“Where are you?”
“Downstairs. Tell my mom.”
Chloe Tremaine was one of my patients. At seventeen, she was a heroin addict, twelve weeks pregnant, and trying to clean up. I ran outside and found her lying on the pavement, curled into a ball. She wasn’t dead, but a great amount of blood was soaking through her pink flannel pajamas.
She was just conscious enough to say, “I had to get rid of it. Tell…Mom…I’m sorry.” I tried to keep her talking, but she had passed out.
Chloe lived with her boyfriend in his parked van behind the pizzeria where he worked, around the corner from the clinic. She had come in irregularly for checkups and had told me that she wanted the baby, but she was shooting up, horrified at herself for doing that, not eating or sleeping properly. She was a total mess with a sweet personality and a desperately dangerous and chaotic life.
Now, curled up at the intersection of Maple and the highway, she was close to death. Her pulse was thready, and she had a high fever, indicating a raging infection. But the loss of blood was going to kill her first. I wouldn’t be able to save her in our low-tech walk-in clinic.
By the time the ambulance arrived, Gilly was under the care of our head nurse, and I had Chloe’s medical records in my hands, including her pre-signed permission for procedures including surgery to save her life.
As messed up as she was, I was fond of Chloe. I talked to her nonstop as we tore down Interstate 91 at rocket speed, assuring her that everything would be fine.
Dr. John Nelson, the attending emergency surgeon at Springfield Metro Hospital that day, had booked an O.R. for us and was ready to assist. We scrubbed in and assessed Chloe’s condition as critical. She was given a complete physical, a blood transfusion, and an MRI.
We were able to ascertain that Chloe had thrust a sharp instrument up her vagina, likely a coat hanger, hoping to hit something that would induce a miscarriage.
The fetus was dead, and the instrument Chloe had used had pierced the spongy walls of her uterus, clipping an artery on the way to puncturing her bowel, which had introduced a massive infection. She was septic, on the verge of shock, and I couldn’t even give her Kind Hands’ fifty-fifty odds. The very small chance we could save her was still dropping.
Over the next four hours, Nelson and I performed a complete hysterectomy and tried to stabilize our young, stupid patient. I felt stupid, too, that I hadn’t guessed during those prenatal counseling sessions that she had considered doing this.
Chloe survived the surgery, and her condition stabilized. I was looking in on her in the ICU, waiting for her mother to arrive, when a nurse found me.
I asked her, “Is Chloe’s mother here?”
The nurse had a very strange look on her face.
“Dr. Fitzgerald. Your husband is trying to reach you. It’s an emergency. You’re wanted at home.”
“What kind of emergency? What happened?”
The nurse didn’t know.
It had to be Gilly. Something had happened to Gilly. Please, God. No.
I called James. He didn’t answer.
I’d come to the hospital in an ambulance, and I was going to have to return home the same way.
I went out into the hallway and shouted, “I need a bus to take me back to Millbrook. I need it now.”
Chapter 99
THE PARAMEDIC drove the ambulance as if it were his child’s life on the line. We reached Millbrook’s town limits after I’d gotten the message that James had called. During that drive, I was in a roaring panic. My God, it was so late. The clinic was long closed. I’d forgotten Gilly. What had happened to her? What had happened to my child?
James was with her, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he?
I prayed, asking God to please let my daughter be safe, but if He heard me, He didn’t respond. I called James until I had jammed his mailbox with my messages, and we finally approached the rectory.
What I saw was so unbelievable, I thought I was in one of my open communications with God. But this scene was 100 percent real, in this time and place. While I was out, hell had come to our door.
The street fronting the church was clogged with cars, and four fire trucks were parked up on the grass. Fire burned behind the church’s arched windows, and flames shot through the roof. The blaze looked like a living thing, an evil entity that was determined to destroy everything it touched.
Where is James? Where is Gilly?
The churchyard was pitch-black and raging orange at the same time. I searched the fire-illuminated faces of the bystanders and called for James. Water arced through the air, soaking the rectory’s roof, our home, only fifty feet from the blazing church. The flames fell back, but the heat and roiling smoke made even breathing nearly impossible.
Where is James? Does he have Gilly?
A group of men with their backs to me were talking among themselves. I called out, “Please help me. I’m looking for my husband and child.”
The men turned.
The one closest to me was the maniac Lawrence House. He’d pulled a gun in a church jam-packed with people, including dozens of children, and warned me that because of our message, there would be hell to pay. Had he done this?
“Sorry, Doctor. I haven’t seen him,” House said. “You know what this is, don’t you?” He waved a hand toward the conflagration.
“What are you saying?”
I was looking past him, scanning the onlookers for my husband’s face.
“Divine intervention,” said House, with great pleasure. “Di-vine in-ter-ven-tion. And you earned it. In full.”
I was staring at him, speechless with fury, when someone pulled at my arm. I spun around, ready to do violence.
It was Katherine Ross, my former bridesmaid, and she had Gilly in her arms.
I screamed my daughter’s name and grabbed a double armful of Gilly and Katherine together. Kath was saying, “Gilly is fine. She’s fine. My mom has your cat.”
Gilly reached out her arms. “Where were you, Mommy?”
Kath handed my precious toddler to me, and I kissed her and held her so tightly that she yelped.
“I’m sorry, baby, I’m sorry. I was at the hospital. Kath, where is he? Have you seen James?”
She shook her head no.
I gave Gilly back to Katherine and said, “Please. Take care of her. I need to look for him.”
I ran.
I rounded the church, and I saw a crew holding hoses on the western side, the side that faced the rectory. James was wearing a fire hat and aiming a hose at the roof.
“James.”
I ran to him and held on to him as he kept the hose trained on the flames.
“I couldn’t find you!” he shouted over the crackle of fire, the roar of streaming water, and the grinding engines. “Katherine has Gillian. I was in the rectory when the fire trucks came. I called you.”
“I was in a no-phone zone at the hospital. What happened?”
James waved his hand toward the church, taking in the blackened walls all the way up to what was left of the bell tower.
“Our wonderful old church. I can’t believe this.”
But I could believe it. I remembered an image of myself floating on a glassy sea with flames leaping around me. God had sent rain. And he had enveloped me in a ball of light.
James shouted, “We hosed the rectory down so that sparks can’t set fire to the roof! Can you give me a hand with this hose, Brigid? My arms are wearing out.”
I stepped in front of my husband, and we stood together with our hands on the line, dousing the fire.
“Thank God,” he said to me. “No one was hurt. No one died.”
Chapter 100
AT ONE in the morning, James, Gilly, and I opened the front door to the rectory. Our little home was smoke filled, water soaked, and uninhabitable. James left his phone number with the fire chief, and we drove to the closest motel on the highway.