The Miracle

by Irving Wallace

  Dr. Whitney measured his words. "With surgery, some. Without surgery, none. There is some advance work being done in this field, but I'm afraid it hasn't come to fruition yet. About a year ago, I read a paper by a Dr. Maurice Duval in Paris who had evolved a new technique, surgery and implants coupled with genetic engineering. But his experiments at that point, although fully successful, had involved mammals other than man. I discussed this with several highly accredited local surgeons, who had also heard of Duval's progress, but they felt that it was not ready to be applied to human beings as yet. So, since time is of the essence, we are left with the only surgery we know and can depend upon, standard bone surgery with replacement of the malignant portion of the femur. Sometimes it works successfully."

  "Sometimes," Amanda echoed dully.

  "Let me be more precise," said Dr. Whitney, "based on case histories of these surgeries. If undertaken right away, before there is more deterioration. Ken may have a 30 percent chance of getting rid of his cancer and being restored to normal life. But the fact remains, statistically, that there would also be a 70 percent chance of failure. Nevertheless, I repeat, there is no other choice but to go right ahead."

  "Well, when do we go ahead?"

  Dr. Whitney frowned. "We don't," he said simply. "I had the surgery scheduled for this week, but now the operation has been cancelled."

  Amanda was on the edge of her chair. "For heaven's sake, why?"

  "That's the reason I called you in today, as the one closest to Ken, to discuss the problem with you." Dr. Whitney cleared his throat and looked away. "I saw Ken late yesterday, and outlined one final time

  what had to be done. He approved, approved of the surgery. This morning, first thing, he telephoned me. He had changed his mind, was turning down the operation."

  Amanda was shocked. "He what? He won't go through with it? I didn't talk to him this morning—he was still asleep—so I haven't heard about this. But it makes no sense. Are you sure? We had agreed surgery was his only chance."

  "Apparently Ken doesn't think so. He now thinks there's a better course. Have you seen this morning's paper?"

  "Not yet."

  "Have a look." Dr. Whitney took the Chicago Tribune off the comer of his desk and held it out for Amanda. She surveyed the front page and was more bewildered than ever. "There's just some headline about Lourdes."

  'Turn to page three. Read the full story."

  Amanda opened the paper, and the headline hit her. VIRGIN MARY TO RETURN TO LOURDES. The story that followed was bylined by someone named Liz Finch, and it was datelined Paris.

  Amanda hastily read the news story. When she was through, she let the paper drop to the floor, and met Dr. Whitney's eyes. She was aghast as the full import of what was happening struck her. "The Virgin Mary returning to Lourdes to perform a miracle? The hallucinating of an adolescent peasant girl over a century ago? Are you telling me Ken has read and believes in this?"

  "Yes."

  "Ken depending on a miracle to save him instead of surgery? Dr. Whitney, that's not like Ken, you know it isn't. He doesn't believe in miracles. He's hardly a churchgoer. You know him. He's reasonable, logical, intelligent—"

  "Not anymore, he's not," said the physician. "Not when he's so desperate."

  "But I'm telling you it's not like Ken."

  "You know his mother fairly well, don't you? You know Helen Clayton is a fervent believer. Can you imagine how this story affected her? She was all over Ken at once. Since she doesn't like the surgeon's odds, she's decided that Lourdes will offer her son a better chance for complete recovery. She's already sent Ken to see their priest. Father Heam, and it was after seeing Father Heam that Ken phoned me and cancelled the surgery. He told me that he's going to Lourdes. He's been brainwashed into thinking he may have a good chance for a miracle cure. It was no use arguing with him. One can't argue with blind faith. Even when it's out of character."

  Amanda sat there, worrying her purse, deeply shaken. "Dr. Whitney, I try to deal with realities in my work. You know I'm a psychologist."

  "I know."

  "Perhaps this is a momentary aberration of Ken's that will pass. Let me ask you a question. What if we let him go to Lourdes, let him pray for a miracle, let him believe in the fairy tale until he sees for himself that it hasn't cured him? Couldn't he return here then, having come to his senses, and undergo the surgery?"

  "Miss Spenser, I must be absolutely candid with you. I will say again what I said earlier. In this kind of disease, time is of the essence. The loss of a full month may make Ken almost inoperable, at least reduce his chances for a successful surgery from thirty percent to fifteen percent. His chances for survival are low enough. To cut them in half again reduces his chances drastically. Such are the facts. Unless he is saved by a miracle, he won't be saved at all. I'm sorry. But I had to apprise you of the turn of events, and the current situation, and hope you could influence Ken's thinking. I'm hoping somehow you can do something about it."

  Amanda gathered up her purse and resolutely stood up. "I am going to do something about it. Immediately."

  Dr. Whitney was on his feet. "Are you going to speak to Ken or his mother?"

  "To neither. They'd be impossible to talk to in their present state. I'm going to talk to Father Heam. Right now. He's our only hope."

  It was not until late afternoon that Amanda Spenser was able to get an appointment to see Father Heam. Even that had been difficult to arrange on such short notice, but she had invoked her friendship with Bernard and Helen Clayton and explained her relationship with Ken Clayton.

  In a way, however, the delay had been a good thing.

  After making her appointment, Amanda had realized that she was poorly prepared to debate with an educated Catholic priest about Lourdes and miraculous cures. While she knew vaguely about Bernadette and her visions, probably from having once seen the film The Song of Bernadette revived on television when she was in college, she knew nothing about the miracle shrine itself.

  Since Father Heam could not meet her until four-thirty in the afternoon, Amanda had five hours to brief herself for the visit. More than an hour of it she had devoted to calling her secretary and arranging to have all her sessions with her patients cancelled for this after-

  noon, and then having a salad and two cups of coffee in a crowded cafe in the Loop.

  After that, she had spent four hours in the reading room of the Chicago Public Library skimming through the few volumes available that were devoted to Bernadette and Lourdes. She had gone through Bernadette of Lourdes by Frances Parkinson Keyes, which was pro, and The Happening at Lourdes by Alan Neame, which was evenhanded, and Eleven Lourdes Miracles by Dr. D. J. West, which was con, jotted a few notes, and by the time the appointment with Father Heam neared, she felt sufficiently briefed to hold her own in a discussion on the subject.

  The Church of the Good Shepherd was near Lincoln Park, and it had its own parking lot. The place of worship, from its size and well-maintained exterior, was obviously attended and supported by a wealthy congregation. Certainly, Amanda realized, her future in-laws would have belonged to no other.

  Refusing to be intimidated by such splendor, Amanda went directly inside, where she was met and shown to the chancery office occupied by Father Heam. The priest proved to be full-faced, potbellied, and amiable. By contrast with the church itself, his office seemed unprepossessing. Plain gray drapes framed the windows. There was a fireplace, and above it a large bronze crucifix depicting an elongated Giacometti-like Saviour on the Cross. Father Heam offered Amanda a velour-covered chair beside his table desk, then took his place in the straight chair at the desk.

  On the wall behind him was a framed photograph of Pope John Paul III.

  Father Heam was disarmingly apologetic. "Normally, I am not this difficult to see. I enjoy meeting people, and rarely constrict their visits. But this has been an unusually busy day. I'm sorry to limit your visit. Miss Spenser, but only through a bit of sleight of hand have I managed to sq
ueeze you in, and I can give you just twenty minutes. Perhaps another time we can—"

  "No," said Amanda. "Twenty minutes will do." She realized that she could not squander a second. She must get to the subject of potential contention as quickly as possible. "As I told you on the phone, I'm Ken Clayton's fiancee."

  "I'm delighted to meet you, at last. Yes, I've known about you. I was to officiate at your wedding. I still expect to do so at a later date."

  "Then you know about Ken's illness, his cancer?"

  "I've heard about it from his parents. And now from Mr. Clayton himself. I assume you know he was in to see me this morning. We discussed his condition at some length."

  "That's why I'm here," said Amanda, "to discuss it with you further."

  "I'm glad to have this opportunity to talk to you," Father Hearn assured her earnestly.

  The smooth moon face before her was phlegmatic, revealed no pretense of knowing what Amanda's visit was about, but Amanda was certain that it masked shrewd understanding of her motive in wishing this appointment.

  "I have no idea if you know anything about me," said Amanda. "Do you know I'm a clinical psychologist?"

  Father Heam's mouth puckered. A faint suggestion of surprise. "No," he said. "No, I don't think I'd been told that."

  "I have a private practice," said Amanda. "I teach part-time at the University of Chicago. I teach clinical psychology, abnormal psychology, theory of personality. I speak of this only because I want you to understand that while my concern for Ken is that of a woman who loves him, it is also that of a person who can view his illness objectively. Father, you do know how serious his illness is, don't you?"

  "Yes, I do. Miss Spenser. I'm sorry for his ordeal, and your own. I shall be offering prayers for his speedy and complete recovery."

  "That's kind of you. Father Hearn, and I appreciate it." She tried to control herself, keep any tinge of sarcasm out of her voice. "Helpful as prayer may be, I'm afraid Ken will need more than that. His only real hope, his one hope, he's in immediate surgery. He was prepared to undergo this surgery until he saw you this morning. Now he has cancelled it, and is off to find a miracle. For me, Father, his decision is suicidal and deeply distressing. Only by having an operation—"

  Father Hearn interrupted her. "Miss Spenser, I have in no way tried to dissuade Mr. Clayton from undergoing an operation. It is not in my province to sit in judgment on a parishioner's desire to seek help from the medical profession. This was a decision Mr. Clayton had to come to himself. When we talked this morning, he had great misgivings about the surgery's being a success. He said that if he underwent an operation now, he'd sacrifice a God-given opportimity to be in Lourdes at the time of the Virgin Mary's visitation. He realized that after his surgery he'd be convalescing, bedridden, and would therefore be unable to pray directly to the Blessed Virgin for a miraculous cure of his possibly fatal illness. Mr. Clayton made his choice on his own. He decided to put his life in the hands of Our Lord and of the Mother of Heaven at a Christian shrine that has provided—constantly provided— miraculous cures to afflicted pilgrims from all over the earth."

  Amanda felt a rush of anger and impatience that transcended her

  control. There was a life at stake, a human life, and this pious poop was trying to disregard it with banalities. "Father Heam, you don't believe all that, do you?"

  Momentarily, the priest was taken aback. "What are you saying— don't believe what?"

  "That this illiterate shepherdess really, in reality, saw the Virgin Mary? Wait, let me finish, let me make myself clear, without being disrespectful in any way. Even assuming that there was a corporeal Virgin Mary, Bernadette would have been a poor choice to see her or report her message. From my reading, the evidence available, what is obvious to me is that Bernadette fits perfectly into the mold of the hysteric. There she was, in this backwater village, a half-starved, always ailing, semi-ignorant peasant girl, a little adolescent hungry for attention and love. She was the ideal type to have hallucinations, to wish for and hence conjure up a beautiful friend like the Virgin Mary, and be convinced that she had actually seen the Holy Mother and conversed with her. Bernadette deluded herself into thinking that she had seen what she claimed to see, and others then and since have been eager to be deluded also, to believe in this, to fulfill their own personal needs." Amanda caught her breath. "Father, do you expect me to put the life of the one person I love more than any other on earth in the hands of an unstable adolescent who lived briefly 130 years ago? Can you actually expect me to believe that Ken, or anyone with a medically determined serious disease, possibly incurable, can be cured by kneeling and praying at some French cave because a simple-minded peasant girl, her head filled with dreams, claimed that she had seen and talked with the Mother of Jesus eighteen times at this spot?"

  Drained, Amanda sat back, hoping that she had resistance enough to weather the storm that she was sure would follow. But, to her surprise. Father Heam displayed no anger. He appeared calm, the figure of reasonableness.

  The tone of his response was quiet and steady. "If the Virgin had not appeared at the grotto, to be seen and heard by a pure and innocent believer, and had not endowed the grotto with special powers, how do you account for the scientific, the medical, facts that have been produced in the decades since? How do you account for the nearly seventy persons who have experienced a miraculous cure of what had been diagnosed by the leading physicians of many nations as an incurable disease? How do you account for the fact that in every one of these terminal cases, the best doctors in the world certified the patient as totally cured, not by medicine but by the power of the miraculous? How

  do you account for five thousand other cases of crippled or dying persons being reported as fully cured because of the grotto in Lourdes?"

  Amanda had already brought her library notes out of her purse. Glancing at them, she said, "I read a study made by a doctor of eleven of the so-called miracle cures at Lourdes. He posed the question, 'Was there a real physical change or was it all psychological?' He decided that all or most of the so-called cures were of diseases or illnesses induced by hysteria, bodily effects of emotional disturbances such as depression, anxiety, or tension that affect the heart, blood vessels, kidneys, and so forth. 'Under hypnosis,' he wrote, 'and given appropriate suggestions, subjects have been known to produce blisters corresponding to imaginary bums and even to develop bruising and oozing of blood from the skin.' In the same way, under the hypnotic influence of Lourdes, ailments aggravated by the imagination can be improved and healed by the imagination. Not usually, but often enough to make believers think that they are sudden miracles."

  "I gather," said Father Heara wryly, "you don't believe in miracles at all."

  "Father, in my profession I've seen many cases—and read many case histories -- in which the mental has had an effect on the physical. But mental healing can't be depended upon, certainly not in Ken's case where he is suffering from a very real bone cancer. I'm ready to trust his life to a surgeon's scalpel. I can't trust it to an imaginative fable. No, Father, I don't believe in miracles."

  "But surely you have not come here to debate with me?"

  "I have come here because I assumed that, whatever your profession, you are a rational and logical man. I hoped that you would disenchant Ken with the idea of leaving his life to a mystical cure at Lourdes, and that you would convince him to go into surgery at once. I hoped that you would understand me, and I hoped that you would help me.

  Father Heam sat in silence for many seconds, and finally he spoke. "Miss Spenser, I can't help you because I can't understand you, just as you can't understand me. We speak different languages. My language speaks only in the words of faith, unreserved faith and belief in God, in the Lord, in the Virgin Mary, and the wonders, the miracles, they choose to perform. If you do not understand my language, there is nothing more we can say to each other."

  Amanda felt sickened. "Then you are saying there is no chance you'll try to dissuade Ken f
rom making the pilgrimage to Lourdes and waiting for the Virgin and her miracle?"

  "No chance. I've already succeeded in getting Mr. Clayton on an

  official British pilgrimage to Lourdes being led by an old colleague and friend, Father Woodcourt of London. I will pray that Mr. Clayton's pilgrimage proves successful."

  Amanda sighed, and stood up. "You've made his reservation, you say?"

  "On a pilgrimage train from London to Paris to Lourdes. Yes, the reservation for Mr. Clayton is secure."

  Amanda went to the door of the chancery, then turned. "I'd appreciate it if you'd make it two," she said.

  "Two?"

  "Reservations. One for Ken. The other for me. I can't let that damn fool take this horrible risk by himself. Thank you, Father. I hope that the next time we meet it will not be at a funeral."

  Sitting in the Cadillac limousine taking him from the United Nations to the Soviet consular building on East 67th Street in New York City, Sergei Tikhanov still enjoyed a sense of elation at the excellent reception given his speech at the UN, especially by delegates of the Third World bloc. While the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, the good-natured Alexei Izakov, delivered the routine speeches. It was Tikhanov, as veteran foreign minister of the USSR, who was always sent to New York to make the more crucial public statements.

  This morning's address, on the continuing nuclear weapons confrontation with the United States, had been a crucial speech, and it had gone down well. If Tikhanov had any one reservation about his speech, it was that Premier Skryabin had placed limitations on its contents and the invective that might be used. This was the one thing that irked Tikhanov, his superior's conciliatory and soft policy toward the Americans. Tikhanov knew the Americans better than anyone else in the Kremlin hierarchy, and he knew they were like children who responded only to sternness and threats. But nevertheless, within its limitations, the major policy address had been effective, he was sure.