"Who was that child?" he asked.
"I don't know, Dad," Trudy said. "Don't let it concern you."
"I want her to come back," he said. "I want another kiss."
Ruth turned to me, her lips sucked into her mouth. This was an unlovely expression she had perfected over the years. "She pulled his IV line halfway out...he's bleeding...and you just sat there."
"I'll put it back," I said, and someone else seemed to be speaking. Inside myself was a man standing off to one side, silent and stunned. I could still feel the warm pressure of her palm on my mouth.
"Oh, don't bother! I already did."
Ralph came back. "They're gone," he said. "Walking down the street toward the bus stop." He turned to my wife. "Do you really want me to call the police, Ruth?"
"No. We'd just be all day filling out forms and answering questions." She paused. "We might even have to testify in court."
"Testify to what?" Ralph asked.
"I don't know what, how should I know what? Will one of you get the adhesive tape so we can keep this christing needle still? It's on the kitchen counter, I think."
"I want another kiss," my father said.
"I'll go," I said, but first I went to the front door-which Ralph had locked as well as closed-and looked out. The little green plastic bus shelter was only a block down, but no one was standing by the pole or under the shelter's plastic roof. And the sidewalk was empty. Ayana and the woman-whether mother or minder-were gone. All I had was the kid's touch on my mouth, still warm but starting to fade.
Now comes the miracle part. I'm not going to skimp it-if I'm going to tell this story, I'll try to tell it right-but I'm not going to dwell on it either. Miracle stories are always satisfying but rarely interesting, because they're all the same.
We were staying at one of the motels on Ford City's main road, a Ramada Inn with thin walls. Ralph annoyed my wife by calling it the Rammit Inn. "If you keep doing that, you'll eventually forget and say it in front of a stranger," my wife said. "Then you'll have a red face."
The walls were so thin that it was possible for us to hear Ralph and Trudy arguing next door about how long they could afford to stay. "He's my father," Ralph said, to which Trudy replied: "Try telling that to Connecticut Light and Power when the bill comes due. Or the state commissioner when your sick days run out."
It was a little past seven on a hot August evening. Soon Ralph would be leaving for my father's, where the part-time nurse was on duty until eight P.M. I found the Pirates on TV and jacked the volume to drown out the depressing and predictable argument going on next door. Ruth was folding clothes and telling me the next time I bought cheap discount-store underwear, she was going to divorce me. Or shoot me for a stranger. The phone rang. It was Nurse Chloe. (This was what she called herself, as in "Drink a little more of this soup for Nurse Chloe.")
She wasted no time on pleasantries. "I think you should come right away," she said. "Not just Ralph for the night shift. All of you."
"Is he going?" I asked. Ruth stopped folding things and came over. She put a hand on my shoulder. We had been expecting this-hoping for it, really-but now that it was here, it was too absurd to hurt. Doc had taught me how to use a Bolo-Bouncer when I was a kid no older than that day's little blind intruder. He had caught me smoking under the grape arbor and had told me-not angrily but kindly-that it was a stupid habit, and I'd do well not to let it get a hold on me. The idea that he might not be alive when tomorrow's paper came? Absurd.
"I don't think so," Nurse Chloe said. "He seems better." She paused. "I've never seen anything like it in my life."
He was better. When we got there fifteen minutes later, he was sitting on the living-room sofa and watching the Pirates on the house's larger TV-no technological marvel, but at least colorfast. He was sipping a protein shake through a straw. He had some color. His cheeks seemed plumper, perhaps because he was freshly shaved. He had regained himself. That was what I thought then; the impression has only grown stronger with the passage of time. And one other thing, which we all agreed on-even the doubting Thomasina to whom I was married: the yellow smell that had hung around him like ether ever since the doctors sent him home to die was gone.
He greeted us all by name, and told us that Willie Stargell had just hit a home run for the Buckos. Ralph and I looked at each other, as if to confirm we were actually there. Trudy sat on the couch beside Doc, only it was more of a whoomping down. Ruth went into the kitchen and got herself a beer. A miracle in itself.