A Miracle for Maggie

By Stephen Eaton Hume

Maggie Davis is a young girl who lives in Chester, Nova Scotia, near Halifax, when her beloved Uncle Nick is killed by diabetes. Maggie’s father, a doctor, is greatly saddened by his brother’s death, and soon has to deal with his own daughter’s diagnosis with the dread disease. Various remedies are tried, including starvation diet popular at the time, but nothing works and Maggie’s condition worsens. Meanwhile, in Toronto, Banting and other doctors work night and day to perfect insulin. Will they succeed in time to save Maggie and thousands of others?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Nov 1, 2000
• ISBN: 9781554884810

Stephen Eaton Hume

Stephen Eaton Hume teaches creative writing at the University of Victoria. He has published three picture books: Midnight on the Farm, Rainbow Bay, and Red Moon Follows Truck. His children's novel A Miracle for Maggie, available from Dundurn,was nominated for the Canadian Library Association's Children's Book of the Year. He has also published the biography Frederick Banting: Hero, Healer, Artist for young people.

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Library.

One

Chester, Nova Scotia

December 1917

Maggie Davis had forgotten to feed the chickens. She ran downstairs, realizing she was late for school, too. Should she feed the chickens first or go straight to school? She decided to feed the chickens, and was on her way outside when she stopped at the diningroom table to drink her morning tea. Her father was always scolding her for running in the house. Even the cook, Mrs. Claggett, was in the habit of reprimanding her. If you don’t slow down, the cook would say, you’re going to turn into a pool of butter.

She gulped her tea and set the cup down on its saucer with a clink. Then she heard the explosion, felt it in the pit of her stomach. It was like a thunderclap, only deeper, and longer, as if lightning were being torn slowly from the sky.

She looked around. The glass in the dining-room windows trembled. The house shifted, and for one long moment it seemed as if her cup were levitating above the table.

Her father, Dr. Robert Davis, the village’s only physician and apothecary, burst from the doors of his study carrying a copy of Canada Monthly. He didn’t have much time to read, and he liked magazines because the articles were short. He had just opened the Monthly to read about the war in Europe.

What in heaven’s name— he began.

Maggie threw her arms around her father. "What was that?" she whispered.

I don’t know, he said, guessing the explosion might have something to do with the war. After all, German U-boats had been spotted off Halifax, and German prisoners of war were incarcerated on Melville Island in the city’s harbour. He wondered if the army had fired one of its big new cannons.

Mrs. Claggett, a stout woman whose long grey hair was coiled into a bun, stepped gingerly into the dining room and peered through a window. It’s from Halifax, she muttered, crossing herself. It’s smoke from the fires of hell.

Don’t be ridiculous, Dr. Davis said. There’s a logical explanation for everything. This is no exception.

He didn’t want to alarm his daughter. But she had already opened the front door and stepped outside for a closer look. The doctor and Mrs. Claggett followed her out to the wide front porch. The morning was warm, like Indian summer.

Dr. Davis’s two-story Victorian mansion, heated entirely by fireplaces, was on Haddon Hill, overlooking Mahone Bay and the village’s front and back harbours. What they saw was incredible. The smoke from the explosion had floated into the sky and seemed to be walking in the wind on long black legs.

Lord have mercy, it’s an unholy sight, Mrs. Claggett said.

We’ll go back inside and wait until we find out more, Dr. Davis said. Where’s Nick?

I’ll find him, Maggie said. She ran into the house, with her father and the cook not far behind.

While you’re at it, see if you can find Brutus, Mrs. Claggett called out. Her dog, a Great Dane, had bolted from the kitchen and was cowering under an upstairs bed.

Dr. Davis was worried about Nick, his younger brother. There was talk in Canada about making military service compulsory, but even if it were, Nick couldn’t possibly go to war. For one thing, he was only eighteen. If conscription ever became law, it was going to start taking men at age twenty. For another, he had just been diagnosed with diabetes mellitus, honey diabetes. The word diabetes, like the word plague, terrified people. There was no cure. Diabetes was a death sentence.

A few minutes later Maggie shouted from upstairs, He was still in bed! He didn’t even wake up!

She walked triumphantly downstairs holding Nick’s hand, as if she had just captured him in a game of foxes-and-hounds. He was still in his pajamas and grinning sleepily.

Uncle Nick, you’ve got to see it! she cried. The sky is black! You really didn’t hear it? Do you think it’s the dreadful Hun?

I don’t see any Germans, he said. Wait a minute. I think I do. No, it’s just your daddy and Mrs. Claggett at the foot of the stairs.

Now you’re being silly, she said, leading her uncle outside.

The doctor could hear them talking on the porch. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he heard Nick laughing. Maggie always made him laugh. They were more than uncle and niece. They were best friends. Nick had helped raise Maggie after her mother died in 1906 when Maggie was only a year old. They had grown up together in the same house.

The doctor knew that Nick would have to be cared for at home. His death would be horrible to watch. He wondered how to tell Maggie.

Nick had begun to show symptoms in the fall after returning from a trip to Hawaii. One of the first things Dr. Davis had noticed was his breath. It sometimes gave off a sweet, sickish smell, like rotten fruit. Nick began to complain of fatigue. He was thirsty all the time.

The doctor was fairly certain of his diagnosis. But just to make sure, he had sent his brother on the train to Halifax for medical tests. He had received the results only yesterday.

When he gave Nick the news, they were in his study, and Maggie was at school. He didn’t pull any punches. He told his brother there was no cure. He wasn’t sure how long Nick had to live. Young diabetics typically didn’t survive more than a year or two after developing the disease. Amid plenty, they starved to death, their bodies unable to convert food into life-giving energy. Instead of being absorbed into the body’s cells, the glucose from food spilled into the urine. Frequent urination made diabetics thirsty, and the craving for sugar led to a terrific hunger that couldn’t be satisfied. They lost weight rapidly. Without nourishment the body simply failed. Diabetes was a mysterious disease that had baffled physicians for thousands of years.

Nick listened to his brother. At first he didn’t believe him. When he realized he was going to die, he collapsed in a wicker chair that creaked under his weight. He stared through a window at the sea. Schooners lay at anchor in the harbour, and gulls rode gusts of wind. He realized how much he was going to miss this place, this view, this house with its rooms smelling of pine smoke. He was angry at people who weren’t going to die, who were going to stay on the Earth and enjoy the life they had been given. Even the soldiers in the war had a fighting chance to live. He believed the posters in the village that said: THE FATE OF THE EMPIRE DEPENDS ON YOU. Now that he had received his death sentence, he wasn’t fit for the army anymore.

You’ll have to be strong, Nick, Dr. Davis said.

Will I really? he said flatly.

That’s all you can do.

Easy for you to say. You’re going to live.

We all have to die someday.

But why me? It isn’t fair.

You have a little time. With care we can prolong your life.

The big doctor pronounces me dead. Now you see me, now you don’t. What will it be today, eh, Doctor? What does it feel like to be God?

It doesn’t feel like anything. Do you think I like what I’m doing? For God’s sake, I still haven’t told Maggie. You should be the one to tell her.

Nick knew his brother was right. He had to get on with his life and let Maggie know.

But the more his brother talked, the more Nick began to feel sorry for himself. He cursed the day he was born and felt that life was a lot of bother over nothing. He fretted over how to tell Maggie and wished his brother would tell her himself and get it over with. He felt like a bloody coward. He couldn’t face a twelve-year-old girl and tell her he was going to die.

Nick mulled over the gruesome things his brother said. His body wouldn’t be able to metabolize food. His bones would begin to show under his skin. His skin would feel cold and rough, like parchment. He would become so weak that he wouldn’t be able to walk up a flight of stairs. Diseases like tuberculosis or pneumonia would find him an easy target. A simple cut on his finger might never heal. His feet could become easily infected. The infection might be accompanied by gangrene. If the gangrene didn’t kill him, the amputation would, because diabetics seldom survived the trauma of major operations.

Nick liked to draw and paint, and the part that scared him the most was that he might go blind. The disease affected the blood vessels in the eyes.

Maggie didn’t know he had diabetes, but she suspected something was wrong after he came back from Hawaii. He was different. He used to sail, row his racing shell, and take a big dory through a gale for fun. He was one of those people who seemed to be in love with life. More and more, all he wanted to do was lie in bed in the dark. It took all his strength just to get up in the morning.

Maggie kept asking Nick why he didn’t have a job. He lied and told her