Nonviolence in Egypt

It's worth noticing that the apparently successful popular revolution in Egypt came to pass mostly nonviolently. I suspect that the people realized that there was no way they could win by fighting the army and police. By staying nonviolent, they made it more difficult for the authorities to attack them.

Maybe the Palestinians will notice. If they do, the Israelis may be in for it. If the Palestinians seek redress from the Israelis without using violent means, the Israelis will be hard-pressed to justify using violence against them.

The new (old) fiddle

It was in sad shape when I found it. The vendor was running an estate sale in a sixties-vintage house in north Dallas, just off Coit Road. The fiddle was lying on a couch and looked as bedraggled as much of the other junk stuff up for sale. It hadn't belonged to the now-dead inhabitant. The vendor had had it sitting around for some time, in its old, wooden case.

The bow had been attacked by bow mites. Only a few strands of horsehair stuck out of the frog. The sound post was loose inside the fiddle. There was no bridge, and only two strings out of the four it should have had. It had been "rode hard and put up wet," as I learned to say in west Texas years ago. Not literally, of course. The fiddle had, I was told, been in the top of someone's closet for years, maybe decades. I looked it over. Inside was the obligatory label: Antonius Stradivarius Cremonensis 1726. Of course it was a Strad, just like every old fiddle made between 1800 and 1950. (Note: snark alert). But it seemed fundamentally sound—no obvious cracks. The neck seemed straight and secure.

He wanted $125.00 for it. We agreed on $85.00. I think he was glad to finally move it. I was taking the risk I'd been wanting to take for months—buying an old fiddle for next to nothing in the hope of getting something playable.

More to come.

J.C. and the Boys - Chapters 19-20: the end

Things, and people, come to an end.

Chapter 19

           

                  It was one of the ER nurses.

                  “How—?”

                  “Stable, for the moment. He’ll be going upstairs soon.”

                  “ICU?”

                  “Room Four.”

                  Jeannie heard the automatic door swing open at the far end of the corridor, away from the ER waiting room. She tossed a “Thanks” over her shoulder to the ER nurse as she hurried to Diego’s side. Two nurses and Dr. Rashad were wheeling the unconscious priest at top speed toward the elevator. Jeannie fell in beside the stretcher.

                  Diego looked bad. His hair was matted with drying sweat. An IV pole rose above the gurney, the piggy-backed bags of drugs swinging with its movement. His face was pale, his lips tinged with a faint blue shadow. His breathing was steady, but shallow. A small green steel bottle lay beside him; from it snaked a clear plastic nasal cannula, feeding him oxygen.

                  “Ah, Nurse Christopher,” Rashad said. “Your infidel priest has had an acute myocardial infarction.” He showed his teeth as he spoke, whether in a grin or an attempt at sympathy, Jeannie could not tell.

                  “Yeah, I know,” she said, trying to obviate further talk. She was not in shape to trade idle chatter. She was too worried about Diego.

                  The elevator’s doors opened, and the nurses wheeled Diego into it. Rashad punched the button and the elevator rose. The flight lasted less than a minute, then the doors opened again.

                  Gus was waiting, at the forefront of several others on the staff. Word spread fast in the hospital. Although the day shift was gone, workers from evenings were arrayed around the elevator, waiting for Diego’s arrival. The nurses pushed the gurney through the crowd.

                  “Comin’ through, people, comin’ through!” one called.

                  The crowd split in half; they included nurses who had convinced themselves that they were not busy at the moment, aides, ward clerks, janitors, volunteers, housekeepers, engineers, nuns—every kind of worker the hospital housed.

                  “Wait,” Jeannie said. She dug in her pocket. There were two quarters left. Diego was wheeled ahead; the staff would not relax until Diego was securely in the hands of the ICU staff.

                  She handed the two coins to Gus.

                  “That’s double toll, J.C.,” he protested.

                  “One for me, one for him,” she said.

                  “You know you don’t have to pay when you’re sick,” Gus said.

                  “That’s when you need to,” Jeannie answered, “most of all.”

                  She hurried to catch up. Two of the gathered crowd were still holding open he double doors that led into Intensive Care.

                  Inside the unit, the nurses who could not leave their patients looked up from their work silently as she caught up with the two nurses, the doctor, and Diego. Jeannie pushed open the door into Four and turned on the light. The two nurses positioned the gurney parallel to the bed. Jeannie turned down the covers. One moved the oxygen bottle to the far side of the bed. Jeannie made sure the line from the IV was unencumbered and would not pull or tangle when they moved Diego.

                  Sister Mary Catherine came padding silently into the room, and without speaking helped transfer Diego from the gurney to the bed.

                  Finally, Jeannie removed the IV bags from the gurney’s pole and hung them at the bed. Mary Catherine picked up Diego’s chart from the gurney.

                  “Appreciate your help,” one of the nurse said. “It’s a busy night.” They disappeared with the gurney. Rashad ran a cursory check of the unconscious patient, pronounced him alive, and followed the nurses back to Emergency.

                  Jeannie covered the priest as Mary Catherine flipped through the chart.

                  “Can you special him for a shift?” Mary Catherine asked. “We had four people call in sick tonight.”

                  “I planned to,” Jeannie said.

                  “Damn!” the nun exclaimed. “It doesn’t say so, but he ought to be DNR.”

                  Jeannie stopped her fussing around Diego; she was suddenly cold. “DNR” meant Do Not Resuscitate.

                  “How do you know?”

                  “We had often talked about it,” Mary Catherine said. “When you get to be our ages, it’s something you think about. I’d better call the bishop. He’ll want to know.”

                  She dialed the phone while Jeannie tried to figure out what to do in case Diego coded again. There really could not be any question. The DNR orders were not written in the chart by a physician; therefore, she had to make every effort to save Diego is his condition deteriorated.

                  “I have to try,” she said. “I have to.”

                  “I know, dear,” Mary Catherine said, listening to the bishop’s telephone ring. “That’s why I’m calling.”

                  While Mary Catherine called the cathedral, Jeannie shut the door to the sickroom.

                  The waning sun shone through the window, framing Father Diego’s face against the pillow. The sunset made the priest look healthier than he was, bathing him in a ruddy glow that belied the inefficiency of his circulatory system. When Jeannie blocked the sun with her body, his lips showed blue, his skin pasty. A thin sheen of sweat covered his face, and he shivered slightly in the air-conditioned chill of the room.

                  Diego’s vital signs were marginal. Down in ER, the diagnosis was a massive myocardial infarction, a serious heart attack. He had been given medicines to stop the pain, to bring down his blood pressure, and to keep his pulse rate at a reasonable level. The purpose of all the drugs was to reduce the strain on his heart, to make its vital function as easy to accomplish as possible. Broken or not, his heart had to continue working, or Diego would die. But it also needed to rest and heal.

                  With vitals checked, Jeannie plugged Diego into the cardiac monitor. Its tracings would give her warning of impending damage, another infarction. The leads were already in place on his chest; they had been placed while he was in Emergency. All she had to do was hook him up to the monitor in his room. As she connected the wires, she saw that her hands were shaking. It surprised her; she had not thought that Diego’s illness was affecting her so much. Mary Catherine saw it, too.

                  “Will you be all right?”

                  Jeannie nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Most of the time, the technical demands of nursing kept her insulated from emotional reaction. It was strange to be performing the usual tasks, and simultaneously to be worried sick about the patient.

                  “He’s throwing some PVC’s,” she said, looking for the comfort of the technical. Her voice seemed steady enough. “But they’re only occasional,” she went on, looking for hope where she found it. “He’s in sinus rhythm; that’s a good sign.”

                  “The bishop will be here in a few minutes,” Mary Catherine said, hanging up the phone. “I managed to catch him at his office.”

                  Jeannie nodded, not wanting Diego’s bishop to come at all. When the bishop arrived, he might endorse the DNR order and have a doctor add it to Diego’s chart. Jeannie did not want to let him die, any more than she wanted to make him suffer the pain and indignities of cardiac resuscitation.

                  “You don’t look well,” Mary Catherine said.

                  “I’m fine,” Jeannie lied. She was frightened, exhausted, and already feeling a sense of loss over Diego. He had been the one who had heard her, had seen through her mask of competence to the person inside. For his insight, for his compassion, she was falling in love with him, even as he lay unconscious and sick.

                  The door pushed open. Hoss stood in the entrance, looking toward the bed.

                  “How’s he doin’?” he whispered.

                  Jeannie was irritated at the interruption to her care. “He’s stable, for the moment. Now get out of here. I have work to do.”

                  “Sorry,” Hoss said. “I just wanted to know.”

                  “So now you know. Good-bye.”

                  Hoss silently shut the door.

                  “You were a little rough on him, weren’t you?” Mary Catherine said.

                  Before Jeannie could answer, the door came open again. This time it was Horst Appleby, who burst in trailing Delilah Bancroft. Horst went straight to Jeannie. He had the gall to put his arm around her. Mary Catherine raised her eyebrows at Horst, saw the expression on Jeannie’s face, and lifted a finger in warning: Be quiet! her eyes said.

                  Jeannie stiffened in response to the administrator’s touch, but she held her peace.

                  “Tragic,” Appleby said, gazing down at Diego on the bed, “absolutely tragic. What’s the prognosis?”

                  “Guarded,” Mary Catherine answered, speaking before Jeannie could form her anger into words. “He’s not out of the woods, yet.”

                  “Just tragic,” Horst repeated. Delilah nodded her head like a ventriloquist’s dummy. She seemed unable to stop. Her head bobbed above the rest of her body.

                  “The reason we’re here,” Appleby said, his duties of comfort now completed, “is to let Miss Christopher know that the investigation about the missing drugs is now officially closed. We’re sorry about any inconvenience that it might have caused her, but you understand that we have to check these things out.”

                  He nodded at Delilah; both turned for the door. Delilah went out, still bobbing her head. Appleby stopped in the doorway.

                  “Tragic. Absolutely.”

                  Before he left, he smiled at Jeannie. The smile seemed to say That’s one out of the way. Then he followed Delilah out.

                  Jeannie would have gone after him, but her friend the priest needed her more than she needed an emotional outlet. She sighed in frustration at Appleby’s disappearing act and turned back to her patient.

                  She picked up his chart, after looking him over once again and finding no changes. She needed to review what had been done to him downstairs. She knew in general terms what the treatment for an acute MI had to be; her study was to pick out details that might differ from one doctor to another. She lowered herself into a chair and scanned through the already thick document.

                  Mary Catherine was at the window, looking down at the parking lot.

                  “There’s the bishop’s car,” she said. “I’ll go ahead and bring him up to date. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

                  Immersed in the chart, Jeannie merely nodded as the old nun left the room.

                  Father Diego’s medical treatment had followed the standard closely. None of the drugs he had been given was out of the ordinary. If a crisis occurred, it would be a familiar one.

                  Jeannie used the quiet to try to sort out her feelings—the physical, first. If she were to be of any use to Diego, she had to get her head clear.

                  Behind her eyes there lay the gritty tension of fatigue. She could keep that at bay for a while longer; Lord knew, she had had enough practice. She consciously relaxed the muscles of her body, willing the chemical concomitants of exhaustion, fear, and anger to dissolve in the tide of her blood, which would carry them away to her kidneys, in which they could be stored, briefly, without doing her further damage. The litany of chemical names—lactic acid, catecholamines, adrenaline—went through her mind in the cleansing ritual. All the while, she kept her eyes focused on her patient, assessing his color, watching his breathing, alert for anything that might signal change, for better or for worse.

                  When she was through with the physical, she turned her inward attention to the emotional. Too much was pent up inside, she knew. She needed a good cry, alone, sprawling on her bed, pounding the mattress with balled-up fists, shouting at the injustice of everything that took good men from the world in the midst of their goodness. But the necessary indulgence would have to wait. Neither time nor place was available. Diego still needed her.

                  There was a tentative tapping at the door. She roused herself from her trance, glanced at Diego (no change), and cracked the door open.

                  One of the evening shift nurses was outside, with Marie Jefferson, sitting up in a wheelchair.

                  “My God,” Jeannie breathed. “Marie!”

                  “I’m sorry to bother you,” the nurse said, “but she insisted. I tried to explain, but—”

                  Marie’s voice was hoarse and soft, from long disuse. “I heard he’s very sick. I have to thank him.”

                  “He’s unconscious,” Jeannie protested. He won’t know—”

                  “I’ll know,” Marie said. Jeannie did not answer; she could not think what to say. Only the day before, Marie Jefferson had been in what everyone thought was an irreversible, terminal coma. Now she was awake and alert, demanding to see Diego. Somewhere a wheel had turned. Events were crowding in on Jeannie, and her wondering grew.

                  “Please,” Marie said. “If there’s any trouble, I’ll leave right away.”

                  Jeannie stepped aside. Marie’s intensity convinced her.

                  The musician allowed the evening nurse to roll her up to the bedside.

                  “Can I leave her for a little?” the nurse asked. “We’re short tonight.”

                  Jeannie nodded, still crowded by events. The nurse left her alone with Diego and Marie.

                  Jeannie stayed at the doorway. Night was falling outside, and shadows crept into the room, enveloping her, making her anonymous, enfolding her in their soft darkness. She had had too much bright light. She allowed herself to lean against the wall by the door, leaving at least an illusion of privacy for Marie and Diego.

                  Marie leaned toward the priest, clasping his left hand between her own. She pressed her forehead against the joined hands, mumbling inaudibly. Jeannie wondered whether or not Marie had suffered some deficit herself, a possible result of the long coma. If so, she would not be the first who had awakened with faculties missing. But she seemed to be alert, oriented—far more so, in fact, than anyone could have predicted after so long a period of unconsciousness.

                  Marie had known the priest only slightly before the accident. After, she had been unconscious, unaware of the fact that he had visited her every day of her illness. Jeannie did not understand her acute interest in him now. Sick people, she knew from too much experience, were normally self-centered. It was a natural reaction to illness; they reasonably focused all their attention on getting well, at least the sensible ones.

                  Marie’s actions indicated far more intensity that she should feel over the illness of an acquaintance. Jeannie slipped silently closer, her curiosity on overdrive.

                  Marie’s mumbling became comprehensible as Jeannie came closer. She was praying—or, reciting.

                  “‘Who will separate us from the love of Christ?’” Marie whispered, her voice weak but persistent. “‘For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that comes to us in Christ Jesus, our Lord.’ Do you hear me, Diego? Not pain, not fear, not danger. Nothing keeps you from Him.”

                  Jeannie was not a prayerful person. It sounded to her as if Marie believed that Diego would die at any moment. She could not let the woman keep talking this way to her patient. When people were in a situation like Diego’s, they were fragile. If they believed that they were about to die, they bloody well might, even though they were capable of pulling through.

                  “Marie,” Jeannie said, trying to be gentle, “that’s enough. He needs to rest.” She pulled the wheelchair away from the bedside, toward the door.

                  “But he needs—”

                  “He needs to live,” Jeannie said.

                  “He’s dying.”

                  “Not if I can help it.” Jeannie got the chair as far as the door. She could not leave Diego, not even for the few moments it would take to slip Marie back to her room. She stuck her head out the door. Marie’s nurse was busy in Joe Wood’s room, and others were gathering; it looked like an incipient code. Jeannie would have to keep Marie. She wheeled her to the farthest corner away from Diego. “No more praying,” she said. “He might be able to hear you, and it might upset him.”

                  “I hope he can,” Marie said. “I heard him, when I needed to. He brought me back.”

                  “Ssshh,” Jeannie said. “I have to check his vitals.” She once again assessed his condition, pulse, pressure, breathing. The pulse was down somewhat, the pressure slightly elevated, the respirations a little quicker, a little shallower. Diego’s color was still OK, but she did not like the trend. It was not quite bad enough yet to call the doctor in, but Diego bore watching.

                  “Are we too late?”

                  The soft voice startled Jeannie. She whirled to see Sister Mary Catherine in the doorway, and, looming behind her, the leonine figure of the bishop.

                  Did everyone expect Diego to die?

                  The bishop’s sacramental intention seemed to fill the room. As he opened his briefcase and set the vessels of bread and wine on Diego’s bed table, he instructed Jeannie.

                  “I have spoken with Father de la Vega’s physician. He is amending the chart to follow your patient’s wishes. Heroic attempts at resuscitation are to be avoided. You must let this soul depart in peace.”

                  Jeannie stepped up to face the bishop across Diego’s bed and sleeping form. “I have to see that for myself.” The black jacket, white collar, and purple shirt failed to intimidate her; she was raised a Baptist, and such things did not matter to her. Something compelled her, however, to add, “You understand.”

                  “Yes, Miss, I do. And you are quite right.” He kissed his sash and placed it around his neck. “The doctor will be here in a moment. Are you Catholic?”

                  The question caught Jeannie by surprise. “No, I’m sorry,” she said.

                  “Pity,” the bishop answered. “Sister Mary Catherine has told me how fiercely you worked to save Father de la Vega.”

                  “I’m not finished, yet,” Jeannie said, stubbornness welling inside her.

                  “Neither am I,” the bishop answered. “We are both his friends. Will you help me?”

                  “Help you what?”

                  “I have talked with his doctors. He may never regain consciousness. They say that the heart attack caused immense damage, and that they have never seen someone with such damage live more than a day or so longer, no matter what the treatment.” The bishop withdrew a spotless white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow. “He is my friend, too, and I hate the thought of losing him. But it is, apparently, his time to go.”

                  “I have to see the order,” Jeannie insisted.

                  Her concentration on the cleric was so intense that she had not heard the door open. She jumped with sudden fright Dr. Rashad put Diego’s chart in her hand. “Nurse Christopher,” he said, “please read the most recent physician’s order.” His finger pointed to a line of chicken scratches that looked like Sanskrit to her. She pulled her tiny penlight from her pocket and scanned the handwriting. It was a specific DNR order.

                  “On whose authority?” she demanded.

                  “Your friend’s,” the bishop answered. Mary Catherine gave a confirming nod.

                  Jeannie was nearly in a state of panic. She felt as if she was the only one still with a grip on the living Diego, who lay in front of her. All the others in the room were trying to prize her fingers loose from his life, to make her let go and let him die.

                  “If you’re going to perform some ritual for him,” Dr. Rashad grumbled, “you will need to start soon. He is not in great distress at the moment, but it is my thought that he will not live much longer. The infarction is very large.”

                  “Right, then,” said the bishop. “Let’s get on with it.”

                  “If you will excuse me,” Rashad said, “I have other duties.” Jeannie heard him scuttle from the sickroom.

                  The bishop turned back to his briefcase. He laid a white cloth on the bed table and placed a cross at its center; the table became an improvised altar. He placed candles on either side of the cross, then reached for the matches.

                  Jeannie stopped him before they all blew up.

                  “Oxygen, sir,” she said. “No flames, please.”

                  “Hm,” the bishop mused. “I forgot. Thank you, young lady. I suppose we’ll have to do without the symbolism, this time.”

                  “How important is it?” Jeannie asked.

                  “Every little bit helps.”

                  Jeannie dug in her pocket and came up with her penlight. She clicked it on. It cast a pale beam in the shadow where she was still standing. “How about this?”

                  “Yes,” the bishop said. “Father Diego would like that. Just set it on the altar, here.”

                  Jeannie placed the penlight on the bed table, next to the crucifix. The gold caught the light and reflected it back at her. She could nearly feel the light’s weight on her face.

                  “All right, let’s get on with it.” The bishop turned to face the women. “What is your name?” he asked Jeannie. She told him. He seemed to know Marie, somehow.

                  “Jean, I can not offer you communion, but I would like it—our friend, Diego, would like it, too—if you were to participate insofar as your conscience will let you.” He handed her a little leather-bound book. “I think I know this by heart, and I am sure that Sister does, as well. Where you see a red “R” that looks like the symbol for a prescription, that’s your cue to respond. We’ll start on page ninety-nine.”

                  Jeannie thumbed through the book. Mary Catherine brought Marie to the bedside. The book’s cover was soft, the leather caressed by the priest’s hands over and over. It smelled of the sacramental oil, and the pages were of the same paper used in Bibles.

                  The bishop crossed himself; Mary Catherine and Marie followed suit. Jeannie wondered briefly whether she ought to follow along, but before she had the chance, the bishop began the service for the anointing of the sick.

                  “‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.’”

                  Mary Catherine pointed to the response, two-thirds of the way down the page. The bishop had not started at what looked like the beginning.

                  “And also with you,” Jeannie, Marie, and Mary Catherine said. The bishop was already placing the pyx, the silver chalice, and the vial of wine on the altar. Then he took another object from his case, one Jeannie had not seen before. It looked like a silver hand grenade, the kind used by the Germans on old war movies.

                  He shook it three times over Diego. “The Lord is our shepherd and leads us to streams of living water.”

                  Several drops landed on Diego’s face. He twitched and opened his eyes; more than anything else, he looked puzzled. Jeannie started to move toward him, but Mary Catherine held her back. The bishop had seen. He laid a hand on Diego’s arm and gave a gentle squeeze.

                  “My dear friends,” he went on, still touching Diego, “we are gathered here in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is present among us….” While he explained the connection between healing and forgiveness, Diego looked around the room. His eyes met Jeannie’s as the bishop talked. Comprehension seemed to grow in him as he took in the presence of his bishop, Mary Catherine, Marie, and Jeannie in the hospital room. His free hand reached up and touched the tubing that brought him oxygen, tracing its rise from his chest to his nose. He saw the crucifix on the table and crossed himself. When he had looked at each of them, Jeannie saw, he smiled. A sob caught in her throat. Mary Catherine’s hand found hers and squeezed. She looked to the nun and saw her eyes filled with moisture, as well. The little book trembled in her hand. She almost understood.

                 

* * *

                 

                  When Diego opened his eyes, he had been dreaming about sleeping on a summer lawn. The smell of earth was in his nostrils, mingled with the tang of cut grass. Cool air seemed to flow into him right out of the smells. Then someone must have turned on the sprinklers, for he found himself being doused with water. It ran into his nose and his eyes and she shook himself with irritation at the interruption. He opened his eyes to see what was going on.

                  How? he wondered. He was right, he had been lying down; he hadn’t the strength to sit up. But the lawn was gone, vanished with its earthy pungency. He had been in the sun, now darkness was all around him, except for a terribly bright light from behind and above, and the feeble glow of a tiny flash light in front. He turned his head to look around, and felt an answering tug below his chin. His hand, searching, found a small plastic tube that ran up his nose.

                  At least he awoke with friends, in a place he knew, albeit from a new point of view. He smiled at the reversal when he recognized his bishop and the service he was reading. The young nurse, J.C., was trying to follow, and Mary Catherine and that nice Marie Jefferson were there, too.

                  Diego knew that he was dying, and that his wish for a natural death would be respected. His bishop had arrived before they would otherwise have been forced to put him on a ventilator, from which there was no escape.

                  “… and I ask blessed Mary, ever Virgin, all the angels and saints, and you, my brothers and sisters to pray for me to the Lord our God.” Diego could not, for some reason, form words to say out loud. The muscles refused to cooperate. But he held the thought in mind that he was being prepared for his journey.

                  “May almighty God have mercy on us,” the bishop said, “forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life.”

                  “Amen,” the women said.

                  Amen, Diego thought.

                  He drifted, knowing that the rite continued, hearing only fragments of the words, in and out of consciousness. The words formed his dreams—visions—and worked their healing inside him. He had worried, when the time of dying finally came, how he would hold up, whether he would cling to his espoused faith or fall victim to what the priests’ books called the “natural human anxiety” concerning death. But he found himself floating on clouds of calm, almost but not quite ready to join the saints awaiting his arrival, the glowing cloud of witnesses in which he had spent his life trying to believe. “… new heavens and a new earth….every tear from their eyes….all things new….” Diego’s eyes came open of their own accord. Not dead yet, he noticed.

                  “Lord, have mercy,” the women said.

                  “Give life and health to our brother, Diego, on whom we lay our hands in your name; Lord, have mercy.”

                  “Lord, have mercy,” they responded.

                  The bishop’s hands approached Diego, growing larger in his sight. They seemed to float to his forehead, where they exerted a firm pressure. The bishop, Diego noted irrelevantly, had a wart on the fourth finger of his right hand. He could feel it pressing against his left temple.

                  The pressure was gone. Diego thought of his ordination, when another bishop had performed the same act upon him, giving him the power to consecrate, to bind and loose. Now as then, the act was strangely physical for something meant to confer metaphysical results. That earlier bishop (he had a name, he must have had one, but it was lost, now) had had rough hands, chapped and scored with age.

                  Diego had missed the blessing of the oil of anointing. It was one of his favorites, and he was sorry not to have heard it in his bishop’s voice. The prelate’s thumb, slippery with the oil, signed the cross on Diego’s forehead. It was hot, like a brand. Funny, it had always felt cool to Diego when he had performed this rite for others. Did they all feel it this way, or was it just an artifact of his sickness? Sensations were becoming disjointed.

                  He felt his hands being lifted of the bed coverings, and a sense of pressure on each as they, too, were anointed. The words of the second part of the rite slammed into him: “May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up.” He could feel something that he had never known before, which cradled him in safety, but he had no name for it; names were going, too.

                  “Naked I came into the world, and naked I shall return.”

                  But there was something he wanted to do, some task left him, and he could not remember it. It was important, he knew; he felt its importance slip away as he tried to grasp it. A hand was under his head, lifting him to receive the viaticum, his food for the journey out of life. The contact brought him awake again, and he panicked, thinking that he had already died, before the task was finished.

                  He shook his head, trying to force himself to remain conscious. There was a sudden pain in his chest, but he denied it. He saw the bishop’s face close to his own—the wrong face. He had to tell someone something, not the bishop, but whom? He struggled for memory, refusing the Eucharist for the moment, trying to make his reason stay with him long enough to remember.

                  Jean.

                  The name came to him, and he remembered the rest.

                  The sound must have escaped him, for the bishop’s hands gently laid his head back on the pillow. Shapes moved in front of Diego—he could not identify them further—until he smelled the young nurse, soap, hot tears, and fear-sweat. He hand grasped his, and he was certain.

                  “Something to tell you,” Diego said. Jeannie had placed her ear at his lips, knowing he was fading. Her hair tickled.

                  He caught his breath. A great weight was lying on his chest. Just a few more moments, he prayed.

                  “Let me go,” he said. “I’ve had my turn. He’s waiting, with the rest of them.”

                 

Chapter 20

                  Jeannie nodded, unwilling to trust herself to speak. Diego’s hand squeezed hers, weakly. Her throat was tight with sorrow. Diego’s death was no clinical matter. Unlike most of the others, though by no means all, Diego’s dying was a loss to her, the permanent loss of a man she loved.

                  She told him so.

                  “It will be a long time, yet,” Diego said, “but I’ll be waiting for you. It’s not forever. It’s just messy. The pain makes sense now. You’ll see.”

                  His eyes slipped shut, the pressure of his hand slackened, but he still breathed. Jeannie stood up, her back aching.

                  The bishop, unable now to give Diego the consecrated wafer, moistened his finger with the wine.

                  “Jesus Christ is the food for our journey,” he said, “he calls us to the heavenly table.”

                  He touched his finger to Diego’s lips. “The blood of Christ.”

                  “Amen,” Diego answered, not awakening.

                  “May the Lord Jesus Christ protect you and lead you to eternal life.”

                  “Amen,” Jeannie said. Mary Catherine and Marie echoed her.

                  “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for him. Holy angels of God, pray for him. Saint John the Baptist, pray for him,” the bishop said. Then Mary Catherine interposed, “Saint Mary Magdalene, pray for him. All holy men and women, pray for him.”

                  Diego was quiet, a slow smile spreading over his features. The bishop watched him, Jeannie saw, with a compassion that she had seen before only on Diego’s face. “Go forth, Christian soul, from this world….may you live in peace this day. May your home be with God in Zion, with Mary, the virgin mother of God, with Joseph, and all the angels and all the saints.”

                  Jeannie turned to the window and lifted it open. It was fully dark outside, a few stars burning on the eastern horizon.

                  A breeze flirted into the room, freshening its stuffiness. It was almost as if J.C. and the boys were riding the breeze, come to gather one of their own into the fold.

                  When she turned back, Diego was dead. The bishop had more prayers to say, and it seemed that Mary Catherine and Marie wanted to hear them, but Jeannie felt no more need. She felt instead the light wind swirling through the room, ruffling the curtains, troubling the bed sheets, brushing her hair as if in affectionate greeting.

                 

* * *

                 

                  After Diego died, and after the bishop finished performing the rites for him, after Marie and Mary Catherine left, after Dr. Rashad pronounced Diego dead, Jeannie performed the nurse’s final care of the body.

                  Diego’s corpse was in relatively good shape, compared to some that she had cleaned after a full-blown code. She removed the nasal cannula that had delivered him oxygen, then bathed his body before covering it with a clean sheet and moving it to a gurney for the trip down into the basement to the morgue. She remembered the bag that held Diego’s few personal effects and tucked it under the sheet that covered him.

                  As she reached the surgery elevator in the back hall, where patients and their families were never allowed, Gus Charon was waiting for her.

                  “Good man, for a preacher,” he said.

                  “The best,” Jeannie answered. She felt a hollow calm, wondering when the mourning would take place, when the pain of the loss would strike her.

                  “You OK?” Gus asked.

                  “Uh-huh.”

                  “That fellow, Wood, had another code, y’know. While you were with Father Zorro, there.” Gus was diffident, shy of her, for some reason. “But he’s still alive. It don’t figure.”

                  Jeannie smiled. “I know.”

                  Gus paused, awkward.

                  “I guess he knows, now.”

                  “Knows what?”

                  “The padre,” Gus said. “Me and him used to discuss things, religion and stuff, and I always teased him. Guess he knows now, which of us was right. Awful damn young, though—just a kid, really. Makes me feel old, when the young ones like him are dyin’.” Gus fished in his pocket and pulled out two quarters. “Here—these’re for him.

                  Jeannie took the coins.

                  “Real silver,” Gus said. “Put ‘em heads up. Let him look at the eagles. I’d sure as hell hate to have to stare at George Washington for eternity.”

                  The elevator arrived. Its doors hissed open.

                  “Go on, now.”

                  “Thanks, Gus,” Jeannie said.

                  “Get goin’.” Gus turned away, hiding his face. Jeannie pushed the gurney into the elevator, holding the quarters tight in her fist. Reflexively, she turned to face to the front as she stabbed the “B” button. The doors were still open.

                  Gus was staring at the sheet-wrapped body at her side.

                  “Why don’t the good ones live?”

                  The doors snaked shut between them. The elevator started its descent.

                  While going down, Jeannie tried to feel nothing, and succeeded.

                  The short ride eventually ended.

                  She turned the body in to the morgue attendant. She did not stay to watch Diego’s corpse transferred to the refrigerated box where it would be held, but she did place the coins on his eyes with her own hands—heads up, so Diego could see the eagles. She retrieved the bag and took it upstairs to Diego’s office. She opened the cubicle with a key she found in the bag.

                  No one was around. The administrative staff had long ago gone home for supper and sleep.

                  The clothing she hung in the closet, smoothing out as well as possible the wrinkles of the day’s wear.

                  She went through his desk, looking for something personal, something that neither bishop nor hospital needed to be aware of. She found the whiskey bottle and disposed of it in someone else’s trash can—not scandalous, but not necessary for anyone else to know about.

                  She riffled the files in his drawer, not really reading, just scanning to see the nature of the material they contained. They were the records of counseling sessions, some personal writing, correspondence. They could go to the bishop for disposal.

                  The bottom left drawer of his desk contained only two objects. One was a photograph of two people: Diego as a young man, arm in arm with a young woman, both grinning hugely at the camera. It was a black-and-white photo, creased with age, the emulsion brittle and shiny. The woman looked like Maria Sanchez, but the daughter could not have even been born when the picture was taken. The background was a dirt-poor little town, seen in the distance, surrounded by jungle. It must be her mother, Elena, in the frame with Diego, many years ago.

                  They looked so young.

                  And there was the other object, a black mask, designed to cover only the eyes.

                  The mask of Zorro.

                  She picked up the photo to look more closely. Yes, something black dangled from Diego’s hand in the picture. It was the mask.

                  Jeannie smiled. So that was where the nickname had come from. It had trailed him from Nicaragua, decades ago.

                  Jeannie had one more service to perform for Diego. After locking his desk again, she took the photograph upstairs to ICU. Elena Sanchez was sitting up in bed, one of the evening nurses bustling around the room, getting Elena ready for the short trip to a regular nursing floor.

                  Jeannie explained who she was to the older woman and gave her the photograph. Elena looked at it carefully.

                  “He is dead?”

                  Jeannie nodded.

                  Elena asked, “He died well?”

                  “Yes,” Jeannie said. “Bravely and well.”

                  Elena shed no tears; her face was sad and proud. “I always thought he would. It is good to know. I thank you.”

                  Jeannie went to the door, stopped and turned. “He knew who you were.”

                  “Yes.” Elena looked up at Jeannie. “I always knew he would.”

                  Jeannie went out the door. She refused the temptation to look at her watch. Whatever time it was, she would not get enough sleep.

                  She went to the back stairs, familiar in their coat of peeling paint, down, and out into the darkness, toward home.

                  Tomorrow was coming.

                  Diego’s mask dangled from her hand.

The End

J.C. and the Boys by Alan David Justice is licensed under a 

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

If you'd like to have a dead tree edition of J.C. and the Boys, you'll find it here.

There's another story, The Communion of the Saint, here. 

And also here. 

And as a free audiobook here.

A Hanging Offense begins here. It's the story of the Peasants' Revolt in England in 1381, set in the town of Saint Albans.