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“Well, Mike, I’m sure your, friends here, must know how expensive this place is.” He shifted to Cat. “Your daughter, she would be here for a long while, a period of several months to rehab.”
Mike didn’t disagree. He fixed a practiced eye to the child and he could see she was an especially bad case. Got it in all of her limbs. But that was no surprise. Polio was mighty hard to pin down, and in Negro children, it always got explained away as something else for a long time—until it was too late.
Cat spoke, “How much does it cost?”
Her full bottom lip, so red and rosy, began to quiver in a way that Mike didn’t like. No weakness. Stay strong, Cat.
So, he did the unthinkable again and touched her. “We don’t need to worry about that just now, Catherine. Mr. O and the center will take the finest care of this here chocolate drop.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Sarah peered over her desk at the group, not liking the way the thing was going. She had a nephew here and didn’t want him having to share a room with a Negro child. Good thing the one he suggested was empty.
Mr. O folded his arms. “Oh yeah, Mike? ”
“High time, sir. Don’t you agree?” He could use his deep voice to great effect many times. To soothe a child in pain, a baby to sleep, or to save a man’s life in the heat of a war battle. It was the voice that Mr. O was most familiar with—the one that had coaxed him back to life.
The white man with red hair shifted and the beginnings of sweat shone through the armpits of his cream-colored linen suit. Yeah, Pittsburgh could get mighty hot in August. “There’s that, Mike. But we have no room. I’m sorry.”
“Sure. Still, wasn’t so long some of your kind couldn’t stay here.” Mike regarded him with a pointed look. “In such a fine place. If it’s that kind of problem and the room is taken, they can have my room. This chocolate drop is special to me.”
Mr. O didn’t look so uncomfortable anymore, but instead looked amused. “What now Mike? Who are these people to you?”
He edged over closer to Cat and grasped her by the hand. “This little chocolate drop is mine. She’s my daughter.”
Chapter Two
Her tongue transformed into her fast-beating heart at seeing that smooth Negro come stepping forward with a pail in his hand. The first thing in her mind was, “Praise God, he’s come to save us.”
Then cold water from the pail of reality came over her as the blood rushed forward to her face. The louse.
He stepped around the ambulance they had ridden there in, a low-set station wagon ambulance since Andie wasn’t very big. He started ordering around the two white male drivers about how to move Andie from one conveyer to the other.
Once it was done, he turned to her, his beautiful teeth and lips gleaming. “Right this way.”
Would her leg let her step forward? She tried. No. Was she getting polio? Dear God no. She was trying to recover from seeing Myron “Mike” James in this place at this time when her heart, her entire life was wrapped up in that twisted little body on the stretcher. She couldn’t divide herself just now.
“You need help?” He held out his big hand to her.
“I do not.” Her words whipped in the stillness as they proceeded into the home. She grabbed onto the cold metal of Andie’s stretcher and willed herself. Step forward. One at a time just as you’ve always been doing.
A miracle occurred. She could walk. On her smooth brown pumps, she held herself upright and walked, as she always did. Could the same miracle happen for her daughter? Still as they pushed onto the elevator, it hit her.
How did he know?
There was only room on the small lift for Andie’s bed, Mike and her. “We’ll send it back down for you.” Mike trilled in his deep voice and closed the gated doors of the lift himself in the faces of the director and the receptionist lady. He pushed his big body in front of her, next to Andie’s bed and them into a corner. “Sometimes, you just gotta take things by the horns, right Cat? How’s things?”
She could breathe again. He knew nothing. Joy and fierceness mixed in her veins. She bit the words out one at a time. “As you can see, Mike. Things are not going that well.”
“Hard to see you’ve had such a time, Cat. You surely deserve better. But we are going to do what we can to get this little precious standing up again, running and playing like always.”
Andie’s brown eyes shone above the rim of the sheet that covered her and spoke from beneath the sheets because she was unable to lift up her chin, “Well, that’s what we come here for, mister. I got plans for myself, just as soon as I can get out of this here bed.”
Cat wanted to slink down next to the bed in horror at her daughter’s forward response, but Mike seemed amused.
“What’s that, chocolate drop?”
“I’m going to be Maria Tallchief. I’ll dance in the Ballet Grand in a pretty white and pink tutu with garlands of flowers in my hair.”
Mike turned to Cat and fixed her with a sharp look. Then he faced Andie. “Whatever you want honey. We are going to help you here. You going to get better. You don’t have any more worries, Cat. It will be okay.”
