Title: What More Can I Do?
Dedication: To all the Nells and all the Mad Monicas of Ireland's Potato Famine and of every other difficult time, past and present, that humanity has ever lived through. God walks with you all.
Author's Note: This story is AU, or Alternate Universe, meaning that it contradicts some of the established plot of the "Touched by an Angel" TV series. It's based on my ideas after seeing my first three-quarters or so of an episode, the first time I ever watched the show at all.
That was several days ago. I've since seen quite a few more episodes; including the one about Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth in which it was said that Andrew (already an angel) became an Angel of Death when President Lincoln was killed, and the episode about the young boy called Petey and his mother the songwriter in which Monica said that she had been "an angel of God since the beginning of time."
Still, I like my first ideas so here's the fanfic! In this version, the angels from the show are angels because they were good people who died and became angels that way. As far as I know, that - and Andrew already being the Angel of Death in the Potato Famine which occured during the 1840s - are the most significant differences I've got from the plot of the TV series itself.
"Here you go," Monica O'Leary said softly, helping the little girl to drink from the cracked wooden bowl of thin soup. The child was doing her best to hold up the bowl with one of her own emaciated hands, but she was too weak to tilt it and drink without Monica's help.
Monica was faring little better herself. But then, here in County Galway and in all of famine-stricken Ireland, almost no one was doing very well. The young widow O'Leary was actually more fortunate than many others, because she still had possession of a small patch of farmland of her own. Even now, with the mysterious blight destroying almost every potato in Ireland, the little bit of food that might come from a small farm could mean the difference between life and death.
Her husband had been dead and gone these two years now. Gone to Heaven, thank the good Lord, Monica thought. It was he who had left her the farmland.
The thin little girl coughed harshly, drawing Monica's thoughts back to the present. The child's body was frightfully thin and wasted by starvation and fatigue, but Monica still thought her beautiful. Her hair must once have been red, but all that Monica saw now was a faded, dirty gray-brown color with only a hint of russet still showing. But the young girl's eyes were still as green as God's grassy hills, even though they were filled with despair and pain.
"What is your name?" Monica asked her kindly.
"Nell," the girl replied weakly but with a definite note of pride in her voice. "My Ma and Da always said it's the best name they could give me."
"It's a beautiful one," Monica told her. The young widow's own voice was faint, robbed of its old strength by too many months of hunger and near-fruitless toil. 'Ye've the voice of an angel,' her husband had often told her, in the days when her joyful singing and laughter had rung often from the hills to the sky. Now Monica's voice was always hoarse and weary, but it was still filled with the same love and faith that it had always held.
Nell's eyes turned suddenly hard and cynical, looking far too old to adorn the face of a dear young girl who could be no more than ten years old. "Maybe," she said, "but what good does it do now? Ma's already dead and Da's fit to die of a broken heart." She coughed again, hard, then continued vehemently, "You should've seen him, leaning against a hill and looking like he was trying to be a field of potatoes for us all on his own! And that was before Ma died. Now I don't know what he'll do, or me."
Monica shook her head, her own long, deep-red hair so weighed down with dust that it hung almost motionless in spite of her gesture.
"Never give up hope," she said with absolute sincerity, her eyes wide. "God will provide for you."
In the terrible years of the famine, many strangers like Nell and her father had come travelling through Monica's once-bright hometown. People were moving all over Ireland, the widow knew from the talk that travellers brought, all trying to find some place better than the one they had come from.
Some, including Monica herself and many of the neighbors she had grown up near, had simply refused to leave their homes no matter how bad things got. They still dug what little food they could out of the blighted earth, often eating things they would never have dreamed of touching only a few years before, and somehow many of them still managed to stay alive day after day.
Monica herself, after her husband's death in the early months of the famine, had looked around and found herself unable to bear the suffering she saw around her. She had vowed in her heart that she would do something about it. So ever since then, Monica had worked herself almost into exhaustion in dragging crops out of the earth of her little farm plot. Keeping as little as she could manage for herself, she had insisted on giving all the rest to her neighbors and the travellers who came stumbling into her ruined hometown.
Her actions had quickly earned her the name of "Mad Monica," given by a few of the more blunt-spoken of her neighbors and eventually picked up by nearly everyone. It was often said with a sort of disbelieving admiration, and always with honest gratitude, but there it was: Everyone knew Monica O'Leary must be crazy.
Sure and I know they're right, Monica thought, huddled against the side of a derelict house whose roof had long since caved in and blown away in bits. What am I thinking to do such a thing? But she knew why she did it, why she kept giving away the food she needed to sustain her own health. She loved her neighbors - all of them, the ones she had grown up with and the ones from the far reaches of County Galway and beyond - far too much to watch them starve.
Monica coughed, feeling it like a series of harsh blows that rattled her lungs and painfully clenched the muscles of her tired back. She tried to will herself to find the strength to stand up and shuffle back to her little farm, but the idea of the pain involved just in pushing herself to her feet was, for the moment, too frightening.
God, she prayed, closing her eyes, help me find the courage to keep trying. She felt warm inside, as if He was very close to her, and knew that her prayer had been answered one more time.
Just as soon as I open my eyes, she thought, I'll go back and find something else I can use to help someone keep alive another day.
A very unhappy and worn-out Andrew walked slowly along the wretched streets of the same small County Galway village. The Angel of Death had spent a lot of his time in once-thriving Ireland lately. Out of everything he had seen in the several centuries since God had assigned this task to him after his own death, the recent famine in this land had held some of the most terrible pain.
Now, the gentle angel was on his way to bring home a very wonderful soul. Monica O'Leary, he knew, was one of those spirits that God held in the very highest regard: the truly selfless. And it's that very selflessness that has meant she will need to meet me today, Andrew thought, as he walked along with his hands in the pockets of his worn-out Irish peasant trousers.
Rounding a corner, he caught sight of the young woman. She was as painfully thin as everyone he had come for recently in starving Ireland, her body crumpled like a wind-blown rag against a half-tumbled wall. As he approached, she began to cough wretchedly, her body exerting itself beyond her remaining strength with the spasms. The sight and sounds twisted like a knife inside Andrew's grieving heart, the more so because they were so horribly familiar.
Andrew walked up next to the dying woman and knelt down on the muddy ground beside her. "Hello, Monica," he said, speaking Gaelic as easily as he did any language. "My name is Andrew."
Monica O'Leary's head lolled back, seemingly from weakness, but Andrew could tell the movement was intentional. She opened her soft, luminous eyes and smiled up at him. "You're an angel, aren't you?" she breathed, exhausted from coughing.
"I am," Andrew replied. Immediately he went on to lay out the truth as matter-of-factly as he did every single time. "I'm the Angel of Death. I've come to take you to Heaven."
"Death?" Monica whispered. Her eyes were round in her sunken, bony face. "I might have expected nothing less. But I wish I didn't have to go just yet."
"I know," Andrew said very softly. "I'm sorry." Too many people, among them far too many young people, had said similar things when Andrew came for them. As always, it nearly broke his heart. "But it's your time to go on. God has called for you." He smiled reassuringly. "Never fear. God has seen what you've been doing here, and you will be rewarded."
Andrew reached out a hand to Monica, and she trustingly took it. Easily, he helped her to stand up: not her wasted body, but her radiant freed spirit. Behind her, the body that she had neglected for the sake of those she loved remained curled against the broken wall that had been supporting her.
The new angel, suddenly restored to all her youthful health and strength, looked very seriously at Andrew. "But that's just it," she said in a tone of explanantion, as he started to lead her along by the hand he still held. "I don't want to just be rewarded." She suddenly looked away, then right back at Andrew's face. "It's not that I want to reject God's gift! It's just that I've been able to do so little for anyone in the time I've been alive. There are still so many people suffering, people who need help. What more can I do?"
Andrew stared at the young widow, forcibly reminded that angels like himself were very definitely fallible. I completely misinterpreted what she meant by not wanting to die yet! Monica O'Leary's unquenchable giving spirit quite literally took his breath away.
A moment later, Andrew suddenly found his heart filled with a feeling of extreme, joyful peace. He smiled again at Monica, his face beaming with happiness. "I believe God might have a job for you."
A few decades later, just after the triumphant success of Monica's latest mission as a Search and Rescue angel, Andrew came to pay her a visit.
"I'm on my way to bring home a very good woman, and I thought you might want to come along," he said with one of his dazzling, sparkling-eyed smiles. "She has done many wonderful things in her life. She is known to everyone in her community as Grandma Nell Brisbane."
He said the name as though it was very significant, Monica thought as she followed after Andrew. But there were thousands of women named Nell, and Monica didn't personally know a Brisbane family.
The two angels soon reached a small village in one of the eastern counties of Ireland. The countryside and the people had recovered significantly from the ravages of the Great Famine, though the suffering of the Irish and their beloved land was far from over. At any rate, this village seemed to be reasonably prosperous.
And as the angels walked invisibly down the smooth dirt streets, past small groups of laughing, playing children, Monica could both see and sense that it was also a very happy town.
They came to one of the houses, no larger or smaller than most of the others. Like every other dwelling in the town, it was in remarkably good repair.
"The people here take very good care of their neighbors, don't they?" Monica commented to Andrew as they walked unseen and unheard up to the door of the house.
"They do," Andrew said, sounding pleased and approving. "They are good people, and they have a very good example of love from the old lady we are on our way to meet."
Andrew and Monica walked in through the open doorway of the house. Inside, they found an old woman sitting in a sturdy wooden chair, her lap covered by a bright knit blanket. She seemed to be almost asleep, but she looked up when they entered her home.
"Well, hello," she greeted them in a kindly, age-cracked voice. Then she suddenly seemed to take a closer look at her visitors. "Monica!" she exclaimed in recognition.
Monica stared at her in surprise. The old lady's hair must once have been red, but now it was thin, soft, and grayish-white, shot through with streaks of warm, faded russet. Her eyes, filled with love and years' worth of happiness, were as green as God's grassy hills in her wrinkled, comfortable old face.
"Nell..." Monica breathed.
"Yes," the old woman answered, smiling in delighted welcome. "But why are you still so young? And who is the young gentleman there beside you?"
Monica felt the soft radiance of Heaven beginning to glow around herself, and knew without looking that the same thing was happening with Andrew.
"I am an angel now," Monica said. "As you will soon be." Smiling fiercely, feeling the sharp sting of happy tears welling up in her eyes, she gestured to Andrew. "My good friend Andrew is an angel too. He's here to lead you home to Heaven."
Nell sighed once, then nodded, her deep emerald eyes content. "I'm ready to go," she said. Then she turned her face to look squarely at Monica. "I'm not surprised to see you as an angel," she said warmly. "They called you 'Mad Monica' - but it's the kind of madness angels need."
She reached out with her old hands and took hold of Monica's. Her voice was filled with sincere gratitude when she spoke. "Thank you for my children's and my grandchildren's lives," she said, looking directly into Monica's eyes. "I would never have lived long enough for any of them to be born if you hadn't cared for me back then."
"It was my privilege," Monica replied, her eyes overflowing with tears. She was overwhelmed at the thought of having been God's instrument in something so wonderful as bringing the very lives of Nell's entire family into being.
"I know," Grandma Nell answered. "That's why you're an angel now."
Andrew stepped forward, nodding with the deepest respect to Grandma Nell Brisbane and reaching out to touch her shoulder with a gentle hand. "It's time."
References: A website called History Place, which has among many other things an excellent and detailed section about the Potato Famine of Ireland, has made all the difference in the world for my ability to tell this story with any kind of authenticity at all. I've put a link to the Famine article into my author bio, at the very end just above where my fanfics show up.
I knew when I first decided to write this story that my ignorance was shameful and in no way conducive to good writing. I barely knew that Ireland had HAD a "Potato Famine" at all, to be able to look it up in the first place. I promise, about four days ago I thought it was called the Potato Famine because they had nothing to eat EXCEPT potatoes! I had a very, very underestimated and naive idea of what any of it was like. What little I've learned since about the reality of that time chills me. It can have been nothing less than a miracle of God that three-quarters of Ireland's original population actually survived the four years of that terrible famine without leaving their homeland.
Every tacky, stereotypical, mistaken thing in this fanfic is entirely the fault of my own fool ignorance. Every piece of good, accurate information about Ireland or the Great Famine is entirely to the credit of History Place's excellent article.
County Galway is and was actually a real county in Ireland. I chose it as Monica's home because it caught my eye while I was looking at the 1840s Ireland map on History Place.
If you liked this fanfic, I highly recommend you check out the online article where I learned every last thing I needed to know in order to write it!