Patience Harper
The Tale of an Extraordinary Girl.
By
Flora Holt
Sharp pains awoke Gladys Harper from her sleep on the morning of November 2nd 1983. They pulled her from sleep and sent her swollen body into convulsions. The pains encased her lower stomach and back. It felt as though an invisible assailant was stabbing her in her stomach over and over again.. The pains brought racking sobs to her throat as well as gut wrenching moans. She understood what was happening even as it happened. She was going into premature labor. She knew it was too soon, her baby wasn’t due until March. There was too much pain for this to be false labor and like with everything else to early in her pregnancy to be occurring.
The light snores beside her confirmed that her husband Brad still lay sleeping next to her. Most days it took a small bulldozer to wake him from sleep. This morning however before the light of dawn had even reached their small portion of the world he was pulled from his sleep by some unknown force. He came awake to his wife’s moans of pain. Within moments he was at her side dialing the hospital on the beside phone. Even in his just waking state he was alert to the fact that something wasn’t right. She looked pale and scared. This wasn’t a look that Gladys ever had. She was fierce in her beauty and always graceful even when in labor with their first child , their son, Toby.
Thinking of Toby Brad immediately called their neighbor Linda Walsh and told her of the situation and asked if she could come sit with Toby while they went to the hospital. Linda Walsh was a kind sweet middle aged woman who often babysat Toby for them. As soon as he called she said she would be right over. Brad tried to make Gladys as comfortable as possible while they waited. He didn’t want to leave her side for even a moment but knew he had to go let Linda in and make sure the paramedics would be able to get upstairs.
Squeezing his wife’s hand he left her to attend to what was necessary. By the time he made it down stairs Linda was already knocking on the door. He opened it and she slipped quietly inside giving him a motherly smile and telling him that everything would be just fine. As if in response to her words an ear splitting cry of pure agony came from the room above. That cry had Brad and Linda both racing upstairs, taking them two at a time.
What would follow would be a blur to those involved. No sooner than they entered the bedroom Gladys let out another cry, that cry would be the last sound Gladys would hear. No one even the paramedics would believe the events that follow. They would say that the situation had been exaggerated but to those in that bedroom on that morning they would forever remain a miraculous mystery.
With that piercing scream came an agony Gladys had never known and the pain would drag her down into the darkness. She knew she was dying. She would never be sure if she spoke aloud but one word made it through her dry parched throat and out her lips.
“Patience.”
At the time Brad and Linda would both take those words for utter nonsense. They wouldn’t understand them till later much later. They were only concerned with saving the courageous woman who lay unmoving in the bed and the precious life she carried. The silence that followed that scream would be the most frightening thing that Brad would ever know. Gladys stopped moving and not one noise would come across her lips. Brad knew they were losing her, his very reason for living. He tried to wake her but nothing happened.
He wouldn’t recall Linda calling 911 a second time, he would only remember his own grief in that moment.
What happened next is as unbelievable as it is impossible Gladys’ dead eyes opened and with one push she pushed the baby from within her. The baby lay between unmoving legs and it was as still as Gladys had been. She lifted one shaking hand and pointed to the child laying on the mattress,
“Patience.”
Thinking something miraculous had just happened Brad looked at his wife only to see unseeing opaque eyes looking back at him and something unseen spoke again from his wife’s dead lips,
“Patience.”
Brad grabbed his wife’s hand and held it murmuring words he wouldn’t be able to recall later to his wife. He had no idea what was happening to her, he was only thankful that she was alive. Even as he held her hand he could feel it cooling. Her eyes closed once again and didn’t open. Her heart was no longer beating. Brad knew she was gone but couldn’t bring himself to admit it.
Linda seeing what had happened picked up the small bloody child from the mattress. The child was a little girl. She was pink beneath the blood and like her mother she wasn’t breathing and her little heart did not beat. Tears slid down Linda’s cheek for she understood that on this morning under the lavender sky that was somewhere between night and day that the souls of two very precious people would forever leave this world. There would be grief for those who knew Gladys and even more for those who had loved her. She looked over to Brad and could see him clutching his wife’s hand to his face as he cried silent tears willing her to live. She slipped from the room to give him his privacy.
Linda carried the small child in her arms knowing that seeing the child would only hurt Brad all the more. In her life she had met many people but none as good and pure as this small family that was being torn apart before her very eyes. She felt her own grief as she held the child because in many ways she was losing her own family. As the tears washed her cheeks she saw two beautiful blue eyes open before her and a tiny cry escaped the lips of the child as she took her first breath. Upstairs at the same moment her daughter breathed her first breath Gladys Harper inhaled a shallow painful breath and ran her fingers across her husbands cheek. The cheek he had been holding that hand to as he wept.
When the ambulance finally arrived thirty minutes later all was well once again in the Harper house. Gladys was going to be okay and though the baby was small she seemed fine. When the paramedics whisked her off to the hospital they would say shock had made it look like Gladys had died. The doctors would agree and only those in the house would really ever know the truth. A day that had started off in pain and fear had been turned around by a miracle none could explain.
The child that almost died would be named Patience. Brad wouldn’t remember until much later why he had chosen that name and Gladys would never remember speaking it. They only knew that she was their small miracle. Even when Patience was diagnosed as having Downs Syndrome, to them she would remain a perfect miracle. They would love her no matter what and that would frame the person she would become.
Linda would later bring Toby to the hospital to meet his little sister. He would think she was small and smelled funny but he would love her as he loved no other. The first time he saw the little pink baby cradled in his mother arms he understood that Patience was special. She didn’t look much different to him than most babies but he sensed something in her that even her parents couldn’t sense or know. You see small children and animals often sense things that we can’t as adults. May be only the pure of heart can really see or understand it but Toby knew from the moment he saw her. When he spoke in the language only two and three year olds can speak,
“Patience is special mommy, we have to take good care of her. She’s very special.”
those words would make Gladys and Brad smile, then they would bring fear because you see, little Toby hadn’t been told his sisters name.
For many that day holds no significance. If you asked someone they might say the sun was a little warmer that day or a little brighter but none could tell you one thing remotely memorable about that day. None except for the Harper’s and Linda Walsh. They would remember miracles and the birth of a precious child. They wouldn’t realize that as extraordinary as her birth had been that it was no more miraculous than the child. Patience is a miracle, she’s the miracle that will save the world.
