Sebastian stayed seated.
“James, I must know if you understand me. The full force of the Boston Archdiocese is poised to launch a campaign against you. You will be painted as a pervert, as a tool of the devil, as a cult leader, and your followers will be tarred with the same brush…”
I had heard way too much of this crap, and I couldn’t stay quiet anymore.
I jumped to my feet and said to the outrageous Father Sebastian, “Please understand us. James is a good man and a good priest, and there’s nothing you can say that will stop the JMJ movement. The Roman Catholic Church’s threats, rigidity, and exclusion are exactly why people are coming to JMJ. We will fight anyone who gets between people and their love of God, and we will win.”
Now Sebastian was on his feet, too, and Gilly let loose with her signature, glass-breaking wail.
“I wasn’t speaking to you,” Sebastian said to me over the din.
James said, “Brigid and I are of the same mind. I’ve got work to do upstairs. Rain is in the forecast.”
The priest made a gesture, as though brushing dirt off his hands. When he had cleared the threshold, James closed the door hard behind him.
Baby and I went into my husband’s arms.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I expected to be excommunicated. But I am worried that Cooney will intimidate people and that they’ll be frightened away.”
“Some will. Many won’t,” I said.
I took Gilly upstairs to her room and soothed her as I looked out her window. I watched Father Sebastian get into his car, and I stayed at the window until that black cloud of a man drove away.
Chapter 98
AT FOUR in the afternoon, I was stitching a nasty head wound at the clinic when a patient called the front desk and I was called to the phone, stat.
“Doctor, it’s Chloe.” Chloe’s voice trailed off, and I called her name several times until she came back, saying in a weak voice, “I’ve killed myself.”
“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.