Chapter 7

DURING the month of July and for a part of August I was to be away in Cork, and I did not tell Kathleen so until I was about to say goodbye to her. A look of dismay came into her eyes when she realised it would be a long time until she would see me again. "And you will not be back for six long weeks?” she asked. I told her that I would write to her often while I was away. ”But that isn't as nice as having you come out to see me,” she replied.

She was sitting up in bed when I said goodbye to her, and then she held up her face to be kissed on the cheek. At the door of the ward I looked back and saw that she was watching me and crying. Two patients stayed with her until she quietened down. It is strange that a child who never cried under pain, no matter how severe, would cry on an occasion like this.

While I was away a girl from town often called out to see her and this helped to pass the time for her.

From Cork I wrote to her frequently and received many letters in reply. I have all these letters still, and it is nice but sad to read through them at times and to remember that the child who wrote them is now dead for many years. Many pathetic sentences could be picked from these letters like: “Your letters are the only ones I get because nobody else writes to me,” or, "I am counting the days until you come back again,” or, “I am feeling tired now and I want to go to sleep.”

Or a plea like this from a little innocent child: "When you are coming home could you bring me some chocolate biscuits, put them in a nice box and they will not get crushed." And in another letter she wrote: “Bring me some nice plums. I love plums."

Besides these pathetic sentences there were also more sorrowful ones like, "Mary Fallon died last night, I was asleep when she died, but I saw her in the morning and she dead,” and in another letter she wrote, "Mrs Burke is dying, she will not last much longer.”

On one occasion when I called to see her she produced a half-crown from under the pillow and asked me if that was a lot of money. Somebody had given her the half-crown and as she had no experience of money she did not know what its value was.(3) I told her it was a lot of money for a little girl to have, and then she handed it to me and compelled me to take it.

“You have given me a lot of things," she said, “and I have given you nothing. You must take this money, and don't buy me anything with it. Buy something for yourself.”

This was just one example of her generous heart. Whenever she gave anything she gave all and held nothing back.

When I was in Cork I put a little more money with it and bought her a green coloured fountain pen, and posted it to her. She had seen some of the other patients writing with fountain pens, and I knew that it was one of the things she wanted most for herself.

I heard afterwards that on the morning she received the parcel she tried with trembling hands to open it, wondering what it contained. When it was opened for her, and when she saw the pen, she began bouncing up and down in the bed with delight, and one little girl, ill and lonely in hospital, had one big happy day.

Kathleen was always a neat writer and drew pencil lines on blank paper to keep her writing straight. But towards the end of the holidays, I noticed that her handwriting had got very uneven and at times was scribbled. Sometimes she excused herself by writing, "I am very sick and I cannot write much.

But it was only when I saw her again after six weeks absence that I marvelled at how she was able to hold the pen in her frail hand and I realised how much it must have cost her to write even a short note. In the six weeks she had changed a lot for the worse and the disease had got a firm grip on her. Her dark sparkling eyes had become sunken, and the skin on her face was drawn and almost transparent, her hands had become frail with scarcely any flesh on them and her legs were so thin and weak that she could no longer stand. But the two dimples, the friendly smile and the pearly teeth were as beautiful as ever.

She had developed a painful form of the disease which at times affected her stomach so that for days she was not able to hold down any solid food. But worse still, she suffered from a deficiency of calcium so that her limbs became brittle and painful and at times even the sheet touching her feet, from which she suffered the most, caused her intense pain.

On four different occasions while I was away the nurses were certain that the end had come, but on each occasion she rallied and confidently told them that she would not die until I returned.

She tried to hide her pain from everybody and her usual answer to those who asked her how she felt was that she was feeling quite well. However, she could not always hide her sufferings, as the following episode will show: One evening while I was with Kathleen, another patient came over to talk to us. The patient had placed her hand on the rail at the foot of the bed and, accidentally, without realising it, while laughing, she gave the bed a violent shake and at the same time disturbed Kathleen. Immediately there was an agonising scream from the child, her face twisted with pain, her eyes blurred with tears and in a choking voice she cried out, “Oh, Mary how could you? you have hurt me, Oh! you have hurt me terrible.” It took Kathleen some minutes before she recovered, and we knew then that all along she was hiding the pain from others.

A short time afterwards we found out why she did so. To ease her pain she was given an injection of morphia one evening, and for hours she lay in a drugged sleep, free from pain for the first time. Some days afterwards Nurse Foye came to give her another injection, but Kathleen refused to take it. The nurse reasoned with her and told her it would put her out of pain, and then she blurted out, “But I don't mind suffering. I want to suffer more for Our Lord.” Then she blushed because she realised that she had let out her secret, that she was satisfied to suffer if God willed it.

To a casual observer who might see her once or twice, Kathleen would appear to be just an ordinary but rather pretty looking child. But we who knew her well could see her sterling character, the same strong character that one associates with the well-known saints, and which enabled them not to flinch under suffering.(4)