Morphing of Mabel #2

Story of Mabel continues:
"I don't know why I spoke to her - she looked less likely to respond than most of the people I saw in that hallway. But I put a flower in her hand and said, 'Here is a flower for you. Happy Mother's Day.' She held the flower up to her face and tried to smell it, and then she spoke. And much to my surprise, her words, although somewhat garbled because of her deformity, were obviously produced by a clear mind. She said, 'Thank you. It's lovely. But can I give it to someone else? I can't see it, you know, I'm blind.'
"I said, 'Of course; and I pushed her in her chair back down the hallway to a place where I thought I could find some alert patients. I found one, and I stopped the chair. Mabel held out the flower and said, 'Here, this is from Jesus.'
"That was when it began to dawn on me that this was not an ordinary human being. Later I wheeled her back to her room and learned more about her history. She had grown up on a small farm that she managed with only her mother until her mother died. Then she ran the farm alone until 1950 when her blindness and
sickness sent her to the convalescent hospital. For twenty-five years she got weaker and sicker, with constant headaches, backaches, and stomach aches, and then the cancer carne too. Her three room­-mates were all human vegetables who screamed occasionally but never talked. They often soiled their bedclothes, and because the hospital was understaffed, especially on Sundays when I usually visited, the stench was often overpowering.
"Mabel and I became friends over the next few weeks, and I went to see her once or twice a week for the next three years. He first words to me were usually an offer of hard candy from a tissue box near her bed. Some days I would read to her from the Bible, and often when I would pause she would continue reciting the passage from memory, word-for-word. On other days I would take a book of hymns and sing with her, and she would know all the words of the old songs. For Mabel, these were not merely exer­cises in memory. She would often stop in mid-hymn and make a brief comment about lyrics she considered particularly relevant­ to her own situation. I never heard her speak of loneliness or excepting the stress she placed on certain lines in certain hymns.
Part #3 tomorrow - I assure you this is worth the time to read.