**The Gift of Salvation: How a Chance Encounter at the Bus Stop Saved My Daughter**
When my husband, James, and I welcomed our little girl into the world, the entire hospital staff couldn’t stop admiring her. She was like a picture—tiny, with delicate features, a button nose, perfectly shaped ears, and eyes that caught everyone’s breath—bright blue, clear, and wise, as if she already understood the world.
At first, everything was fine. She lifted her head at two months and tried standing by four. We celebrated every milestone, making plans without suspecting the storm brewing ahead. By six months, a hard lump appeared on her neck. Doctors shrugged, baffled. Tests showed nothing. We tried compresses, ointments, relentless visits—nothing worked. She grew restless, hardly ate, cried endlessly, and barely slept. I rocked her through the nights while the doctors insisted she was fine. Desperation crept in.
Then, when she was a year and a half old, a miracle happened. We were on our way to my mother’s, waiting at the bus stop. My daughter, pale and frail, sat quietly in her pram when a woman approached—sturdy, with a thick braid coiled like a crown, dressed in a floral frock, her blue eyes warm and kind.
She studied my daughter and sighed. “Poor little love. And poor you—no sleep, no peace?”
I nodded.
“I’ve seen this before,” she said. “She won’t last much longer. If you want her well, come before sunset. I’m Mrs. Catherine. Down the lane, past the corner. Bring a dozen fresh eggs.”
Then she walked away, as if sensing my hesitation. And I *was* unsure. Another healer? A fraud? Yet something tugged at me—a whisper that if I didn’t go, I’d regret it forever.
Mum barely blinked when I told her. “Go. If it helps, good. If she asks for too much, walk away.”
So I went. The cottage had green shutters, flowers beneath the windows, and a toddler—rosy-cheeked, giggling—playing in a pen.
“You came,” Mrs. Catherine said. “I thought you might not. I don’t force my help, but my heart wouldn’t let this be. Little Sophie here was just as bad—brought from Plymouth. A month later, she was running about.” Sophie clapped, beaming, as if to prove it.
In the kitchen, Mrs. Catherine rolled the eggs over my daughter’s body, murmuring, “Out with the ache, the withering, from bone and blood…” The eggs, cracked into glasses of water, revealed dark crosses in the yolks and bubbles rising like tiny geysers in the whites.
“See?” she said. “A curse. People fear God too little. But we’ll mend her.”
“Who did this?” I asked.
“Best left unsaid. Speaking names brings more harm. My task is saving, not judging.”
Three rounds of treatment—ten days each—followed. The crosses faded, then the bubbles. My daughter grew stronger, eating, sleeping, laughing.
“Do you eat the eggs?” I once asked.
“Heavens, no,” she laughed. “The pigs get them. They’ve no fear.”
She told me the gift came from her mother, who chose her over a spiteful sister. “The power isn’t in words,” she said. “It’s in the heart.”
By the end, the eggs showed no sign of sickness. My daughter was healed.
Now she’s nineteen—brilliant, beautiful, studying languages, dreaming of London. Sometimes I still marvel that she’s here, that it wasn’t all a nightmare. And whenever I pass that bus stop, I whisper, *Thank you.*
Because Mrs. Catherine didn’t just save my daughter. She saved my motherhood. My very soul.
**Lesson learned:** Kindness, when given freely, mends more than flesh—it mends fate itself.
