A Miracle is Needed (April 4, 2021)

The train rumbled as it drove at high speeds through the towering city. A woman sat coughing on the train, no one noticed her. She was on her way to see her son in the hospital, the boy was young. Now to make matters worse, she was developing a cold from going to and from the hospital so much. She had gone home to grab one of Ethan’s stuffed animals. The first time she had gone back to Leah’s mothers apartment in days, they had no other place to stay other than her mothers. 

A man sat down next to her, he had a short beard, wild hair, and kind face, he wore nothing more than sandals, jeans, and a plaid shirt. “Hello Leah.” He smiled at her. 

She turned and faced him, “do I know you?” She looked the man up and down again. No, he might have been one of her clients, but he looked like too much of a good person to be coming for her services. No, she had never seen this man before. 

He smiled, his eyes, they were what was most strang, most disturbing. “No, not as well as I would like you to. But that wrong question child.”

This man was differently strange. And Leah knew she would probably move away from him, or even run. But something about the man, she knew this man would never harm her, and at the same time it repulsed Leah. 

“I’m not interested, and I don’t do that kind of work right now.” She turned away. 

“But I can give the one thing you always wanted.” Leah couldn’t help but turn and look back at the man as the train rumbled on. 

“What would that be?” She asked sarcastically.

“Forgiveness.”

She didn’t know whether to start laughing in dersion, or burst into tears as his simple word cut through years of pain. She chose the middle and choked. The train rolled to a stop and said to her station. She jumped up and almost ran for the still closed doors. She heard the man behind her. “Tell Ethan, that everything will be alright.” 

Even though the floor inside the train was flat, Leah tripped as the doors slid open. She turned around. The man was gone. She left the train and walked towards the children's hospital. The man had said less than thirty words to her, and yet, she didn’t understand the yet. 

She made her way into the hospital and spoke to some of the regular doctors and nurses. Then went into Ethan’s room. He was fast asleep. The chemo had taken every ounce of his strength. After a few hours when he did stir, he just looked at her.

She stroked his hair as he tried to speak, and failed. “It’s okay, it’s okay, save your strength.”

Leah heard a knock on the door. She turned around, Dr Voss stood in the doorway. “Hello you two!” He always had a broad smile on his, but she knew it was fake, well practiced. She had seen the dead eyed way he read scans and other documents. 

“How is he doing?” Leah asked. 

Voss looked out the window, then back at them. “We are fighting the good fight. We haven’t given up yet. Leah, can I show you something in the other room?”

Fear coursed through Leah, she had heard and seen other parents in this same halfway get a very similar speech. She followed Voss out of the room and into the hallway, Voss closed the door behind her. 

“What is it doctor?”

Voss took a step closer, “he doesn’t have much time left, weeks at best, but I fear the timeline is more like days. The cancer has spread farther and faster than we could ever believe.” 

The floor seemed to slip out from beneath Leah as she physically began to drop. Voss caught her before she fell. No tears came to Leah’s eyes. Ethan was the only good thing that had ever happened in her life. 

“I need to be with him.”

“Of course. I will be back to check on him in an hour.”

She opened back up the door and went into the hospital room, sinking down into one of the two chairs by the bedside. Ethan reached out a feeble hand and she took it, still no tears came to her eyes. Sometimes, there is just pain too deep for tears. 

Leah stayed there in that chair waiting, waiting for the worst. She stared at the clock, the only other thing besides the monitors that was moving. Fifty minutes passed before there was a knock on the door. Dully she thought that it was strange, doctor Voss had always been one of the most punctual people she had ever met. 

A doctor in a long white coat sat down across from her. She didn’t bother looking at him or talking to him, although she realized that it wasn’t doctor Voss. The man didn’t speak either, they just sat there in silence. 

Finally after more time had passed, she looked at the doctor. She jumped up out of her seat, the doctor was the man from the train. 

“Who are you?” But it wasn’t Leah who asked the question she wanted to know the answer to. No instead it was Doctor Voss standing in the doorway. He walked inside and looked at the man, who Leah realized he was still wearing his sandals. “These aren’t your patients. And I've never seen you before a day in my life, do you even work here?” Voss asked the man. 

The man answered in a calm tone. “You know who I am Liam Voss, these are my patients, and yes, you have seen before. But you left me behind a long time ago. As for the question ‘do I work here’ I work where I am needed, and right now I am needed right here.”

Leah didn’t say a word, as she looked towards Voss, Ethan opened his eyes and turned towards the man. Voss grew angry, “take off that coat and leave at once otherwise I am calling security.” The man continued to stare at Voss. 

Then the man spoke. “Leah.”

“Yes?” 

“It is not for your son that I have come. His day has not arrived. Leah, I have come to you. You will know where to find me when you look. Before the sunset on the 7th day, your son will leave this place on his own feet. Have peace.” The man stood up, removed the coat, and disappeared out the door. 

Voss looked around, “damn crazies, I’m calling security.” He walked over to the phone and spoke into it for a while before setting it back down. He then talked to her about Ethan for a while, and left when a security guard arrived. 

He came back a little later looking very confused. 

“Leah, can you come with me.” Leah nodded, the man's words still resting heavily on her heart. She followed Voss down the hallway and to the nurse’s station where a security guard was looking at the security footage. 

The security guard had a name tag that said Brent. Brent looked at Leah and asked, “how long was the man in your room?” 

“He came in almost exactly ten minutes before Doctor Voss did. I really need to be with my son, what is this about.” 

Voss nodded at the guard, “show her what you showed me.” 

“Here, take my seat ma.” She took the security guard's seat and he started the footage about five minutes before the man from the train, and fake doctor entered. The footage was slightly fast forwarded, she watched as the hospital room door stayed closed. No one went in, until Voss opened the door and went inside. Then a couple minutes passed and Voss came back out and spoke to the security officer. 

“Where’s the man?”

The security guard shook his head, “Dr Voss said a suspicious fake doctor went in, but madam, sir. The only people that have been in or out of that room in the last three hours have been the two of you. He doesn’t exist, I don’t know what else to tell you.”

The next day things got worse for Ethan. 

The day after he seemed to recover just a little. 

But it was just the calm before the storm, the third and fourth days he didn’t even open his eyes. 

On the fifth day they took Ethan off of his medication, it couldn’t help him anymore. 

On the sixth day, he was put on a ventilator. 

Leah dozed off, listening to the sound of the ventilator work, keeping her son alive, but barley. She felt a tapping on her shoulder, she tried to shrug it off. She hadn’t slept in a week, not since the man had visited them. 

Leah jumped up to write when she heard a scream, and the shatter of something as it struck the floor. She looked towards the doorway and saw a food tray laying on the ground as the nurse ran out. 

“Mom?”

Leah turned around, not believing her ears. She looked at her son, standing right next to her chair. His hair was still missing, and he still looked a little sick. But his checks were filled, and his eyes were bright. Leah embarrassed her son as Doctor voss and nurses came rushing into the room. 

Then ran test after test on the boy. The cancer was gone, his condition continued to improve rapidly. Leah asked at lunch the next day if they could go home. Voss sat there stunned, and shook his head, “we have no reason to keep him. I can’t stop you, I would like to run more tests, but I can’t in good conscience recommend it.”

The sun was setting as they finished the paperwork, Leah’s mother Marry was there to pick the two of them up and head back to her apartment. They got home, and over the next several days Ethan slept a lot, but the person who seemed to be doing the worse physically was Leah. She paced back and forth and stayed up late staring out the window. 

Ethan hair came back quickly and as the new school year came Ethan started school for the first time in years. Leah tried and failed to get an honest job. Instead the energy built up. One night some weeks after they had left the hospital when the pent energy was too much Leah grabbed a coat and headed towards the door. As she reached it the light turned on in the living room. 

“So are you finally going to go back to being a prostitute? You always do, your father was right about you.” It was Marry. 

“Mom, Ethan!” 

She waved a hand glaring at her daughter, “he’s going to ask where and how you met his daddy someday. Anyway, he’s fast asleep. So where are you going?”

“I need to go for a walk.”

“Where?”

“I need to find someone?”

Even more annoyed Marry replied “who? Does he give good tips or something?”

“It’s not like that. I don’t, I don't know?!” Leah turned around 

She wandered through the city, considering going to her old haunts, but clients would probably try and get her to come home with them. So she avoided them. Instead she wondered until she paid for the subway fair and stepped onto the train. 

As she stepped aboard, she realized that this is the place she had been looking for. She blinked, “you made it, I knew you would.” She looked around, the man was sitting in the same place she had first met him. She could have sworn the train car was empty when she stepped in. She walked over to the man and stopped in front of him, he didn’t rise.

“You healed my son.” Leah stated. 

“My father did.”

“The day we met, you said ‘you're asking the wrong question’ when I asked ‘do I know you?’ What is the right question?”

“You already know, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

She gulped before asking the question she had been thinking about again, and again. “Do you know me?” 

“I know everything about you.”

Leah had known he would say that. “Your him aren’t you?” Leah asked.

“Yes.”

Tears begin welling in her eyes, “what do you want with me? I hate me, I don’t have a job. My son's own father doesn’t even know he exists, let alone has cancer. My mother hates, my friends don’t even want to talk to me, the last thing my father said to me before he died was that I was disappointed in me. I am not worthy.” 

“Worthy. It was never about worthy. You can’t be, you frankly don’t deserve it. But you are loved all the same. I am yours, if you are mine.”

She sank to her knees. “You don’t know what I’ve done?” Leah wept “why my child? There are so many others just like me? You said it was not his time, and this was about me. Why? I am nothing. ” 

“You may not understand it, most won’t. But there isn’t a plan. I know all, I see all that could be, and all that will ever be, the past, the present, the future. I control all, and I have no control. I hold every opposite equally. You cannot apply your rules of logic to me, so don’t try. I cannot save a world that doesn’t want me to. It has been said to death, but no one ever truly dies, they embrace who they are, and go to be a better place, they come home. It wasn’t time for your son to come home, to be loved more than you could know. You aren’t supposed to understand, it. Just have faith.”

“I have faith lord.” 

“Leah, I know everything you have done. You are not nothing, you are everything.” He sat down on the floor and embraced her. Then lifted her to her knees as he stood. “Your faith has given you forgiveness. You are forgiven” The world disappeared off of Leah’s shoulders as she gasped. “Now go forth, and be a new being. You are loved.”

The tears streamed down her face and Leah looked up, and he was gone, Christ was gone, as if he had never been there. But the feeling in her heart, her soul told her that he had been there, that he was still here. She stood up, and returned home.