Maggie's Way

His Maggie thought of everything. Burt had to smile at all the flowers, cards and other doodads his wife had clustered around his hospital bed. Why, first thing she did after calling 911 was to pile up pillows and blankets to make him comfortable on the davenport, though of course his whole chest hurt like crazy. But she made the best of things, since both of them knew it would be some time before an ambulance made it all the way out to the farm.

Then again, sitting still was never good enough for his Maggie. “Hey,” he'd said when she headed for the stairs, “Where you going? Aren't you going to stay with me?”

“Hold your horses, old man, I got something else to try,” she said over her shoulder.

She came back a minute later with a bunch of candles, a picture of some saint, and the kit of holy water and ointment the priest gave her last Easter.

“Aw now Maggie, I don't think--”

“Shh, shh. You just lie still, old man. Settle down and don't bother me.” Then she lit all those candles and started saying a bunch of prayers in Russian. Heck, she talked to that saint like he was there in the room. She dabbed oil onto Burt's chest and made him drink a chug of stale water, while the words of her prayers looped around like some crazy folk song.

Burt didn't think much of any of this, but he was too weak to do anything but lie there and shake his head. “Woman, you sure do talk around in circles.”

“Circles, eh? Maybe that's because women don't live in a straight line the way men do. You did want to marry a real woman, didn't you?”

“Hmpf,” Burt had said.

He propped himself upright in the hospital bed and said it again: “Hmpf.” None of her incantations did a thing, either – he still needed emergency bypass surgery. It was just lucky an ambulance happened to be in their part of the county, and showed up as soon as she said her last “amen.” He reached for her picture by his bedside and kissed it. Such crazy stuff she had in her head. When it came to her old man, though, she sure thought of everything.