life easy.

She waved at Maisie and started toward the kitchen for a glass of water. As she walked wearily through the living
room Maisie mumbled and rubbed her forehead as if trying to remember something. “Oh, year. Charley called. He’s got to work tonight. He and his daddy are taking a truckload of pullets to the plant in Jasper. He said he’ll be by at six tomorrow to carry you to church.”

“Thanks, Mams.” She went to her bedroom and locked the door, then leaned against it, her eyes shut. She put her straw hat on the room’s dresser and dropped her sweaty, dirty clothes to the floor. Her body felt hot and confused inside; she was sad, restless, elated, and afraid.

On her bed was Pop’s daily list of chores, made out in his sloppy, bold script. The unforgiving length of the list made her angry, and she shoved it onto the floor then stood, naked, and gazed around her room as if seeing it for the first time.

The furniture was still discount-store castoffs, the twin bed still creaked when she kicked it with one foot, and the walls were still covered with posters of movie and television stars. In one corner her fold-out stereo sat on an old trunk that had belonged to her mother. In a cardboard box beside it were Amy’s comedy albums and the soundtracks from Broadway musicals. On the dresser sat the tiny black-and-white TV Pop had given her for Christmas three years before. That was the best Christmas she’d ever had.

Moving woodenly, she went into her tiny bathroom and took a shower. When she dried herself she scrubbed the towel over her body for a long time, her hands almost frantic. She threw herself across the bed and rolled onto her back. Shutting her eyes, she draped one arm over them, then put a hand between her legs. Such unadorned need had never surfaced in the daytime before, and it embarrassed her. Then images of Dr. de Savin destroyed her control and she stroked herself until her ache burst into such desperate pleasure that she arched upward and bit her arm to keep from crying out.

Shivering, she hugged herself and stared at the ceiling. There was so much more to want from the world than she had ever realized.

S
ebastien did not pride himself on his bedside manner. But then, he excused himself, there was a strong element of macho reserve in all cardiac surgeons. So many operations meant life or death for the patients, and success was measured, quite literally, in the whisper of a heartbeat.

He gazed without pity at the fat, florid little woman who was crying. She dug pink fingers and manicured nails into her bedcovers. Her face was screwed into a childlike visage of misery. “I’m going to die,” she wailed. “I just know I’m not going to survive my bypass operation.”

Sebastien clasped his hands behind his back. Standing beside her bed, he trained his gaze on a mauve flower appliquéd on her robe. “There is that risk in any kind of surgery. I can quote success statistics, but I can’t give you guarantees.”

From the corner of his eye he noticed the cardiac counseling nurse glaring at him. She grasped the patient’s hands. “Mrs. Spencer, your prognosis is excellent. You really shouldn’t worry.”

“B-but Dr. de Savin said—”

“Your chances of having a successful operation are very high,” Sebastien told her. “You’ll die if you don’t have the surgery. Think of it that way.”

Mrs. Spencer’s eyes widened. She stared at him in horror. “I don’t want to think of it that way!”

The nurse patted her hands. “What Dr. de Savin meant—”

“Was that you have no choice but to have a bypass,” Sebastien interjected. “That is simply all there is to it, madame, and you would serve yourself much better by calming down. I’m here to explain the clinical procedures, which are actually very reassuring. We are going to make an incision—”

“I want a tranquilizer!” Mrs. Spencer thrust the nurse’s hands away and jerked the bedcovers violently. Huge tears carried a flood of mascara down her cheeks. “I don’t want to hear about incisions!”

Sebastien turned impatiently toward the nurse. “Bring Mrs. Spencer five milligrams of diazepam. I’ll come back to see her in half an hour.”

He strode out of the room. The nurse followed, her hands jammed angrily into the pockets of her blue blazer. Cardiac-counseling nurses didn’t wear uniforms so they connected with patients on a more casual, comforting level. Sebastien thought their efforts frivolous.

“Dr. de Savin,” she called softly, her voice tight. “May I speak to you for a second, please?”

He halted. “Yes?”

She looked furious. “You need some sensitivity training, Doctor.”

“I’ll leave the hand-holding to you. I have no interest in playing word games with hysterical patients.”

“Can’t you imagine how frightened that woman is?”

“No. Frankly, I avoid using my imagination in such morbid ways. That’s why I’m such a good surgeon. I know how to direct my energy. Now get Mrs. Spencer a pill and call me when she’s ready to listen.”

“All right, Doctor.”

He turned to leave but caught her obscene gesture from the corner of his eye. He knew that she hadn’t meant for him to see it, and that if he reported her, she’d be fired. But he was more amused than offended. “You’re not the first, madame.” He glanced back at her startled expression before he walked away.

Smiling thinly, he went upstairs to the Cardiac Critical
Care Unit and entered a row of glass cubicles. An eight-year-old boy had been brought in the day before suffering complications from open-heart surgery to correct a congenital defect. Electrodes were taped to his pale skin. Tubes carried various medications directly into the veins in the boy’s spindly arms. The clear tube that drained the child’s catheter dangled from one side of the bed. Around him various machines beeped and gurgled and clicked.

Sebastien got the child’s chart and went into his cubicle. He glanced at the boy without saying hello then began reading. Working with children was very difficult. He had a troublesome soft spot for anyone who was young and defenseless, because he remembered his own forced maturity. Annette and Jacques, so many years younger than he, had nicknamed him
le général
. He had disobeyed their father at every turn and caused many family uproars by spending his summers with their mother’s rough-hewn people, working the sardine boats along the Brittany coast.

When he finished with the chart he bent over the boy’s thin body and carefully put his stethoscope against the frail chest, where a thick strip of gauze covered the long incision left by surgery. The defect, a hole between the upper chambers of the heart, should have been repaired when the child was a baby. The boy had never been healthy.

“My name’s Tom,” the youngster murmured. The oxygen tube in his nostrils made his voice stuffy. “I just got transferred here from Florida. My grandma got skeered that I was goin’ to die.”

His attention tuned to the weak sounds of the recuperating heart, Sebastien merely nodded. He was vaguely aware the boy had brown hair and large blue eyes, and a photograph of him grinning beside a run-down farmhouse was taped to one glass wall of the enclosure. Sebastien didn’t want to notice more.

Tom did not intend to be ignored, apparently. “What’s your name?”

“Dr. de Savin.”

“Are you gonna be around a lot?”

“For now. I’m one of the surgeons who works here.”

“You talk funny.”

“I’m from France.”

“I nearly kicked the bucket, you know. Might still.” The remark was so unexpected and so unlike something a child would say that Sebastien was startled. He listed his gaze and found mischief in Tom’s eyes. “
That
got your attention,” Tom said solemnly.

“I’ll have to watch out for you. You think too fast.”

“I got a bad heart. Have to do everything fast. Might croak.”

“You’ve got a perfectly nice heart that’s just been fixed. It works very well.”

“Nope. I heard one of the doctors here say that they fixed it shitty at the hospital down in Florida.”

Sebastien made a mental note to find out who had been so stupid and careless. “Well it seems to be healing nicely, regardless. Believe me. I’m a very great doctor. Haven’t you heard?”

Tom’s eyes brightened. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Good. I’m so tired of bein’ sick.” The boy’s voice was very soft, very weak. Sebastien found himself smoothing the child’s covers and adjusting the tubes that entered his arms. “Every day you’ll get stronger. One day soon you’ll go home better than ever.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“What’s your name again?”

“Dr.… Sebastien. How about that? You may call me Sebastien.”

“That’s a funny name.”

“It’s a very old name. My mother gave it to me. It’s a special name. She was from a part of France called Brittany, and Sebastien is a popular name there.”

“What’s so different about that part of France?”

Sebastien sighed. How could one easily explain to an eight-year-old about Celts and druids and mysterious megaliths, rugged seacoasts and mystic forests, and Arthurian legends? But Tom looked so eager. Sebastien groaned silently. He was becoming sentimental lately. First the girl at the winery, now this boy. He was becoming reckless.

“I’ll make a deal with you, Tom. When I finish my work for the day I’ll come by here and see if you’re still awake. If you are, I’ll tell you about my mother’s home.”