Step On A Crack

Chapter 100

SOME SAY NOTHING compares to Christmas in New York, but I’d never seen the city look grimmer. After I got home and changed, I drove my brood to the hospital. I couldn’t see the wreaths and lights anymore, only the endless gray corridors of blank windows, the grimy concrete, the steam rising from the broken streets. Some Irish writer once referred to Manhattan as a “cathedral,” but as I stopped our van in front of the hospital, it looked more like a sad construction site to me, cluttered and cold and pitiless.

I had to hold myself up against the van’s door frame in order not to fall over from exhaustion as Mary Catherine fed my kids out in their good clothes, clutching their brightly wrapped presents.

Even the stern nurses, stuck there on Christmas, seemed teary-eyed as our cosmically sad procession passed through the lobby to good ol’ Five.

“Wait a second,” I said, patting my pockets as we approached Maeve’s corridor. “The pageant tape. I forgot to…”

“It’s right here, Mike,” Mary Catherine said, handing me the small plastic case.

I was about to thank her yet again for being such a lifesaver. Au pair, I thought. Was that Gaelic for fairy godmother? She would have had a cheerier Christmas in Afghanistan than here with my crew, but she’d jumped right in up to her neck.

“Give my love to Maeve,” the amazing young woman said quietly. “I’ll be in the lounge if you need me. Go.”

I could see Seamus kneeling beside Maeve in her wheelchair when we turned into her corridor.

A lump formed in my throat when I saw the open Bible in his hand. I stopped when I watched him make the sign of the cross on her forehead. Last rites? I thought.

How was I going to get through this? Today of all days?

Somehow Maeve was smiling when I knocked on the door frame. She was all dressed up as usual, this time a red Santa hat replacing her Yankees one.

Seamus closed his Bible and hugged me hard. “God give you the strength, Michael,” he said in my ear. “Your girl is a saint. You are too.” Seamus paused. “I’ll be back; I need to get some air.”

I guess my heart wasn’t already broken because I felt something snap like a guitar string in my chest when Maeve scooped Chrissy and Shawna into her withered lap.

I glanced up at the ceiling. My family’s story could become a new holiday classic, couldn’t it? I thought ruefully. Christmas in the Terminal Ward.

It wasn’t fair. Maeve had always exercised regularly, ate right, didn’t smoke. I bit my lip as a searing pressure built in my chest. I wanted to, needed to, scream my guts out.

But something strange happened when my son Brian helped her back onto her bed and put the pageant on the TV. Maeve started laughing. Not polite little giggles either, but gasping-for-breath belly laughs. I moved next to her, and her hand found mine behind the wall of our kids.

For the next ten minutes, the hospital room disappeared, and we could have been on our beat-up couch at home, watching the Yanks or one of our favorite old movies.

My useless anger exploded into guffaws as Shepherd Eddie tripped over his staff halfway up to the gym’s stage.

“What a great job you did!” Maeve said, throwing high fives all around after the tape had ended. “Bennetts bringing the house down. I’m so proud of all you guys.”

“Would you listen to the shameful amount of ruckus coming from this room?” Seamus said to giggles as he came back.

Maeve beamed as he gently took her hand and kissed it. “Merry Christmas,” he said, smuggling a gold box of Godiva chocolates behind her back with a wink.

It looked like someone had rolled a hospital bed into a Hallmark store after the handmade gifts and Christmas cards were handed out. Julia and Brian stepped forward with a black velvet box. Maeve’s smile, when she opened it, seemed powerful enough to banish the illness from her body forever. It was a thin gold necklace. The attached pendant said #1 mom.

“We all chipped in,” Brian said. “All of us, even the little ones.”

She kissed him on the cheek as he did the necklace’s clasp for her.

“I want you to keep on chipping in, guys,” Maeve said, leaning back, struggling to keep her eyes open. “Many hands lighten the load, and if it’s one thing we have a lot of, it’s hands. Little hands and big hearts. You couldn’t have made me prouder. Dad will show you what I got for you later, kids. Merry Christmas. Never forget, I love you all.”