Free The Question of Miracles by Elana K. Arnold Page A

long enough for the warmth of Dr. Shannon’s hand to seep through her sweater and her T-shirt, all the way down to her skin. And it was such a relief, to cry like this, without worrying that her parents might hear her. She had never cried in the old psychiatrist’s office; maybe it was because he always seemed to expect her tears, and Iris hadn’t wanted to be that predictable.
    But she cried now, and after a while she breathed in those ragged after-crying breaths that collapsed a few more times into tears, and then she wiped her eyes with her sleeve.
    Dr. Shannon tilted a box of tissues toward her. Iris pulled out three, wiped her face again, blew her nose loudly.
    â€œSorry,” she said.
    â€œAbsolutely nothing to apologize for,” said Dr. Shannon. “Would you like some water?”
    Iris nodded. Dr. Shannon left the room for a minute and came back with a bottle of water. She twisted off the cap before handing the bottle to Iris.
    Iris gulped down half the water. “Thanks.” She put the bottle on the low glass table next to the couch.
    Dr. Shannon didn’t ask any questions. She just waited, watching Iris calm herself down, but not in a creepy way. Iris decided that maybe Dr. Shannon wasn’t completely terrible.
    Finally, when Iris’s breathing had calmed all the way down, when she’d blown her nose one last time, Dr. Shannon said, “Do you want to talk about it?”
    Iris shook her head, but then she said, “I’m okay, you know? I mean, it isn’t great or anything, but I’m okay. I’m taking care of Charles, and I made a friend, this kid named Boris, and I’m not having any trouble sleeping anymore. Except just every now and then.”
    Dr. Shannon nodded. “Were you having trouble sleeping?”
    â€œYeah. I mean, at first. Right after. But now it’s way better.” Iris thought back to the first nights after they’d come home from the hospital, when Sarah hadn’t.
    She thought about how she’d spent each night wedged in between her parents, Charles on her chest, how she wouldn’t dare to move in case it woke her parents up. She was afraid they might tell her to go back to her own bed.
    â€œBut you’re sleeping better now.”
    â€œYeah.”
    Neither of them said anything for a while. Then finally Iris decided to ask a question. “Dr. Shannon, do you believe in miracles?”
    Dr. Shannon’s face didn’t reveal any surprise about the new direction the conversation was taking. “That depends,” she said. “What exactly do you mean by miracles?”
    Iris told her about Boris. About how he was supposed to die, but didn’t.
    â€œWhat a wonderful way for that to have turned out,” Dr. Shannon said.
    â€œBut do you think it’s a miracle?”
    Dr. Shannon shrugged. “What do you think?”
    Iris thought about it for a moment. “I looked up ‘miracle,’” she said. “
Wikipedia
says a miracle is an event attributed to divine intervention. So something is only miraculous if it’s because God made it happen.”
    â€œThat’s interesting.”
    â€œYeah,” said Iris. “But what I want to know is, if there
is
a God . . . if divine intervention is possible . . . then why would miracles only happen sometimes? Wouldn’t it make more sense, if God could make good things happen, that miracles would happen all the time?”
    â€œLike with Sarah,” Dr. Shannon said. “I’ll bet you wonder why there wasn’t a miracle for her.”
    Dr. Shannon was smart, Iris decided.
    â€œWell,” Dr. Shannon went on, “what do you think? Why wasn’t there a miracle for Sarah?”
    Iris thought for a long time before she spoke again. She wasn’t sure how much she wanted to tell Dr. Shannon. Mostly she was afraid—she didn’t want this blue-suited psychologist to tell her that she was