Harvest

CHAPTER TWELVE

"Here it is," said Colin Wettig, laying open the Direcwry of Medical Specialists. "Timothy Nicholls. BA, University of Vermont. MDTufts. Residency, Massachusetts General. Speciality: Thoracic Surgery. Affiliated with Wilcox Memorial, Burlington, Vermont." He slid the book onto the conference table for anyone in the room to look at. "So there really is a thoracic surgeon named Tim Nicholls practising in Burlington. He's not some figment of Archer's imagination."

"When I spoke to him on Saturday," said Archer,"Nicholls claimed he was there at the harvest. And he said it took place at Wilcox Memorial. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find anyone else who was in the OR with him. And now I can't get hold of Nicholls. His office staff tells me he's taken a prolonged leave of absence. I don't know what's going on, Jeremiah, but I sure as hell wish we'd had nothing to do with it. Because it's starting to smell pretty rotten."

Jeremiah Parr shifted uneasily in his chair and glanced at attorney Susan Casado. He didn't bother to look at Abby, who was sitting at the far end of the table, next to the transplant coordinator, Donna Toth. Maybe he didn't want to look at her. Abby, after all, was the one who had brought this mess to everyone's attention. The one who had initiated this meeting.

"What exactly is going on here?" Parr asked.

Archer said, "I thinkVictorVoss arranged to keep the donor out of the registry system. To shunt the heart directly to his wife." "Could he do that?"

"Given enough money — probably."

"And he certainly has the money," said Susan. "I just saw the latest list in Kiplinger's. The fifty wealthiest people in America. He's moved up to number fourteen."

"Maybe you'd better explain to me how donor assignments are supposed to work," said Parr. "Because I don't understand how this happened."

Archer looked at the transplant coordinator. "Donna usually handles it. Why don't we let her explain?"

Donna Toth nodded. "The system's pretty straightforward," she said. "We have both a regional and a national waiting list of patients needing organs. The national system's the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS for short. The regional list is maintained by New England Organ Bank. Both systems rank patients in order of need. The list has nothing to do with wealth, race, or social status. Only how critical their conditions are." She opened a folder and took out a sheet of paper. She passed it to Parr. "That's what the latest regional list looks like. I had it faxed over from the NEOB office in Brookline. As you can see, it gives each patient's medical status, organ required, the nearest transplant centre, and the phone number to contact, which is usually the transplant coordinator's." "What're these other notations here?"

"Clinical information. Minimum and maximum height and weight acceptable for the donor. Whether the patient's had any previous transplants, which would make crossmatching more difficult because of antibodies."

"You said this list is in order of need?"

"That's right. The number one name is the most critical."

"Where was Mrs Voss?"

"On the day she received her transplant, she was number three on the AB blood type list."

"What happened to the first two names?"

"I checked with NEOB. Both names were reclassified as Code 8's a few days later. Permanently inactive and off the list."

"Meaning they died?" Susan Casado asked softly. Donna nodded. "They never got their transplants."

"Jesus," groaned Parr. "So MrsVoss got a heart that should have gone to someone else."

"That seems to be what happened. We don't know how it was arranged."

"How did we get notified of the donor?" asked Susan.

"A phone call," said Donna. "That's how it usually happens. The transplant coordinator at the donor hospital handles it. He or she will check the latest NEOB waiting list and call the contact number for the first patient on the list."

"So you were called by Wilcox Memorial's Transplant Coordinator?"

"Yes. I've spoken to him before on the phone, about other donors. So I had no reason to question this particular donation."

Archer shook his head. "I don't know how Voss managed this. Every step of the way, it looked legal and aboveboard to us. Someone at Wilcox obviously got paid off. My bet is, it's their transplant coordinator. So Voss's wife gets the heart. And Bayside gets suckered into a cash-for-organs arrangement. And we don't have any of the donor paperwork to double-check this."

"It's still missing?" asked Parr.

"I haven't been able to find it," said Donna. "The donor records aren't anywhere in my office."

VictorVoss, thought Abby. Somehow, he's made the papers disappear. "The worst part," said Wettig, 'is the kidneys." Parr frowned at the General. "What?"

"His wife didn't need the kidneys," said Wettig. "Or the pancreas or the liver. So what happened to those? If they never made it to the registry?"

"They must have gotten dumped," said Archer.

"Right. That's three, four lives that could have been saved. And got tossed instead."

There was a ballet of shaking heads, dismayed expressions. "What are we going to do about this?" said Abby. Her question was met with a momentary silence.

"I'm not sure what we should do," said Parr. He looked at the attorney. "Are we obligated to follow up on this?"

"Ethically, yes," said Susan. "However, there's a consequence, if we report this. I can think of several consequences, in fact. First, there's no way we can keep this from the press. A cash-for-organs deal, especially involving Victor Voss, is a juicy story. Second, we're going to be, in a sense, breaching patient confidentiality. That's not going to sit well with a certain segment of our patient population." Wetfig snorted. "Meaning the bloody rich ones."

"The ones who keep this hospital alive," corrected Parr. "Exactly." Susan continued. "If they hear that Bayside spurred the investigation of someone like Victor Voss, they're not going to trust us to keep their records private. We could lose all our private-pay transplant referrals. Finally, what if this somehow gets turned around? Made to look like we were part of the conspiracy? We'd lose our credibility as a transplant centre. If it turns out Voss really did keep that donor out of the registry system, we'll be tainted as well."

Abby glanced at Archer, who looked stunned by the possibility. This could destroy the Bayside transplant programme. It could destroy the team.

"How much of this has already gotten out?" asked Parr. He looked, at last, at Abby. "What did you tell NEOB about this, Dr. DiMatteo?"

"When I spoke to Helen Lewis, I wasn't sure what was going on. Neither of us were.We were just trying to figure out why the donor hadn't been entered in their system. That's how we left it. Unresolved. Immediately after the call, I told Archer and Dr. Wettig about it."

"And Hodell. You must have told Hodell."

"I haven't spoken to Mark yet. He's been in surgery all day."

Parr sighed with relief. "All right. So it's just in this room. And all Mrs Lewis knows is that you're not sure what happened."

"Correct."

Susan Casado shared Parr's look of relief. "We've still got a shot at damage control. I think what needs to be done now is, DrArcher should call NEOB. Reassure Mrs Lewis that we've cleared up the misunderstanding. Chances are, she'll leave it at that. We'll continue to make inquiries, but discreetly. We should try reaching Dr. Nicholls again. He might be able to clear things up."

"No one seems to know when Nicholls is coming back from his leave of absence," said Archer.

"What about the other surgeon?" asked Susan. "The guy from Texas?"

"Mapes? I haven't tried calling him yet."

"Someone should."

Parr cut in: "I disagree. I don't think we should be contacting anyone else about this."

"Your reason, Jeremiah?"

"The less we know about it, the less involved we'll be in this mess. We should stay miles away from it. Tell Helen Lewis that it was a directed donation. And that's why it never went through NEOB. Then let's just move on."

"In other words," said Wetfig, 'stick our goddamn heads in the sand."

"See no evil, hear no evil." Parr glanced around the table. He seemed to take the lack of response as a sign of general assent. "Needless to say, we don't talk about it outside this room."

Abby couldn't hold her silence. "The problem is," she said, 'the evil doesn't go away. Whether or not we hear about it or see it, it's still there."

"Bayside's the innocent party," said Parr. "We shouldn't have to suffer. And we certainly shouldn't expose ourselves to unfair scrutiny."

"What about the ethical obligations? This could happen again."

"I really doubt Mrs Voss will be needing another heart any time soon. It's an isolated incident, Dr. DiMatteo. A desperate husband bent the rules to save his wife. It's done with. We just need to install safeguards to ensure it doesn't happen again." Parr looked at Archer. "Can we do that?"

Archer nodded. "We're damn well going to have to."

"What happens to Victor Voss?" said Abby. By the silence that followed, she knew the answer: nothing would happen to him. Nothing ever happened to men like Victor Voss. He could beat the system and buy a heart, buy a surgeon, buy an entire hospital. And they could buy lawyers, too, a whole army of them, enough to turn a lowly surgical resident's dreams into scorched earth.

She said, "He's out to ruin me. I thought it would ease up after his wife's transplant, but it hasn't. He's dumped offal in my car. He's initiated two lawsuits, with more on the way, I'm sure of it. It's hard for me to see no evil, hear no evil, when he's resorting to tactics like those."

"Can you prove it's Voss doing these things?" asked Susan. 'who else would it be?"

"Dr. DiMatteo," said Parr, 'this hospital's reputation is on the line. We need everyone to be on the same team, everyone to pull together. Including you. This is your hospital too."

"What if it all comes out anyway?What if it hits the front page of the Globe? Bayside's going to be accused of a cover-up. And this'll blow up in all your faces."

"That's why it can't leave this room," said Parr.

"It could get out anyway." She lifted her chin. "It probably will." Parr and Susan exchanged nervous glances. Susan said: "That's a risk we'll have to take."

Abby stripped off her OR gown, tossed it in the laundry hamper, and pushed through the double doors. It was nearly midnight. The patient, a stabbing victim, was now in Recovery, the post-op orders were being written by the intern, and the ER had nothing coming down the pike. All was quiet in the trenches.

She wasn't sure she welcomed the lull. It gave her too much time to brood over what had been said at that afternoon meeting.

My one chance to fuck back, she thought, and I can't. Not if I'm going to be a team player. Not if I'm going to keep Bayside's interests at heart.

And her own interests as well. That she was still considered part of the team was a good sign. It meant she had a chance of staying on here, a chance of actually completing her residency. It came down to a deal with the devil. Keep her mouth shut, and hang onto the dream. IfVictorVoss would let her.

If her conscience would let her.

Several times that evening, she'd been on the verge of picking up the phone and calling Helen Lewis. That's all it would take, one phone call, to get NEB into the picture. One phone call to expose VictorVoss. Now, as she headed back to the on-call room, she was still mulling over what she should do. She unlocked the door and stepped inside.

It was the fragrance she noticed first, even before she turned on the lights. The perfume of roses and lilies. She switched on the lamp and stared in wonder at the vase of flowers on the desk.

A rustle of sheets drew her gaze to the bed. "Mark?" she said.

He came awake with a start. For a moment he seemed unsure of where he was. Then he saw her and smiled. "Happy Birthday."

"God. I completely forgot."

"I didn't," he said.

She went to the bed and sat down beside him. He'd fallen asleep in his surgical scrubs and when she bent down to kiss him, she could smell that familiar on-call scent of Betadine and fatigue.

"Ouch. You need a shave."

'! need another kiss."

She smiled and obliged him. "How long have you been here?"

"What time is it?"

"Midnight."

"Two hours."

"You've been waiting here since ten?"

"I didn't actually plan it this way. I guess I just fell asleep." He moved aside to make room for her on the narrow mattress. She pulled off her shoes and lay down beside him. At once she felt comforted by the warmth of the bed, and of the man. She thought of telling him about the meeting this afternoon, about the second lawsuit, but she didn't want to talk about any of it. All she wanted was to be held.

"Sorry I forgot the cake," he said.

"I can't believe I forgot my own birthday. Maybe I wanted to forget it. Twenty-eight already."

Laughing, he wrapped an arm around her. "Such a decrepit old lady."

"I feel old. Especially tonight."

"Yeah, well then, I feel ancient." He kissed her, softly, on the ear. "And I'm not getting any younger. So maybe now's the time."

"Time for what?"

"To do what I should have done months ago."

"Which is?"

He turned her towards him and cupped her face in his hand. "Ask you to marry me."

She stared at him, unable to say a word, but so filled with happiness she knew the answer must be plain in her eyes. She was suddenly, joyfully, aware of his every aspect. His hand warming her cheek. His face, tired and no longer young, but far more dear to her because of that.

"I knew, a couple of nights ago, that this was what I wanted," he said. "You were on call. And there I was at home, eating dinner out of a carton. I went up to bed, and I saw your things on the dresser. Your hairbrush. Jewellery box. That bra that you never seem to put away." Softly he laughed. So did she. "Anyway, that's when I knew. I never want to live anywhere without your stuff lying on my dresser.

I don't think I could. Not any more."

"Oh, Mark."

"The craw thing is, you're hardly ever home. And when you are home, I'm not. We sort of wave to each other in the hallways. Or hold hands in the elevator if we're lucky. What matters to me is knowing that, when I do go home, I see your things on that dresser. I know you've been there, or you will be there. And that's enough."

Through tears, she saw him smile. And she felt his heart thudding as though in fear.

"So what do you think, Dr. D?" he whispered. "Can we fit a wedding into our tight schedules?"

Her answer was half sob, half laughter. "Yes. Yes, yes, yew And rising up, she rolled on top of him, her arms thrown around his neck, her mouth finding his. They were both laughing, kissing, while the mattress springs gave horrible squeaks. The bed was far too small; they'd never be able to sleep in it together.

But for the purpose of lovemaking, it suited just fine.

She had been beautiful once. Sometimes, when Mary Allen looked at her own hands and saw the wrinkles and brown stains of age, she would wonder with a start: whose hands are these?A stranger's, certainly; an old woman's. Not my hands, not pretty Mary Hatcher's. Then the flash of confusion would pass, and she'd look around the hospital room and realize she'd been dreaming again. Not a true dream that came with true sleep, but a sort of mist that drifted through her brain and lingered there, even into wakefulness.

It was the morphine. She was grateful for the morphine. It took away her pain and it opened some secret gate in her mind, allowing images to flow in of a remembered life, almost over, now. She had heard of life described as a circle, a returning to the point of one's beginning, but her own life did not seem nearly so organized. Rather, it was like a tapestry of unruly threads, some broken, some ravelled, none of them straight and true.

But woven with so many, many colours.

She closed her eyes and that secret gate swung open. A path to the sea. Hedges of beach roses, pink and sweet-smelling. Warm sand swallowing up her toes. Waves tumbling in from the bay. The luxury of hands skimming lotion down her body.

Geoffrey's hands.

The gate swung wider, and he stepped in, a memory fully rendered. Not as he was, on that beach, but as she'd first seen him, in his uniform, dark hair ruffled, his face turning towards her in mid-laugh. Their first look at each other. It had been on a Boston street. She was carrying a sack of groceries, looking every inch the efficient young housewife on her way home to cook her husband his evening meal. Her dress had been an exceedingly ugly shade of brown; it was wartime, and one had to make do with what was available in the shops. She had not done up her hair, and the wind was whipping it into a witch's mane. She thought she looked quite hideous. But there was that young man, smiling at her, his gaze following her as she passed him on the sidewalk.

The next day, he would be there again, and they would look at each other, not strangers this time, but something more.

Geoffrey. Another lost thread. Not one that merely frayed and weakened until it broke, like her husband, but one that had been ripped from the tapestry, tearing an empty furrow that ran all the way down to the final weaving.

She heard a door swing open. A real door. Heard footsteps. Softly they approached her bed.

Suspended in her morphine daze, she had to struggle just to open her eyes. When at last she did, she found the room was dark except for one small circle of light, hovering nearby. It was the light she tried to focus on. It danced like a firefly, then steadied to a single bright pinpoint on her bedsheet. She focused harder and made out a patch of darkness that had materialized by her bed. Something not quite solid, not quite real. She wondered if this, too, was a morphine dream. Some unwelcome memory come through the gate to haunt her. She heard the sheets slither aside and felt a hand grasp her arm with a touch that was cold and rubbery.

Her breath came out in a rush of fear. This was not a dream. This was real. Real. The hand was here to lead her somewhere, to take her away.

In panic she thrashed, managed to pull free from that grip. A voice said, softly: "It's all right, Mary. It's all right. It's just time for you to sleep."

Mary fell still. "Who are you?"

"I'm taking care of you tonight."

"Is it already time for my medicine?"

"Yes. It's time."

Mary saw the penlight playing, once again, on her arm. Her IV. She watched as the gloved hand produced a syringe. The plastic cap was removed and something glittered in the thin beam of light. A needle.

Mary felt a fresh stirring of alarm. Gloves. Why were the hands wearing gloves?

She said, "I want to see my nurse. Please call my nurse."

"There's no need." The needle tip pierced the IV injection port. The plunger began its slow and steady descent. Mary felt a warmth flush through her vein and then up her arm. She realized that the syringe was very full, that the plunger was taking far longer than usual to deliver its dose of painless oblivion. Not right, she thought, as the syringe emptied its contents into her vein. Something is not right.

"I want my nurse," she said. She managed to lift her head and call out, weakly, "Nurse! Please! I need-'

A gloved hand closed over her mouth. It shoved her head back to the pillow with such force Mary felt as though her neck had snapped. She reached up to pry away the hand, but could not. It was clamped too tightly over her mouth, muffling her cries. She thrashed, felt the IV rip loose, felt the disconnected tubing dribbling saline. Still the hand would not release her mouth. By now the liquid warmth had spread from her arm to her chest and was rushing towards her brain. She tried to move her legs and found she couldn't. Found, suddenly, that she didn't care. The hand slid away from her face.

She was running. She was a girl again, her hair long and brown and flying around her shoulders. The sand was warm under her bare feet, and the air smelled of beach roses and the sea.

The gate hung, wide open, before her.

The ringing telephone pulled Abby from a place that was both warm and safe. She stirred awake and found an arm wrapped around her waist. Mark's. Somehow, despite the small bed, they'd managed to fall asleep together. Gently she disentangled herself from his embrace and reached for the ringing telephone. "DiMatteo."

"Dr. D., this is Charlotte on Four West. Mrs Allen just expired. The interns are all busy at the moment, so we wondered if you could come down and pronounce the patient."

"Right. I'll be there." Abby hung up and lay back down on the bed for a moment, allowing herself the luxury of slowly coming awake. Mrs Allen. Dead. It had happened sooner than she'd expected. She felt relieved that the ordeal was finally over, and guilty that she should experience such relief at all. At three in the morning, a patient's death seems less a tragedy and more a nuisance, just another reason for lost sleep.

Abby sat up on the side of the bed and pulled on her shoes. Mark was snoring softly, oblivious to ringing telephones. Smiling, she leaned over and gave him a kiss. "I do," she whispered in his ear. And she left the room.

Charlotte met her at the Four West nurses' station. Together they walked to Mary's room, at the far end of the hall.

"We found her at 2 a.m. rounds. I checked her at midnight, and she was sleeping, so it happened sometime after that. At least she went peacefully."

"Have you called the family?"

"I called the niece. The one listed in the chart. I told her she didn't have to come in, but she insisted. She's on her way now.

We've been cleaning things up for the visit."

"Cleaning?"

"Mary must have pulled her IV out. There was saline and blood spilled on the floor." Charlotte opened the door to the patient's room, and they both entered.

By the light of a bedside lamp, Mary Allen lay in a serene pose of sleep, her arms at her sides, the bedsheets neatly folded back across her chest. But she was not sleeping, and that was readily apparent. Her eyelids hung partially open. A washcloth had been rolled up and placed under her chin to prop up the sagging jaw. Relatives paying their last respects did not want to stare into a loved one's gaping mouth.

Abby's task took only moments. She placed her fingers on the carotid artery. No pulse. She lifted the gown and lay her stethoscope on the chest. She listened for ten seconds. No respirations, no heartbeat. She shone a penlight into the eyes. Pupils midposition and fixed. A pronouncement of death was merely a matter of paperwork. The nurses had already recognized the obvious; Abby's role was simply to confirm the nurses' findings and record the event in the chart. It was one of those responsibilities they never explained to you in medical school. Newly minted interns, asked to pronounce their first dead patient, often had no idea what they were supposed to do. Some made impromptu speeches. Or called for a Bible, thus earning an exalted place in the nurses' annals of Stupid Doctor stories.

A death in a hospital is not an occasion for a speech, but for signatures and paperwork. Abby picked up Mary Allen's chart and completed the task. She wrote: "No spontaneous respirations or pulse. Auscultation reveals no heart sounds. Pupils fixed and midposition. Patient pronounced expired at 0305." She closed the chart and turned to leave.

Brenda Hainey was standing in the doorway.

"I'm sorry, Miss Hainey," said Abby. "Your aunt passed away in her sleep."

"When did it happen?"

"Sometime after midnight. I'm sure she was comfortable."

"Was anyone with her when it happened?"

"There were nurses on duty in the ward."

"But no one was here. In the room?"

Abby hesitated. Decided that the truth was always the best answer. "No, she was alone. I'm sure it happened in her sleep. It was a peaceful way to go." She stepped away from the bed. "You can stay with her for a while, if you want. I'll ask the nurses to give you some privacy." She started past Brenda, towards the door. "Why was nothing done to save her?"

Abby turned back to look at her. "Nothing could be done."

"You can shock a heart, can't you? Start it up again?"

"Under certain circumstances."

"Did you do that?"

"No."

'why not? Because she was too old to save?"

"Age had nothing to do with it. She had terminal cancer."

"She came into the hospital only two weeks ago. That's what she told me."

"She was already very sick."

"I think you people made her sicker."

By now Abby's stomach was churning. She was tired, she wanted to go back to bed, and this woman wouldn't let her. Abuse heaped on abuse. But she had to take it. She had to stay calm. "There was nothing we could do," Abby repeated. "Why wasn't her heart shocked, at least?"

"She was a no-code. That means we don't shock her. And we don't put her on a breathing machine. It was your aunt's request, and we honoured it. So should you, Miss Hainey." She left before Brenda could say anything else. Before she could say anything she regretted.

She found Mark still asleep in the on-call room. She crawled in bed, turned on her side with her back to his chest, and pulled his arm over her waist. She tried to burrow back into that safe, warm haven of unconsciousness, but she kept seeing Mary Allen, the washcloth stuffed under her sagging chin, the eyelids drooping over glassy corneas. A body in its first stages of decay. She realized she knew almost nothing at all about Mary Allen's life, what she had thought, whom she had loved. Abby was her doctor, and all she knew about Mary Allen was the way she had died. Asleep, in her bed.

No, not quite. Sometime before her death, Mary had pulled out her IV. The nurses had found blood and saline on the floor. Had Mary been agitated? Confused? What had induced her to tug the line out of her vein?

It was one more detail about Mary Allen that she would never know.

Mark sighed and nestled closer to her. She took his hand and clasped it to her chest. To her heart. I do. She smiled, in spite of the sadness. It was the beginning of a new life, hers and Mark's. Mary Allen's was over, and theirs was about to start. The death of an elderly patient was a sad thing, but here, in the hospital, was where lives passed on.

And where new lives began.

It was 10 a.m. when the taxi dropped Brenda Hainey off at her house in Chelsea. She had not eaten breakfast, had not slept since that call from the hospital, but she felt neither tired nor hungry. If anything, she felt immensely serene.

She had prayed at her aunt's bedside until 5 a.m., when the nurses had come to take the body to the morgue. She had left the hospital intending to come straight home, but during the taxi ride, she had been troubled by a sense of unfinished business. It had to do with Aunt Mary's soul, and where it might be at this moment in its cosmic journey. If, indeed, it was in transit at all. It could be stuck somewhere, like an elevator between floors. Whether it was headed upward or downward, Brenda could not be certain, and that was what troubled her.

Aunt Mary had not made things easy for herself. She had not joined in prayer, had not asked Him for forgiveness, had not even glanced at the Bible Brenda had left at her bedside. Aunt Mary had been entirely too indifferent, Brenda thought. One could not be indifferent in such a situation.

Brenda had seen it before, in other dying friends and relatives, that mindless serenity as the end approached. She was the only one who dared address the salvation of their souls, the only one who seemed at all concerned about which way their elevator might be heading. And a good thing she was concerned. So concerned, in fact, she had made it her business to know who in the family might be seriously ailing. Wherever they were in the country, she would go to them, stay with them until the end. It had become her calling, and there were those who considered her the family saint because of it. She was too modest to accept such a title. No, she was simply doing His bidding, as any good servant would do.

In Aunt Mary's case, though, she had failed. Death had come too soon, before her aunt had accepted Him into her heart. That was why, as the taxi pulled away from Bayside Hospital at 5:45 a.m., Brenda had felt such a sense of failure. Her aunt was dead, her soul beyond salvation. She, Brenda, had not been persuasive enough. If Aunt Mary had lived only another day, perhaps there would have been time.

The taxi passed a church. It was an Episcopal church, not Brenda's denomination, but it was a church all the same.

"Stop," she'd ordered the driver. "I want to get off here."

And so, at 6 a.m., Brenda had found herself sitting in a pew at St Andrew's. She sat there for two and a half hours, her head bent, her lips moving silently. Praying for Aunt Mary, praying that the woman's sins, whatever they might be, would be forgiven. That her aunt's soul would no longer be stuck between floors and that the elevator she was riding would be heading not down, but up. When at last Brenda raised her head, it was eight-thirty. The church was still empty. Morning light was cascading down in a mosaic of blues and golds through the stained glass windows. As she focused on the altar, she saw the shape of Christ's head emblazoned there. It was just the projected figure from the window, she knew that, but it seemed at that moment to be a sign. A sign that her prayers had been answered.

Aunt Mary was saved.

Brenda had risen from the bench feeling lightheaded with hunger, but joyous. Another soul turned to the light, and all because of her efforts. How fortunate that He had listened!

She'd left St Andrew's feeling wondrously buoyant, as though there were little cloud slippers on her feet. Outside, she found a taxi that just happened to be idling at the curb, waiting for her. Another sign.

She rode home in a trance of contentment.

Climbing the steps to her front porch, she looked forward to a quiet breakfast and then a long and deserved nap. Even His servants needed rest. She unlocked the door.

A scattering of mail lay on the floor, deposited that morning through the door slot. Bills and church newsletters and appeals for donations. So many needy people in the world! Brenda gathered up the mail and shuffled through the stack as she went into the kitchen. At the very bottom of the pile, she found an envelope with her name on it. That's all there was written there, just her name. No return address.

She broke the seal and unfolded the enclosed slip of paper. There was one typewritten line:

Your aunt did not die a natural death.

It was signed: A friend.

The stack of mail slipped from Brenda's grasp, the bills and newsletters scattering across the kitchen floor. She sank into a chair. She was no longer hungry, no longer serene.

She heard a cawing outside her window. She looked up and saw a crow perched on a nearby tree branch, its yellow eye staring straight at her.

It was another sign.