by Shiela Jane Olley

They called him Angelus because he was pulled from the rubble of the Nuevo León building at the exact moment that the Angelus bell rang out for the first time since the earthquake four days earlier.

The city was in ruins, thousands dead and even more hurt. Orphaned children, orphaned parents, orphaned pets. Yet it was important for the church bell to be heard again, even as the search for survivors, and bodies, went on.

In the midst of choking dust, shattered bones and blood and wails of grief, a fireman sifting through the debris of a hotel saw what he thought was a small tree branch lying under a pile of collapsed ceiling beams. A closer look and he saw a patch of smooth elbow showing through the caked dirt. A young girl, possibly in her late teens. She could have been Mexican, or Indian or Middle Eastern. Bizarrely, she was wearing a bright red dress covered in glittering sequins. But when he tried to lift her, he realized the dress was actually plain white cotton. The red came from blood, and the sequins were bits of glass, tiny brilliants from a blown out window, shimmering in the pale late afternoon light. There were larger pieces too, one evil shard embedded deep in her stomach.

Her eyes were closed, yet she moved slightly when he touched her face. He called out and a group of rescuers came. Some were medics, some were firefighters like him, and some just people who lived in the area looking for their neighbours, coworkers, and friends.

The girl’s left hand was under a short of tent formed by the broken beams, creating a hollow between the huge logs of wood. As they slowly her, they could see her hand was holding another, smaller one. In the hollow space there was a child.

He looked to be about two or three years old, thin but not malnourished, pale skinned and brown-haired. His eyes were closed. He looked foreign, perhaps American or Canadian. There had been many tourists staying in the hotel.

The fireman lifted him out as gently as he could, pressing two fingers against the boy’s throat to find a pulse, whispering under his breath, “Despiértate! Despiértate! Wake up!”

The others gathered around, stroking the small dust-covered head, talking all at once. It was a close-knit community but they didn’t know these two. Perhaps they had been guests at the hotel. But all of them were accounted for, either living or dead. There was no time to speculate. They needed immediate medical care.

The rescuers took them to the Canadian doctor Tom Haldane because they knew him. They knew his history. He had come to Mexico City as a twenty-seven-year-old, newly minted doctor, full of zeal and energy, longing to make a difference in this crowded, vibrant city hwere lives merged and melded and often hung in a precarious balance. It was where he met his wife, Isabella, where they married, and where they lived for one year in a tiny apartment in the Juárez neighbourhood.

Although his specialty was family medicine, Tom had been happy working all hours in a maternity home while Isabella sewed clothes for wealthy women in the front room of the flat. She shopped at the local market every day and cooked dinners for Tom to eat late at night when he finished his shifts. They went dancing every Friday night, not in clubs, but in the street where musicians from the neighbourhood played their cheap guitars and fiddles. On one of those Friday nights, Isabella wrapped her arms around Tom’s neck as they danced and whispered in his ear, “Soon, you won’t be able to hold me so close. There will be someone in between.” And she placed his hand on her slightly swollen belly.

Their joy lasted seven months. Then, one rainy morning, Isabella was hit by a car while crossing the street to the market. She was rushed to hospital, and the staff did all they could. She survived. The baby did not.

After that, Tom couldn’t bear the heat of the sun, which kept on shining. He couldn’t bear the warmth of his Latin neighbours who tried to express their sorrow with gifts of food or gentle hugs. He couldn’t cool the fierce burning rage inside himself. He needed the solace of snow and ice and open spaces. So he went home to Canada taking his broken heart and his broken wife with him.

Isabella retreated into a world of prayer, desperately trying to find a peace that passed all understanding. Tom although raised casually Christian, had never given much thought to God, and what little faith he did have died with his child. Work became his new religion. He joined a large health centre and dedicated himself to his patients, winning awards for clinical excellence and eventually becoming the head of family practice. He thought he had left the past well and truly behind. But when the earth moved and shattered the buildings and streets and people he had known so well, he came back to Mexico.

Like many buildings in the city, the hospital in Juárez was a disaster zone. The roof had caved in, there was no electricity, and the only water available was bottled water provided by the Red Cross and other aid agencies. Several of the employees and a number of patients died in the roof collapse. But the surviving staff scavenged what supplies and equipment they could and set up a makeshift medical clinic. It was here that Tom Haldane was working as a volunteer, on the very site where his own son had died before getting even one little look at the world.

By the time the rescuers got to the clinic, the boy started to stir. As the fireman handed him to Tom, he opened his eyes, beautiful eyes, the colour of obsidians, framed with long black lashes. For a long moment, they stared up at the doctor and then closed again.

Something inside Tom seemed to give way, and he stood there unmoving, feeling as if all his muscles had lost their power.

“El está bien?”

No answer.

“Tomás?” the fireman said. “El chico, el está bien?” He frowned, because the doctor looked even paler than the child.

Tom came to and said in English, “I don’t – I think he’s okay. I’ll look after him.” He sank down to his knees and put the boy onto a mat on the ground. The lashes lifted again, and the boy looked around in wonder at the unknown people around him, the medical equipment, and the wounded bodies lying nearby. A woman leaned down and stroked his hair, comforting him in Spanish, but the boy suddenly spoke, startling everyone around him.

“Ionis?”

His voice was parched and cracked but as he looked from one face to another, he was clearly looking for someone.

An instant of confused silence. Then everyone talked at once. Tom waved his hand to quiet them down.

“Please, a bit of space. Let me make sure he’s not injured.” He turned back to the boy and said, “My name is Tom. I’m a doctor. I’m just going to see if you’re all right, okay?

The boy didn’t answer but he didn’t cry or pull away, just lay there accepting Tom’s hands running gently over his legs and arms and stomach, pressing lightly here and there.

“Does anything hurt?”

A shake of the head.

Tom sat back on his heels. “I think you’re okay.”

Cheers went up among the rescuers as well as some of the medical staff and volunteers standing nearby.

Someone leaned over the boy and asked, “What’s your name?”

He only stared back.

The fireman laughed and yelled, “Angelus!” And the crowd took it up. “Angelus! Angelus!” After days of death and grief and suffering, a child had been found alive and well in the echo of the church bell – he was an angel.

They brought him water and food, which he took slowly at first and then wanted more. As he regained his energy, he sat up for a while but then exhaustion overtook him, and he slept.

When night fell, the city quieted down. The patients were resting as best they could, a few groaning in pain occasionally. One or two beds were still usable, but mostly people lay sprawled on mats or mattresses laid out side by side in the long ward dormitory. It looked like a war zone.

The girl found alongside the boy was in the same ward but on the other side of the big room. Tom treated her as best he could but her entire body had been sprayed with broken glass, and the shard that pierced her stomach could not be removed without better equipment and facilities. It was moot anyway; she was not expected to live through the night.

Most of the volunteers and staff were now sitting on the floor or lying down on the makeshift beds, trying to recharge during this brief respite. Tom wasn’t tired. That strange weakness had passed, but in its place was a new sense of lightness. He had felt it even as he tended to the wounded, a kind of exhilaration, as if he’d drunk a couple of tequila shots very quickly. But he hadn’t had anything harder than coffee in days. The buzz grew stronger every time he looked at the rescued child.

He picked up a kerosene lantern and weaved through the mattresses, rubber pads, and hemp mats spread out on the ground. It was as if a magnetic force drew him to the small boy who lay curled up in a ball under a blanket, watching him come closer.

He bent down and said, “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

“Ionis.”

Other than that word, he had not said anything, but by the alertness in his expression, Tom guessed the child could understand English.

He looked towards the other end of the long room at the girl in the blood red dress. “Is that your sister?”

The boy shook his head.

“Ionis, is that her name?

A nod.

“You know her?”

No answer. Suddenly, the boy stood up. Tom tried to stop him, but he pulled away and ran with surprising speed along the room to the mattress where the girl lay half-comatose. He knelt down and touched her cheek.

Tom reached them and squatted down, “Careful, she’s very sick.”

Even with the medication she had been given, the girl’s face was taut with pain. They still didn’t know who she was or whether she was Mexican. All Tom could determine was that she had dark hair and when she turned her head her eyes shone almost gold in the lamplight.

She murmured something, almost a sigh. Was it the child’s name?

Tom bent close and asked her, “Do you know this boy? Is he American?”

She made an effort to speak but no sound came out, just the shape of a word. He couldn’t make it out.

“Do you know where his parents are? Madreé? Do you know where she is?”

Ionis moved her head from side to side. The boy edged closer and bumped her side. She moaned in pain.

“Come away now,” Tom said, taking his hand. “We have to let her rest.”

But the boy resisted. He leaned over and whispered into Ionis’s ear, stroking her face. Tom could barely hear, but he caught a few words.

Don’t leave… don’t go… I don’t know this place.

Ionis turned her head towards him. And there was a whole conversation in the look that passed between them. Young as he was, the child seemed to understand. He put his head on her shoulder and buried his face in her matted hair. She leaned her cheek on him but her eyes reached out to Tom. He crouched closer.

It took a minute before she had the strength to speak. When she did, her voice was hoarse and barely audible, “Take home.”

Tom shook his head, confused. “Take him home? Where? Do you know where his family is, where he is from?”

She shook her head and whispered again, urgently this time. “Take HOME!”

Tom straightened up, every nerve in his body crackling. What was she saying? Was she asking him to take this unknown boy home with him? To Canada? To his wife? It was insane. As if some child rescued from a disaster could be a replacement for the baby they had lost.

His rational mind pushed the idea away, angrily, but the rush he had experienced earlier that had infused him ever since the boy had woken up in his arms was spreading through his body again.

The child was gazing from the girl to the doctor. Ionis was fading, unable to speak anymore. The last effort had been too great. They sat there together for a few more minutes and then Tom said she needed to sleep. He took the boy’s hand and led him back to his bed.

When the first streaks of daylight began to filter through the broken windows of the hospital ward, Tom went back to Ionis. There was no medication left to give her and no heroics. There wasn’t time. Tom held her hands as her body tensed and her breath became erratic. In the final moments, she looked past Tom across the room. He turned too and saw Angelus kneeling on his rubber mat, watching. No tears now, just calmness and watchfulness. And love.
Ionis turned to Tom. She couldn’t speak, but he could read the question she formed with her mouth, those incandescent eyes glowing gold in the pale dawn light suffusing the dimness of the ward.

As the hands he was holding tightened with one last fierce grip and then went still, Tom looked back to Angelus. It wasn’t possible. How could he ask such a thing of Isabella? And yet, there was this feeling, like summer in his heart, a sensation he hadn’t felt since the day before Isabella’s accident.

He knew then, whatever decision he made, whichever path he chose to follow, his life would never be the same again.