The Healing of Peter Smith's Sister

The infant lay on the narrow bed in the annex ward, his face already swelling where the drops had hit. I was the one who had run for the superior when the nurse came screaming down the corridor with him still in her arms. The bottle stood open on the cart behind her, the label turned so the 50 percent mark showed clear.

Margaret Smith held the child against her shoulder and would not set him down. The two doctors arrived first, then the eye man from uptown. He lifted each lid with a gloved finger, shone the light, and stepped back. “The corneas are gone,” he said. Nobody contradicted him.

The superior returned with a small square of faded cloth. She laid it across the baby’s eyes, pinned the edge to his gown, and told us to come with her. We left the ward as it was, the cart still out, the bottle uncapped. Downstairs the chapel was empty except for one person already kneeling. Mary Redman kept her face to the tabernacle and did not look up when we filed in behind her.

We stayed through the night. The only light came from the sanctuary lamp and the street lamp outside the high windows. Every hour or so someone opened the door to check the time. At four the night nurse on the floor above sent word that the fever had begun. At five the breathing changed.

By morning the eye specialists were back. One of them carried a black case of instruments. The superior unpinned the cloth herself. The baby opened both eyes and turned his head toward the window where the light fell. The specialist set the case on the floor and did not open it.

That same afternoon the pneumonia took hold. The temperature climbed past what the glass could show. We moved him to the small side room where the oxygen was kept. Mary Redman stayed at the foot of the bed, repeating the same words she had used in the chapel. The superior sent for the relic again.

By evening the fever broke. The child slept without the laboring sound in his chest. The doctors who came on the late shift looked at the chart, looked at the baby, and said nothing that could be written down.

Margaret Smith was allowed to hold him again the next morning. She traced the line of his eyebrow with one finger and asked whether the eyes would stay clear. No one answered her.

The story moved through the hospital in pieces. By the end of the week the sisters had written it out for the provincial house. Mary Redman gave her account to the same two doctors who had first examined the child. They signed the paper and added that the corneas had been destroyed beyond any known repair.