This Is the Miracle!
Mary Pat Dabb, widow of Anytown Gazetteer journalist Oliver Dabb and mother of the now virtually catatonic Parker (seven), stood in the hallway of Anytown General’s ICU, drinking bad coffee out of a Styrofoam cup, rubbing her red-rimmed raccoon eyes with her fingertips between swallows of the stale, lukewarm stuff. It’d been a rollercoaster, whirlwind couple of weeks for the young woman——just days ago, she and the boys (in addition to seven-year-old Parker, she and Oliver had Lawrence, a precocious five-year-old who, like, his father, had a passion for sport) had been on a trip to her sister’s place, so that Oliver could devote his full energy and attention to a big story he was working on for the paper, when word came in that he’d…
She shut her eyes tightly and shook her head. It still hurt too badly to even think it, let alone speak it! She took another drink of the coffee. “How could he?” she whispered.
That was the question that rattled around in her head, even now, as her eldest sweet boy lay in a hospital bed on the other side of the glass before her, hooked up to all manner of blinking, beeping, whirring modern medical machinery: “Why?” Why had Oliver, that brilliant, bright, vibrant man, with all he had going for him——with all they had going for them——chosen to end it all, and by impaling his every limb into the floor with 18” inch rebar spikes after slashing his throat? It just made so little sense!
And she——not to mention the boys, the precious angels——had barely begun to even consider picking up the fragmented, fractured pieces of shit that remained of their life when Parker was run over while crossing the street to get an ice cream… launched a dozen or more feet into the air and catapulted head-first through the windshield of a nearby pickup truck, his little body mangled all to hell. It was a miracle he wasn’t killed on the initial impact, given the purported triple-digit speed of the automobile that struck him, let alone the crushing trauma of having most of the rest of his bones shattered by going headlong through that windshield, but it——
“Oh, no, my dear,” a warbling, quivering, ancient-sounding voice said from behind her. Reacting not only to the unexpected voice that interrupted the frantic flow of her internal monologue, but also to the sudden and pervasive scent of a piney, rosemary-esque odor that now filled her nostrils and even seemed to be tickling her tastebuds, Mary Pat started and turned to see a tiny, wizened old woman standing a couple of feet away, moving closer with the aid of a rusty walker.
“I’m sorry, did you say something?” Mary Pat asked politely.
The tiny woman smiled in response and shuffled closer. The aroma was now over-powering, but also accompanied by some other smell whose character was even more difficult to pin down, though Mary Pat thought it had something more of the chemical to it, perhaps. The younger woman resisted the urge to cover her nose, instead raising her cup for a perfunctory sip, only to find it empty. Feeling awkward, she swallowed and “ahh”ed lightly, as if savoring the last delicious drop of coffee.
“That wasn’t it,” the old woman said with a light laugh.
“Oh. Well, yes, I guess, I——”
Her skeletal, talon-like hand clasped Mary Pat’s wrist and the old lady smiled, her lips stretching quite a bit more widely and with more elasticity than Mary Pat would have assumed possible. “That wasn’t the miracle!” the woman informed her in a gleeful, sing-song fashion, locking her impossibly pale, watery blue eyes on Mrs. Dabb’s.
“It wasn’t the…?” she intoned confusedly.
“No, it was not! No, it was not!” the old woman chided playfully, slapping the back of Mary Pat’s hand with the tips of her scrawny little fingers at each new word.
“I don’t think I can write this.”
“Come again? Sure you——”
“No, I don’t think I know how to write something like this.”
“Honey, that’s—— of course you do! You’re such a good writer and you have such a good, you know, insight into everything. Like remember that piece you wrote about the narrator of L’Etrange——”
“Please—— Adam, please——”
Emily Twiggs’ boyfriend, Adam Fuqueberge, winced slightly. He began to rub the small of her back in little circles the way she liked. “Babe, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“I know what you’re trying to do and, like, I appreciate it, but that piece was ugh, and, like…” she trailed off and buried her face in her thin hands.
“I loved that piece! What, you didn’t? Is it because… what? You seemed so happy when it was getting all those shares, cares, chirps, and blurts, and it really made me see, you know, the narrator character——”
“His name is Meursault! He has a name!” Emily shouted, then recoiled and added, “And I hate the way you touch my back! It makes me feel yucky and gross!” before screaming in wordless exasperation and storming off to the bathroom.
Left alone on the futon in slack-jawed incredulity, Adam groped for words. Finding nothing adequate to the present moment, he pulled the essay in question, “Camus’ Meursault: Existentialist or Autist?”, up on his phone to read aloud in order that he might convince his now sobbing girlfriend of her writerly genius.
In the cramped bathroom, Emily sat on the edge of the sink with her feet on the lid of the toilet tank, hugging her knees and wishing dumb Adam would shut up or leave or just die already! She shook her head——too far. She’d be happy if he just left for a few hours, maybe picked up some Thai on the way home. She nibbled on the middle knuckle of her thumb, as she did in times of stress. One time she’d worn it so raw and red it got infected. This wouldn’t be like that time though——she just needed to think.
“How can I tell the story of the Man with the Gold Car?” she said aloud.
“Did you say something, babe?” Adam asked breathlessly through the keyhole.
“THAT WASN’T THE MIRACLE!”
And with that, the shriveled, tiny little old woman cackled wildly and flung her rusty walker aside, thrust her bony toothpick arms high above her head, gnarled hands open wide——the arthritic fingers straightening fully for the first time in years, probably——and smiled in pure, rapturous ecstasy as she let the fluorescent tube lights of the hospital ceiling bathe the wavy, thin, nearly translucent skin of her face.
Mary Pat felt the impact in her side even as the wind was knocked from her, and then a man’s weight atop her. A split-second later, from her back on the floor, she saw the wall of the hospital implode as if in slow-motion——glass, plaster, pink fiberglass insulation, bits of brick and splinters of wood, stray hunks of metal and pieces of medical equipment, not to mention a number of bodies, all flying through the air in all directions, like a massive orgasm of matter ejaculated from a shotgun. Her ears were ringing and she could feel hot, sticky blood coating her skin, and the smell that’d been partly obscured by piney rosemary previously was now omnipresent, stifling: the charnel house stench of death and decay.
The ageless blond Adonis stepped out of his fabulous gold car in what was left of Anytown General’s ICU, clad in his gleaming gold driver’s suit and wearing the knowing, understated smile that had captured the hearts and minds of generations. He shook some debris from his perfectly coiffed fade and fixed his gaze on Mary Pat.
And through the ringing and buzzing in her ears, Mary Pat could hear, clear as a bell, the satisfied whisper of the old woman, who sounded close to pure elation, wherever it was that she called from.
“This is the miracle! This is the miracle!”