J.C. and the Boys - Chapters 7-9

Wherein the Reader may come to understand the title.

Chapter 7

                  Back in his office, Father Diego sprayed himself with room freshener to combat the odor of musk which clung to his clerical garb. He became a pine-scented priest.

                  His arm tingled; Wanda Sue had left the bandage a little too tight. His sleeve was torn where the knife had slashed him. He caught himself feeling proud of the pain, a bit of undeserved suffering that reminded him of Jesus’ wounds, and he forced the pride away.

                  Still, he hadn’t done badly, all things considered. He had put himself in harm’s way for the sake of another. He had been tested and not found wanting, at least this once.

                  The pine room freshener overlaid the memory of Wanda Sue and the hint of blood and antiseptic. It was a faintly sickening combination of smells, but it was the best Diego could do for the moment. At least the bishop was out of town and would not come visiting today. Diego could have his suit cleaned and repaired and no one would be the wiser.

                  Whatever had come over him to thrust him into heroism was fading away rapidly, though. When he was finished with the spray can, he found his hands shaking. He considered fleetingly the bottle of brandy in his desk drawer, but pushed the thought away. He had a report to finish for his bishop, who was due back in town tomorrow. So much for heroism; there was paperwork to be done.

                  He dug a pad from the desk drawer and fished a pen from his pocket. From another drawer he took his ledger book, in which were recorded the bare facts of his work in the hospital. His superiors required that he keep a diary of his ecclesiastical acts—the masses, the last rites, the baptisms and marriages (only one so far in the hospital)—the acts reserved to him as a priest of God. Each one was literally written in the book, to be added to the diocesan totals and eventually forwarded to the Vatican, grist for yet another bureaucratic mill.

                  He could get away with merely listing the totals and writing some sort of ghost of a summary. His bishop was not interested in the details. But Diego always rebelled against the bare recital of the canonical facts. He wanted his bishop to know what his flock suffered.

                  He suspected that only an underling read his reports and waded through the swamp of his narrative—an overworked monsignor perhaps, with his own dreams of ecclesiastical glory. Still, Diego would write the kind of report he believed in.

                  The phone on his desk rang, jarring his thoughts. He answered, smiling ruefully at the memory of what he had done when Ms. Christopher called him that morning. At least he did not have a cup of coffee to spill. He gave a small prayer of thanks that he had not poured the brandy. He had never outgrown childhood clumsiness.

                  “Chaplain.”

                  “Padre? This is Jeff Walters.”

                  “Good afternoon, Doctor.”

                  “I’ve just been in to see the heart in Room Six in ICU—Mr. Wood. He told me the damnedest story, said you’d been in there with him.”

                  “Yes,” Diego said neutrally, “I spoke with Mr. Wood today.”

                  “Did he talk to you about this, uh, experience of his?”

                  Diego did not answer.

                  “Padre?”

                  “I’m sorry. Yes, he did.”

                  “What do you make of it?” Walters wanted to know. “Is he going crazy, or what?”

                  That was the question, Diego realized. When you talked to God, how could you know whether the voice you heard was His, your own, or something else’s?

                  “That’s a hard question,” he temporized. “How much time do you have?”

                  “Not enough to philosophize. What do you think?”

                  “I don’t know,” Diego said. “How about a neurological workup? He has a history of TIA’s, doesn’t he?”

                  “That’s the damn problem—sorry, Padre, but this is frustrating.”

                  “Well, is there any new damage? I talked to Dr. Caine about it, and he seemed to think another consult was pointless.”

                  “Well, there you go,” Walters said. “Expensive, too. Wood is a traveling salesman. He can’t afford all this stuff anyway. The hospital will never get paid for everything. His insurance will run out before long.”

                  “Then what?”

                  “We’ll keep treating him, with whatever is necessary, of course. But you’re right—there won’t be any money for extras. Are you going to answer my question?”

                  “Maybe.”

                  “That’s as good as it gets?”

                  “Best I can do,” Diego said. “There is only one certainty in my business.”

                  “That’s more than I get,” Walters said. “Thanks, Padre.”

                 

* * *           

                 

                  My Dear Bishop, Diego wrote in his report,

                  During the past month, I performed the following canonical acts:

                 

                   Baptisms

                           2 infants

                           1 adult

                  Last Rites (for Catholics)

                          2 infants (under two years)

                          4 children (2–18 years)

                          14 adults (over 18)

                  Confessions (patients, families, and staff)

                          24 persons

                  Counseling (patients, families, and staff)

                          12 men

                          24 women

                  Weddings (staff)

                          1 couple (man non-Catholic)

                  Masses                  43

                 

                  During the month, I was on duty in the hospital for a total of 348 hours and on-call for 250 hours. Normal hospital rounds were conducted daily.

                  A daily mass was televised over the hospital’s closed-circuit television system.

                  From the chaplain’s emergency fund, I disbursed $658.65 to the families of patients and to individual staff members, leaving a balance of –$158.65. It is my hope that the bishop’s discretionary fund will be able to reimburse the chaplain’s fund. An accounting is attached.

                  These are the numbers, Sam. I hope that you will forgive me the rest of the report. I know that the duties of administering the diocese keep you very busy, but I have no one here that I can unload on, and it will do me good to get these things off my chest. I fear that I am losing my objectivity here in the midst of so much suffering. I know that my image of the world is skewed by what goes on here. Much of the rest of the staff shares that off-centeredness with me.

                  How much pain can one man see before he begins to doubt his—not his faith, for I see too many reminders of God’s presence. It is not my faith that is in danger. I know that God is real and present with these people in their suffering. I know that the answers are not to be revealed in this life.

                  I know all that.

                  But my flesh cringes from the plastic and steel, from the uniforms of the nurses and the instruments of the physicians, from the pain and confusion attendant upon the ill and the dying.

                  And I have to ask myself, and you, how to love a God who, if He would, could make it so much better than it is.

                  Sometimes I think that God is a terrorist.

                  And I’m not even on the dung heap. Yet.

                  I know He is present. I believe in Him. I know that not a sparrow falls without His knowledge. But why does the sparrow fall?

                  If I knew what the lesson was meant to teach, I would learn it. I would help the sick and injured learn it; it would ease their pain. It would ease mine, too.

                  There is such a variety of destinies, of plans, working out here. Cancer should have a different meaning than a heart attack. Shouldn’t it? Does liver disease mean something distinct from a traffic accident?

                  These people would listen, if He were to tell them. I would listen. So would the families, those awful, mute people, whose eyes accuse me of hiding the answers from them. They come to me fresh from the doctors who explain the physical problems. Those, they can understand—a pump has worn out; a growth has multiplied virulently, demonically, in their loved one’s bodies; bacteria (God’s creatures, too) have established a bridgehead in muscle, bone, or gut. But from the doctors they come to me, and I try to comfort them against the pain.

                  What would comfort them is understanding. Understanding is what they seek. They know I can’t do magic, that the doctors and the nurses are their defenders against the working of disease.

                  But we have told them for two thousand years that if they just have faith, they will be saved, and they believe, even when I can not save them from God’s will.

                  I am running out of comfort. I am not strong enough to comfort all of them.

                  I say the words that I was taught, but my words are all opaque with ignorance. I see through a glass darkly. Jesus looks down from the stained glass in the chapel, the crucifix that hangs on the wall above each bed, and I stand accused. I am not enough—

                  Some time has passed since I wrote the above. I have myself in hand now. But I will let it stand. What I have written, I have written.

                  This place is the western version of Darfur, Rwanda, Dachau. It is more “civilized” than those others, but the suffering is not dissimilar. Here, suffering is concentrated, focused, removed from the community of the living and segregated into a community of pain. The communicants never know each other. Each is in his or her own cubicle, where all his needs, they tell me, can be met.

                  Patient is such a perfect word for the inmates of this place. It describes them so exactly.

                  What might signs of God’s presence mean here? What did they mean in Dachau?

                  When iron ore goes into the smelter, does it somehow know that it is to be “refined”?

                  I have seen suffering to equal Christ’s. Some face it without the sure and certain knowledge of the resurrection.

                  I think sometimes—many times—that it may demand more courage than even Christ showed.

                  As Pilate wrote: What I have written, I have written.

                  Father, when I feel that life ebb from the body, I have given thanks. The suffering is more than is deserved. God’s plan looks—is—unjust.

                  I am not suffering a crisis of faith. I believe in Him. But I do not love Him.

                  Yet—how can I not love the person behind the face contorted in dying’s pain, be he God or man, saint or sinner? My heart reaches out to her, or him. I suffer from an excess of empathy, you have told me. I am to steel (steal?) my heart, and keep my feeling for the sufferer abstract. The words will not cooperate.

                  Take this one easily. Make that one agonize. Remove from this third one all family and friends. Let this other live, but make each breath a trial. Remove all evidence of spirit from a fifth.

                  He is One with us. I must tell the comforting lie (is it a lie?) to each of these. I cannot make myself leave them uncomforted. Is it a sin to say the words not meaning them? They stick in my throat, clogging it against the truth, which is that I know nothing.

                  I would hymn these sufferers, instead. Their ability to believe astounds me. They trust my comfortable words although I have no trust left.

                  They show me how He must have felt, hanging there, waiting for an end of pain.

                  Words are not enough. They lead me to self-pity.

                  Each of these people is the Christ in their pain. I see that. But pain is not explained by pain.

                  The three I baptized died. I have reported their baptisms to the priest of the local parish, and he has entered them upon the rolls. Their names are in the book.

                  For all the good it may do them.

                 

                                    Yours in Christ,

                                    Diego +

                 

* * *

            

                  Diego’s pen nearly ripped through the page as he scrawled the cross after his name, the ancient sign that the letter was written by a priest of Christ. He folded the long letter and stuffed it into an envelope. He wrote the bishop’s name and address on it, found a stamp, licked it, and stuck it on the envelope. He worked quickly, to avoid giving himself the chance to reconsider what he had written.

                  He took the letter and walked quickly through the typing pool to the hospital lobby, avoiding the eyes of all he passed. The mailbox stood sentinel between the two elevator doors.

                  He yanked back the lid of the dark blue steel mailbox and threw the letter inside. It fell gently, in spite of his agitation. He heard only a faint susurrus of paper kissing paper as it landed inside. By rights, the letter should have clanged when it hit bottom. He slammed the lid shut in frustration.

                  The metallic crash echoed through the lobby. Mrs. Wagner, at the gift shop, peered cautiously out from behind her venetian blinds, eyeing him doubtfully. The head of the volunteer at the desk snapped around to stare at him. Two visitors, whom he had not seen in his rush to dispatch the letter, edged away from him, whispering to each other.

                  Diego leaned his forehead against the cool blue metal, embarrassed at his public outburst in spite of himself. It was a relief to revel in sensation for a moment, to allow the neutral cool to seep into his red confusion.

                  He must have stayed that way longer than he thought. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

                  “Are you all right, padre?”

                  “Yes,” he whispered, lying, his throat suddenly tight with phlegm. He stood up straight and found himself rubbing his left arm without knowing why. It tingled slightly. “I was just tired for a moment. I’m fine.”

                  Standing at Diego’s side, a look of concern painted on his fiduciary face, was Horst Appleby.

                  “Maybe you should sit down for a couple of minutes,” Appleby said. “Can’t have you passing out in front of all these people, now, can we?”

                  Diego tried to shake the administrator’s hand off, but Appleby guided him to an empty admissions cubicle. In a moment, he was being solicitously seated in the suppliant’s chair. Appleby hoisted his own behind onto a corner of the desk.

                  “Feeling better?”

                  “I’m all right,” Diego said. He forced himself to forget the letter he had just dispatched and to concentrate on the new problem—how to get away from Appleby.

                  Appleby was the assistant vice-president for finance in the hospital. He took his responsibilities seriously. He prowled the hospital, searching for what he thought to be waste and inefficiency. Diego mentally shook himself and looked at Appleby. He saw a man in his late fifties, whose skin had the glow of one who worked out on a regular basis, but who had never done physical labor. He knew that Appleby played racquetball three days a week; he had turned down the administrator’s invitations repeatedly.

                  Diego kept a sort of card file in his head. It functioned automatically, even under stress. It was a trick he had learned during his first job as a curate, from the parish’s rector. It had helped him to greet people by name and ask about their families, even when, consciously, he had no earthly idea whom he was speaking to.

                  The card file flipped open to Appleby, Horst, as Diego stared up into the administrator’s empty face.

                  Horst Appleby was the third son of a local family known for its wealth. He had knocked around for years before landing his present position, for which he had no particular qualifications except for a long acquaintanceship with money. In his youth, he had been arrested once, perhaps twice, for public intoxication, once for statutory rape. But the judge had been a personal friend of the family, the police chief unwilling to jail the scion of the clan who contributed to his campaign chest, and the publisher of the newspaper had been having an affair with Horst’s mother. Nothing ever grew from the sowing of Horst’s wild oats. Horst had served with the Army during the Vietnam war, but never saw combat; he had been a public relations spokesman for the Pentagon—family connections, again.

                  The file flipped to the next page. Not overly bright, Horst had to compete with two older brothers. The eldest administered the family wealth; Horst was given a regular, liberal allowance, but had nothing to say about how the fortune was administered. The second brother carved out a brilliant legal career. When he finally decided that he had to do something for pin money and to justify his existence in the world, Horst had accepted the oldest brother’s offer to find him a job where he could do relatively little harm to the family’s reputation in town. In return, Horst was expected to throw the family’s construction firm any work he could.

                  Flip. Does Horst know what people think of him, Diego wondered. Probably not. It could not occur to Horst that the $25,000.00 sculpture in the rose garden might be seen as misspending by a nurse’s aide who only earns $10,500.00 per year, or a nurse whose patient died because a ventilator malfunctioned from lack of proper maintenance.

                  “Are you feeling all right, Padre?” Horst asked.

                  “I’m fine,” Diego said. He started to rise.

                  “Are you sure?”

                  Diego found himself irritated with the man’s solicitousness, with the pink hand on his shoulder.

                  “If you’re certain,” Appleby said, “there’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

                  Diego resigned himself. He was, anyway, duty-bound to listen to anyone who needed his ear.

                  “Go ahead.”

                  Appleby clasped his hands around one knee and teetered on the edge of the desk. “You understand, this is confidential?”

                  “All right.”

                  “Good.” Appleby lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. Diego had to strain to hear him.

                  “There have been some—well, irregularities—upstairs in one of the nursing units. In Intensive Care, as a matter of fact. Now, I’m not asking you to spy on the people up there, you understand. But if you hear anything, I’d appreciate your letting us know about it.”

                  “Us?” Diego asked. “Who is ‘us’?”

                  “Ah—in administration,” Appleby said. “Me, if you like.”

                  “About what?” Diego asked.

                  Appleby looked through the glass partition, as if he expected to see someone with his ear cupped against the transparent barrier.

                  “Drugs.”

                  Diego played the innocent, enjoying making Appleby spell out his intentions.

                  “They use drugs all the time.”

                  “They do?” Appleby’s mouth dropped open. “Who?”

                  “All of them.”

                  “Not on duty?”

                  “When else?” Diego was having trouble keeping a straight face.

                  “You’re not serious?” Appleby demanded, amazed at this bit of intelligence.

                  “They have to,” Diego said. “The doctors tell them to.”

                  “The doctors make them use drugs?”

                  Diego leaned forward in his chair and beckoned Appleby to meet him halfway. Their heads nearly touched.

                  “I’ve seen the doctors themselves use drugs up there. They make the nurses get them out of the narcotics locker.”

                  “There have been thefts up there, you know,” Appleby whispered. “I had no idea it was so serious.”

                  Diego’s pager sounded off. Jeannie Christopher’s voice, mutilated by the electronics, called to him.

                  “Father Diego, call 2217.” She repeated the message, then the pager gave off another whine and fell silent.

                  “Excuse me, Mr. Appleby,” he said. “I’ll keep my eyes open. It looks as if I’m on my way up there now.”

                  “Good man,” Appleby said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I knew we could rely on you.”

                  As Appleby left, Diego dialed ICU on the telephone. Once Appleby was out of sight, a malicious grin spread over his face. How am I going to get out of this one, he wondered as the phone rang in his ear.

                  “ICU, Vivian.”

                  “This is Father Zo—Father Diego.”

                  “Padre, we have a new admission. He doesn’t seem that bad, but he’s asked to see a priest.”

                  “I’ll be right up.”

                  Diego hung up the phone and started for the elevator, absently rubbing his left arm.

                 

Chapter 8

                 

                  The poor guy is probably terrified, Diego mused, while the elevator carried him up from the lobby and, he gave thanks, away from Horst Appleby. I know I would be.

                  Appleby wanted him to spy. The church stood for virtue, so the powerful thought that churchmen would tattle on their fellow human beings. The pity of it was that many would. But Diego mistrusted any alliance between power and faith; the alliance seldom served the purposes of God. More often, the churchman became the tool of the temporal partner, and a trust was betrayed, a soul lost. “Unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s—but unto God the things that are God’s.”

                  Diego was, for the moment, alone in the elevator, for which he was grateful. He had the chance to collect his thoughts before dealing with the frightened new admission. He caught himself—the person he was about to meet was not, in his own eyes, an “admission.” He, or she, was a person. If Diego claimed any ethic as his own, it was his refusal to consider any person as a thing. Each one was like him, a bundle of vulnerabilities, a cauldron of hopes, fears, sensitivities and loves.

                  The elevator groaned to a stop with its peculiar, lifting sensation of weightlessness. Diego composed himself to face the world again after his all-too-brief respite of solitude. The doors slid open.

                  Gus Charon was waiting for him.

                  Diego dug in his pocket for a coin, smothering a wave of irritation. Gus, too, he reminded himself, was a person. He tried to remember his ethical claim.

                  “Any answers yet, padre?” Gus demanded, before Diego had even stepped from the elevator.

                  Diego tossed the coin to the wizened old man. “Not yet, Gus. It’s been kind of a busy day.” He made himself stand still long enough to be polite. Gus’s service as gatekeeper to ICU was valuable to the hospital, even more so to the nurses beyond the double doors. He kept the riff-raff out. But sometimes the price to be paid in idle chatter was painfully high.

                  “Don’t wait too long,” Gus said. “I’m old. I might die before you answer, and where would that leave me?”

                  “In the hands of God,” Diego answered.

                  “Not bad, padre.” Gus flipped the coin back to Diego. “Buy yourself a Coke.”

                  “What do you do with all the money you collect, Gus?”

                  “It’s for the boatman. Not even dying is free any more.”

                  “Is that a classical allusion?” Diego asked.

                  “Surprised you, huh?”

                  “Always, Gus”

                  “Pass, mortal,” Gus said, grinning. His teeth were yellow with age, but they were all there.

                  Suppressing a shudder, Diego pushed through the doors and entered the Intensive Care Unit. It was late in the day shift, sometime between two and three o’clock. The nurses were moving busily around the unit, gathering the last bits of data on the patients before passing them into the care of evening shift. Blood pressure, respiration, temperature, pulse rate, EKG and EEG readings, where needed, would soon go into the charts, to be graphed against the same measurements taken earlier, a record and a trend marker for the living or the dying.

                  “Well, hi there, padre!” Wanda Sue was at her desk, copying orders into the kardex, the counter top flip file that contained all the current recommendations of the physicians for each patient on the unit. “How’s your arm?”

                  She dropped her pen on the counter and rose to meet him. Her perfume nauseated him, and he backed away, clenching his teeth to keep his gorge in place, and breathing through his mouth to avoid her smell.

                  “Here, let me look at it,” Wanda Sue said, advancing.

                  “It’s fine,” Diego insisted. “No problem at all.” He dodged past, trying not to smell her. In doing so he grazed her considerable breasts and felt his face redden. Annoyance surged through him, downing other urges. He was a sixty year old priest; by now he should have celibacy down pat. Instead, it was giving him more trouble now than it had when he was a young seminarian.

                  Seminary and semen, he thought. The sophomoric joke went through him like a whiff of Wanda Sue, and he grinned in spite of his resolve.

                  “You make me feel young again, Wanda Sue,” Diego said, “but I have work to do. Maybe in heaven…”

                  “Best offer I’ve had all day, padre,” she said. Her gum snapped at the air. “You must be up here about the new guy. He’s in Four.”

                  “What’s the matter with him?” Diego asked.

                  “Beats me,” Wanda Sue said. “Let me dig through his chart.”

                  The ward clerk undulated over to the chart rack while Diego waited. In the moment or two that it took her to get the chart and return, the atmosphere cleared a little around him. He hurried to snatch a deep breath of relatively unpolluted air. Wanda Sue came back and handed him the chart. As he leafed through the multi-colored sheets of paper clamped in the aluminum clipboard, he found, to his surprise, that he was holding his breath. As his body used up the oxygen stored in his lungs and replaced it with carbon dioxide, the urge to breathe grew stronger and stronger. But Wanda Sue was standing behind him reading over his shoulder. She would surely notice the massive exhalation that was building up, tightening in his chest.

                  He felt the veins in his neck begin to throb as his need to breathe increased. The words penned on the chart began to blur before his watering eyes.

                  What to do? If he exhaled explosively and gulped in a new breath, he might as well simply tell Wanda Sue that she stank, which would hurt her feelings, something he would hate to do. But if he did not breathe soon—very soon!—he would pass out.

                  The problem solved itself: Diego coughed.

                  It was not just any cough, either. Spit and phlegm exploded from his involuntarily unclamped mouth, tears spilled from his eyes, and his throat hurt as it if were being torn inside with the force of the cough.

                  He gulped air, coughed again.

                  “Water,” he managed to gasp.

                  Wanda Sue hurried away in search of liquid. Again, the constant air-conditioning swept the atmosphere clear of her perfume; Diego’s breathing slowed.

                  Vivian poked her head out of her office. “Are you all right?”

                  “Yeah, I think so,” Diego said, fanning himself with the chart.

                  Wanda Sue came back with a cup of water. Vivian took it from her and handed it to Diego.

                  “Are you OK, padre?” Wanda Sue said. She tried to get closer, but Vivian blocked her way.

                  “Wanda Sue, go into Eight and get Jeannie, will you?” Vivian asked.

                  “Just tryin’ to help the padre,” Wanda Sue drawled in resentment. “I didn’t hurt anyone.”

                  “Go,” Vivian ordered.

                  Wanda Sue sulked across the hall, called Jeannie through the door, and returned to her desk. Vivian moved Diego to the other end of the nurses’ station, upwind of Wanda Sue.

                  “Feeling better?”

                  Diego tasted the water. It was cold, with small lumps of ice floating on top. He sensed his heartbeat returning to normal.

                  “Yes, thank you,” he replied.

                  Jeannie Christopher rounded the corner of the nurses’ station.

                  “Hi, Father Diego,” she said. Her face was flushed and she was panting. She dropped into a chair. “I’ve been doing the passive exercises on the Tur—on Mrs. Jefferson. I’m bushed!”

                  “How is she?”

                  “About the same,” Jeannie said, “though I could almost swear that I felt some resistance while I was exercising her. I don’t know—maybe not. But it seemed harder, somehow.”

                  “Any sign of consciousness?” Vivian asked.

                  “No, nothing,” Jeannie said. “Could be just my imagination. I haven’t worked with her for a few days, and I loafed around on my weekend off.”

                  The passive exercises given to a comatose patient are more of a workout for the nurse than for the patient, who is, after all, unconscious. Marie Jefferson was exercised every two hours—“q2h” in hospital parlance. It was a grueling regimen for the staff. All the long muscles were contracted and flexed, to insure that, when and if the patient ever woke up, she would not have useless arms and legs. The exercises maintained at least a minimal muscle tone and kept an acceptable range of motion in the major joints. Jeannie had a right to be tired.

                  “Reason we called you up here,” Vivian said, “was Mr. Perez. He was admitted an hour ago with chest pain. Dr. Walters—Jeff—ran an EKG on him and can’t find any reason for him to feel sick. His vitals are all right, too. As far as we can tell, he’s in pretty good shape.”

                  “So why is he in ICU?” Diego asked.

                  “Standard operating procedure for chest pain,” Jeannie said. “If he does throw an MI, we’re equipped to handle it. He doesn’t look all that sick to me, I’ll admit. But he insisted on a priest. He said he wants to make an act of contrition before he dies. There’s no reason I can see that he should, though.”

                  “Four?”

                  “Yeah, Room Four.”

                  Diego crossed the hall and entered Mr. Perez’ hospital room. Perez was a small man, bent with decades of outdoor labor. His skin was leathery brown from a lifetime of exposure to the west Texas sun and wind. His bushy Latin mustache was sprinkled with a generous helping of salt, his hair at long last receding from his forehead and likewise seasoned. The fluorescent lighting gave his skin an unhealthy pallor. The blinds were closed, the sun kept from him.

                  “Mr. Perez?” Diego said from the doorway.

                  “Aquí.” It was a woman’s voice that answered. At first Diego could not see her.

                  “Yo soy el padre Diego.”

                  “Bueno.” The woman rustled her clothing, standing, preparing to leave. “ Está aquí,” she said to her husband. Perez stretched out his hand to her. Diego averted his eyes from their intimacy, granting them the privacy that their touch seemed to require. Husband and wife murmured to each other. She bent and kissed his forehead. Then she gathered up her purse and toddled from the room.

                  “Come in, father,” Perez said. “Sit down here, close to me.”

                  Diego felt that warmth left by Mrs. Perez as he obeyed. “Podemos hablar español, si quisieras.” In his priestly role, he addressed Perez with the familiar tú.

                  “English will do,” Perez said. His voice was gravelly. “This is America. We will speak her language. Rosa likes the sounds of México better, but she does not go out much and had no need to learn English. But I have worked all my life, and I learned, as soon as we came across the river. In my last words, I will speak as an American, because here there was work for me.”

                  “What did you do?”

                  “The work that others would not. I dug the ditches, I tended the gardens, I picked the cotton and the peaches, I herded the sheep, I carried away the garbage of the Anglos. I delivered their circulars when there was no other work to do. Always I worked. My family’s welfare was my business. They never went hungry.”

                  “But you did?” Diego asked.

                  “Sometimes,” Perez admitted, after a pause. “You will not tell them.”

                  “I will not,” Diego said.

                  “It is better that they do not know. I was no saint.”

                  “And now?”

                  Perez’ eyes glistened with moisture. “Soon I will die, father. And I have sins on my conscience.”

                  What sins this noble old man could have, Diego did not know. But it was not his duty to judge the man, nor his supposed sins. His job was absolution, the performance of the rite through which Perez could go in peace, if go he must.

                  “I have to say,” Diego explained, “that the nurse I talked to before I came in here does not think that you are going to die.”

                  “What does she know?” Perez said. “It is my death, not hers. I have seen it.”

                  It was as if Perez had spent his life expecting a vision of his death, a kind of advance warning. Had the farewell Diego watched been the final leave-taking between husband and wife?

                  “What is your Christian name, Señor Perez?” he asked.

                  “Pablo.”

                  “You were named for Saint Paul, then.”

                  “Yes.”

                  “Paul was a great man. It is a proud name to bear. A difficult name to live up to.”

                  “It can be done. He was a man like other men,” Perez said. “I like you, Father Diego. You are a good man to talk to, and you also have a difficult name to carry. I have read Saint James—San Diego. He knew how to listen to a man, too. But I have little time left. So—

                  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” Perez continued. “It has been many years since my last confession.”

                  Diego removed the shawl from his jacket pocket, kissed it, and placed it around his shoulders. He turned from Pablo Perez, to make his speaking easier.

                  “I last confessed in México, before smuggling my family across the border,” Perez said. “It must have been thirty years ago. It was in case we were killed. The whole family went to confession that night—Rosa demanded it. It was to be an ending and a beginning. We were leaving everything we knew—family, friends, our language and our customs—and it seemed to her that in some way we were dying. I knew better, of course, but I went to ease her mind. That is the first thing I wish to confess: that my last confession was insincere. My thoughts were all for the border, for finding work to feed my family so that I could feel like a man. That was my second sin: that I tore Rosa from the place that had given her birth and made an alien of her, because of my pride as a man. She was never happy here, but I insisted, and we stayed. She did not complain—she is a good woman—but a man knows these things. She suffered because of me.”

                  Pablo Perez’ eyes were moist with the effort of his confession. But his voice did not waver as he continued.

                  Diego could never make himself immune to the pain of the people whose admissions he heard. His imagination was vivid, and, as Perez told his story, Diego was with him, sharing the loneliness of an alien land, the struggle to learn the language and to find work, to fulfill the promise of the pilgrimage. Perez gave Diego the gift of his life, as he had meant to live it and as he had fallen short of his intentions. Finally, the old man’s voice stopped. He had spoken without interruption, without the need for encouraging sounds that most penitents needed. Perez was sure of Diego’s attention, and he was strong in his belief that his story was worth listening to. It was not a catalogue of sins committed and regretted; it was an explanation of a life, so that, in performing absolution, Diego would know the man to whim he transmitted the gift of eternal life. When Perez finished, Diego simply said, “Thank you.” They sat in silence for a long moment.

                  “The absolution, Father Diego,” Perez prompted.

                  Diego performed the rite, anointing Perez’ forehead with the consecrated oil of unction. Somehow, he was unsurprised when, as his thumb traced a cross of oil on the man’s forehead, the oil seemed to glow with a light of its own. He decided not to mention it; it was enough that it occurred.

                  On the overbed table, Diego spread a small linen cloth. He opened his portable communion set and laid the elements out, a small silver chalice and a tiny silver paten, or plate. He filled the chalice from a stoppered cruet and took from the case two wafers of consecrated bread.

                  “Do you remember the words?” he asked Perez.

                  “It has been very long, father.”

                  Diego nodded. He was used to communing lapsed Catholics. He had his own variation of the eucharistic rite, cobbled together from his own training and the Anglican prayer book. His bishop would not approve, he suspected, but he only used the ritual with lapsari. They were unlikely to complain, and it seemed easier for them to accept.

                  He took Perez’ hand in his own. “Don’t worry about getting the words right,” he said. “Just follow along as best you can.”

                  From memory, Diego recited.

                  “May the Lord be with you.”

                  “And also with you,” Perez answered.

                  “When his friend, Lazarus, died,” Diego said, “Jesus went to see his sisters, Mary and Martha. Martha was grief-stricken for her brother, and when Jesus arrived, she said, ‘If you had been here, he wouldn’t have died.’ Jesus said back to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me, even when he dies, will live.’ Then he went to the tomb and called Lazarus’ name, very loud. And Lazarus, who had been dead for four days, woke up and came out.”

                  “Good story,” Perez said. “I always wondered if Lazarus was really dead, or just unconscious.”

                  Diego smiled. “ Well, the story says that Martha didn’t want to open his tomb because Lazarus stank.”

                  “That’s dead.”

                  Diego picked up the thread of his special rite.

                  “I give you God’s peace,” he said.

                  Perez nodded, smiled weakly. His eyes were focused not on Diego now, but on the far end of the bed.

                  “Our father,” Diego began; Perez joined him in a whisper.

                  As the prayer ended, Diego gently opened Perez’ lips and placed the wafer in his mouth.

                  “The body of Christ,” Diego said.

                  Perez maintained his state, seemed almost not to notice the bread. Diego held the chalice to the old man’s lips and tilted it, so that he received at least a taste of the wine.

                  “The blood of Christ.”

                  Without moving his gaze, Perez swallowed and crossed himself. Diego replaced the chalice on the table and swung it away from the bed.

                  “Are you all right, Pablo?”

                  Perez pointed to the end of the bed.

                  “They’re—”

                  “Who?” Diego asked.

                  “Evan—Mr. Evans,” Perez said, “and Jesus.”

                  “Are you sure?” Evans was the man who had died that morning, in the room. Perez could not know about him. It was impossible for Perez to know.

                  “They’re waiting for me.” Perez stretched out his had toward the darkness at his feet. “They’re waiting for me,” he repeated, looking to Diego with a smile of hope. “You were right.”

                  Perez looked back toward the foot of the bed and gasped. His body fell back heavily against the pillow, his head clunked against the headboard. Diego shook him.

                  “Pablo!” he cried. “Can you hear me?”

                  There was no response from the inert form. It was empty.

                  “Pablo!”

                  Diego stood and went to the foot of the bed. He threw the covers back and yanked Perez’ body flat and straight on the bed. He moved around to the side and, while blowing three or four quick breaths into Perez’ mouth, elbowed the call button. Jeannie’s voice came over the intercom.

                  “Can I help you?”

                  “Come quick,” Diego shouted. “He’s dying!” His fingers searched Perez’ neck, feeling for a pulse in the carotid artery. There was none.

                  “Ohmigod,” Diego breathed. He struggled to recall the CPR training he had had a year earlier. His fingers traced along Perez’ ribs until they came to the notch at the bottom of the breast bone. Two finger widths up was the spot. He locked his hands, one atop the other, on the sternum. How many compressions? He couldn’t remember. There was no time to remember. How long had he spent so far?

                  Time seemed to stand still for Diego, as if he had entered eternity.

                  Compressions—rapid, steady. He locked his elbows stiff; that much he could remember. He leaned over Perez, pushing down on his chest. He heaved rapidly, up and down, trying to force the immigrant heart to beat.

                  “One-and-two-and-three-and-four… ” he counted out loud.

                  How often should he breathe him? Where were the nurses?

                  He reached thirty, gave Perez a few extra beats for good measure, and bent to his lips, tilting up the chin to open the windpipe. With his other hand, Diego pinched Perez’ nostrils shut. He placed his mouth over the dead man’s lips and blew air into his lungs. He saw the chest rise. He blew again. Again the lungs expanded. He felt quickly for a pulse in the neck.

                  Nothing. He replaced his hands on Perez’ chest and resumed the compressions. Immediately, he lost count. He had to estimate how many compressions he had already given. Arbitrarily he chose the number eight.

                  “Don’t stop,” Jeannie said as she came through the door. “Keep counting!”

                  “—nine-and-ten-eleven-twelve and-thirteen-fourteen—”

                  While Diego counted and compressed, Jeannie raided the crash cart and found the ambu-bag. Between Diego’s compressions she deftly and sanitarily slipped in two breaths.

                  “Slow it down a little, Diego,” she ordered. She began to count for him. “One-one thousand, two-one thousand… ” Between them they reduced the rate of compressions to about eighty per minute.

                  Vivian followed Jeannie into the room.

                  “Need a backboard,” Jeannie said.

                  “Vivian opened the closet and pulled out a six-foot long piece of plastic. “Roll him up,” she ordered.

                  “Stop a second,” Jeannie told Diego. “On three—one, two, three!” The two of them rolled Perez on his side. Vivian slid the backboard under him, and they let him fall onto it. Diego resumed the compressions, but he was tiring rapidly. His face was flushed; sweat poured off him; he panted the numbers aloud.

                  Under his hands, bone snapped. He looked at Jeannie, a grimace of fear on his face.

                  “Don’t stop—it’s okay, happens all the time. He can’t feel it. He needs what you’re doing a lot more than he needs those ribs.”

                  “Let me take over, padre,” Vivian said. “On five.” She slipped beside him. As he finished “five-one thousand,” Vivian’s hands pushed his aside and she smoothly picked up the count.

                  “Good job, Padre,” Jeannie said.

                  Wanda Sue wandered in.

                  “Make yourself useful,” Jeannie ordered. “Breathe him for me.” Wanda Sue began feeding Perez air.

                  Jeannie pushed Diego to a corner of the room where he would be out of the way. He huddled there and watched her purposeful actions.

                  Perez was already connected to a heart monitor; it was standard operating procedure for all patients in the unit. Jeannie glanced at the screen and saw the characteristic rhythm.

                  “He’s in vee-fib,” she said. She wheeled the defibrillator into place across the bed from where Vivian sweated through the rhythm of CPR. She squirted conduction paste on the face of one of the electrode paddles and rubbed them together, keeping up a running commentary on what she was doing—as much to remind herself of the sequence of actions necessary as to inform Diego.

                  “If we don’t use this gunk, we’ll burn the living hell out of him,” she said. Vivian ripped the thin hospital gown, exposing a sunken, weathered chest.

                  “Clear!”

                  Vivian backed off. Jeannie leaned over Perez and placed the paddles on his chest.

                  “What have I got?”

                  “Two hundred,” Vivian answered. “Do it!” Jeannie pressed the button, and two hundred joules of electricity snapped across Perez’ chest. A joule measures the amount of work done by one ampere of electricity pushed through one ohm of resistance. Pablo’s back arched and relaxed, thunking against the backboard.

                  Vivian’s eyes were on the monitor. “Nothing. Still vee-fib.” Jeannie clicked the switch, increasing the current. “Clear.” Again electricity coursed through Perez. Again there was no result. Jeannie tried one more time, then Vivian resumed CPR.

                  “Where’s a damn doctor?” Jeannie asked.

                  “Wanda Sue should have called the code,” Vivian said.

                  “Padre,” Jeannie ordered, holding up a hypodermic like a weapon, “get on the phone. Dial seven. All the damn doctors in the hospital have gone deaf. Say ‘Code Blue, three-oh-four.’ Then say it again. Got that?” She slipped the needle into the IV line as she spoke and pushed the plunger home.

                  Diego started for the door.

                  “Use this phone, ” Jeannie said.

                  She looked up at the monitor again. “Epinephrine’s not doing any good. I’m going to zap him again.”

                  As Jeannie prepared to defibrillate Perez once more, Diego dialed the phone and spoke into it. His voice cracked as he spoke. He could hear himself from the PA speakers in the hall outside. The characteristic sound of defibrillation penetrated the whole hospital.

                  For Diego, the entire experience was dense with unreality. As he replaced the phone in its cradle, Jeannie was pushing another drug—“Lidocaine,” he heard her say—into Pablo’s veins. Vivian was breathing him, continuing the compressions.

                  Jeannie frowned up at the monitor. “No change.” She threw away the used syringe. Diego heard it rattle twice around the empty trash can.

                  “I’m going to give him three-sixty this time,” Jeannie said. “Clear!” Diego, fascinated in spite of his terror, leaned over to watch as she again bent over the inert form of Perez.

                  “I said clear, damn it!” Jeannie shouted. Vivian reached across the bed and shoved Diego away. His hand had been resting on the metal side rail.

                  He banged over the visitor’s chair and fell heavily against the wall. Neither nurse even bothered look at him. Jeannie again placed the electrodes on Perez’ chest. Again she pressed the button. Again his back arched—a little higher; there was more current. Again he fell back against the wooden board. Diego wanted it to stop.

                  “More epinephrine,” Jeannie said, pushing another needle into the IV port. She discarded the used syringe and picked up another. “Bretylium,” she told herself, and injected its contents.

                  Pablo Perez was unconscious during all the activity around him, Diego knew, but he was also terribly aware of the story that Joe Wood had told him earlier that day, about Evans’ awareness of the actions of the doctors and nurses during his death. Involuntarily, Diego looked up toward the ceiling, half-expecting to see some form of Perez hovering over the scene of his death. What he expected, Diego could not say, but he saw nothing but the ordinary ceiling.

                  Dr. Rashad came in and stood at the foot of the bed. “What is this man doing in here?” he demanded of the nurses. “Get rid of him.”

                  “We’re busy,” Vivian panted. Jeannie was preparing to administer another shock. Vivian’s breathless counting—“three-and-four-and-five“—was a quick rhythm, synchronized with Jeannie’s alternation of injection, defibrillation, expectation.

                  Rashad harrumphed at Diego.

                  “How long has this been going on?”

                  As the others came into the room—a Respiratory Therapy technician, a doctor she had never seen before, someone from Pharmacy, Preacher Walters and Delilah Bancroft—together—Dr. Caine, and Horst Appleby (what was he doing here?)—Jeannie referred to her watch. She hated to put a code over the public address system. It was an open invitation for the vultures to gather.

                  “Eighteen minutes. It was a witnessed arrest. Father Diego began CPR immediately. Monitor shows ventricular fibrillation. He has had two injections of epinephrine, one of Lidocaine, one of Bretylium. We’ve tried to defibrillate four times; no conversion. Do you want to tube him?”

                  “No, I think not,” Rashad said. “Continue. I will observe that you proceed correctly.”

                  “Thanks bunches,” Jeannie said. “We appreciate your help.” The young nurse turned her full attention to her work, thereafter ignoring the physician. “Cherry, you breathe him,” she said to the RT. “Dr. Caine, take over from Vivian.” Preacher might be pissed off at being ignored, but Jeannie had seen him foul up more than one code because he never updated his training in CPR. He was above that sort of thing.

                  Diego heard the dialogue as if from a great distance. He had no intention of leaving the room until the issue of Perez’ life or death was decided, one way or another. Had Rashad made a serious effort toward removing him, he would have found Diego rooted in his corner like an ancient tree, roots wrapped through the soil and clinging to the buried rocks that were old before man appeared upon the earth.

                  Once he had landed in his corner, Diego had landed also in a part of the universe unknown to him before this moment. His life was built upon a rational faith, itself grown out of an unreasoning need to believe in some kind of goodness. He had sensed a benevolence of purpose in the rites of his Church, a gift in the promise of grace contained in the Mass. He had tried all of his life to act out that goodness, failing often but always returning to the blessed attempt. He had marched in the protest days in Mississippi and Alabama and Chicago, been beaten for his stand in Georgia, reprimanded by his various bishops for going too far, and taken the reprimands as signs that he was at least marginally effective as a conscience for the hierarchy. He had counseled the hurt and broken souls who came to him seeking solace, assuring them of God’s grace and mercy. He had visited the sick and those in prison.

                  Diego de la Vega was a good priest—and he was totally unprepared for the experience he had just had—was still having.

                  It was not that he had never seen someone die before. He knew that it could be a physically messy process. God’s work had prepared him for that part. Priests cannot be overly fastidious. Sometimes it was necessary to share the blood and pain, and he had done his share.

                  What he had never done before was witness the going so clearly. His faith had been that of a rationalist, built on the bedrock of the traditions of the Church. He had never expected—never wanted, particularly—to witness a miracle.

                  The dying of Pablo Perez tore a rent between the two worlds that Diego knew. To a moral certainty, he knew that Pablo Perez died in the arms of Jesus. And those arms had grazed Diego—fleetingly, yes, but truly.

                  Diego rebelled, standing in his corner, back against the wall. He was hardly present in the room, but the others were too busy to notice his state of mind, which was just as well. It was a whirlpool. His thoughts bounded, gamboled, and frisked through the events of his life. One moment, he was prostrate before the altar of God, the weight of a bishop’s hands pressing him down against the floor of cold marble, as if they pushed his priesthood into him by force. The next moment he was on the edge of the jungle somewhere in Central America, holding a broken child, helpless against her pain. He found himself in the locker room in the Catholic high school, kneeling in front of an older boy, gagging but somehow continuing the act that had begun as the acting-out of the larger boy’s dominance.

                  He stood alone on a barren plain, wondering where everyone had gone.

                  He opened the telegram that brought the news of his parents’ simultaneous deaths in an automobile accident.

                  He knelt at the altar rail, hands trembling with fear that he would drop the Host, on the morning of his first communion.

                  He laughed in triumph with his fellow protesters on hearing the news that a city council had agreed to negotiate.

                  He dreamed the recurring dream: he was flying through the air, his hair pulled tight from the grip of Jesus, caught up in the Parousia, on his way to spend heaven in eternity. Then Jesus checked his list one last time, just before they got to heaven. He looked closely at Diego, frowned, and shook his head. His grip loosened, and Diego fell and fell and fell, knowing all the while that he was falling toward the burning lake.

                  He cut a “Z” with his rapier in the bishop’s chasuble. He was amidst a sea of sufferers, carrying a tin of ointment that would heal them all. With shaking hands, he unscrewed the top. The sufferers jostled him, anxious for the healing balm. They made him drop it, and the mob of desperate people trampled their hope under their feet. Then they trampled him, for disappointing them.

                  Jesus had given him an unperformable task, and Diego felt guilty. How can I give them life? Pablo Perez was dying and Diego could not help him. He was being removed from Diego’s provenance.

                  Diego was afraid of God. Father Zorro was scared of what he had staked all his hope on, what he believed in. He knew he was right to be afraid, because everything he believed was true.

                  Jesus was waiting.

                  Jesus had waited for Pablo Perez.

                  Jesus was waiting for Diego de la Vega. With all his saints.

                  “Father Diego! Diego!” Someone was calling him. “Are you all right?”

                  He tried to shake off his confusion. “Yes, I—I think so.” Jeannie was looking across Perez’ bed at him with concern, yet another hypodermic in her hand. “You seemed—I don’t know—very far away.”

                  “How is Mr. Perez?” As soon as he said it, he could hear the sounds of the code continuing, but in a slower rhythm. If Jeannie was talking to him, it meant that she must have given up.

                  “Open the window a little,” she said. “They’re waiting.”

                  “I don’t—”

                  “Open it!”

                  Diego turned. The window was right behind him. He strained upward, until there was barely an inch-wide gap between the window and the sill. “That’s the best I can do.”

                  “It’s enough,” Jeannie said.

                  “Clear!” one of the doctors called. Jeannie stepped back from the bed. Preacher Walters held the defibrillator’s paddles in his hands. He bent over Perez’ inert body. The machine snapped. Walters had forgotten the conduction gel, and the paddles burned Perez’ chest, but the patient was long past feeling the indignity.

                  Everyone’s eyes turned to the monitor.

                  “That’s it, then,” Dr. Rashad said, and the vultures scattered, leaving Diego, Jeannie, and Vivian to clean up the mess.

                 

Chapter 9

                 

                  Jeannie had taken Father Diego to the doctor’s lounge and left him there, staring at the crucifix on the wall above the television set. Then she had cleaned up Mr. Perez’ body and removed the garbage left over from his code, so that his wife could see the corpse. Finally, she had wheeled the body, now clean and decently covered, down to the morgue in the basement. As she came up in the elevator, she met two members of the evening shift coming to work.

                  “How’s it been going today?”

                  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Jeannie said. “I just want to go home.”

                  “That bad?”

                  “Worse.”

                  The elevator doors grated open. The two late-shift nurses had their quarters ready for Gus and passed through the swinging doors into the unit. The old man signaled to Jeannie to hold back.

                  “What is it, Gus? I’m too tired for fun and games.”

                  Gus glanced up and down the hallway, assuring himself that it was empty.

                  “Them administrators,” he said, “are still in there.”

                  “Shit,” said Jeannie. “What now?”

                  “They haven’t figured out what happened to them drugs. They’re all fired up about it,” he said. “Must need something to do.”

                  “They can have my job,” Jeannie said. “Thanks for the warning—I think.” She pushed through the doors herself and went into the conference room for report. The evening shift was waiting to start its work, but first the members needed to know the status of each patient.

                  Jeannie poured herself a cup of coffee, looking forward to the chance to sit down for fifteen minutes before escaping the bedlam of her job. Someone (God knew who) had found time to start a fresh pot, and for once there was good coffee and a chance to enjoy it. Jeannie ignored the presence of Horst Appleby and Delilah Bancroft. It was enough that her shift was finally drawing to a close.

                  Normally, each nurse reported on her own patients, but since Jeannie had borne the burden of the code, Vivian had checked the status of each patient still alive on the unit and was presenting report. Prissy-Jo stood by the door and would take care of any of the patient’s needs that came up during report.

                  Jeannie enjoyed the end-of-shift report, especially on the bad days. There was a ritualistic quality to formally turning the responsibility over to another group of people. The daily recital of names, numbers and observations made the terrors of the day seem rational, controllable. When report was over, she could leave it all behind, secure in knowing that others would handle what she was too exhausted to bear any longer.

                  Jeannie only barely listened as Vivian explained the major happenings of the day. Fatigue poisons were flooding her body as she allowed herself to run down. At last, responsibility was slipping from her shoulders, even though the respite was only for a dozen or so hours. It was something. The weight seemed to flow off her body, slither across the floor, and crawl snakelike up the legs of the evening nurses, to drape heavily around their shoulders. She fancied that she could see them accept the load, see their shoulders droop under it, the scores of tiny physical adjustments the human body made to bearing a burden. She smiled while Vivian talked of heart rates and medications and the bizarre actions of family members and their patients. Until tomorrow, Jeannie was free.

                  “That’s almost it,” Vivian said. “Anybody have anything to add—any questions?” The evening nurses shook their heads. “All right, then. There’s one thing I haven’t talked about. Mrs. Bancroft and Mr. Appleby have something they want to discuss and then report is over.”

                  Vivian leaned back in her chair, her face a mask. Jeannie came out of her reverie, having pushed the administrative presence from her mind in the comfort of the rite.

                  Horst and Delilah locked eyes for a moment. He nodded, and she stood up and moved to a position in front of the blackboard. Jeannie saw her shift her attitude, take on the role of Instructor.

                  “We had a theft on the unit today,” Delilah said. In her voice were the accents of a trust betrayed, of a parent tormented by the unthinking cruelty of her trusted daughters’ misbehavior.

                  Delilah suddenly looked like the wife of the president. Jeannie blinked her eyes; they were weary with the day’s effort, but the image would not go away.

                  “A drug theft,” Delilah complained.

                  “Mercy me!” whispered one of the evening nurses. The others tried not to giggle, Jeannie among them.

                  “This is serious,” Delilah insisted, “and I expect you to pay proper attention, girls! You know what it means. Someone who has been on this unit today is stealing drugs—narcotics—morphine!—for their own personal use!”

                  “And won’t share!”

                  The whispered voice came from behind Jeannie. She was too tired to turn and look.

                  “That’s enough of that,” Delilah said. Appleby’s eyes scanned the group of nurses draped around the conference room, each nurse in a blue scrub suit, for the culprit. Each nurse, Jeannie included, glared back at him. His gaze met each other theirs in turn, suspicious and full of accusation.

                  Delilah waited until Appleby’s hate had done its softening-up. She wanted her charges, Jeannie understood, to feel upset and anxious.

                  “As you know, theft from hospital supplies is reason for dismissal. I’m not accusing anyone, but it happened during day-shift today, so naturally I’m asking each of the nurses who were here today to write a narrative of their actions from the time they arrived this morning until 11:45, when the theft was discovered by Miss Christopher. You will write this narrative today, before leaving the hospital. Any questions?”

                  Jeannie didn’t care any more. She raised her hand.

                  “Yes, Miss Christopher?”

                  “Just the nurses?”

                  “All the nursing staff—including RN’s, LVN’s and ward clerks.”

                  “What about the patients, the relatives, the visitors, pharmacy, respiratory therapists—”

                  “All in good time, Miss Christopher.

                  “—and the doctors?” Jeannie asked. “They were here, too.”

                  Delilah opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Appleby straightened; he had been leaning against the blackboard. His back had collected a mirror image of the chalked notes written there.

                  “That’s not your problem,” he said. “You worry about what you have to do; let us worry about the doctors.”

                  Jeannie looked around for support. Each of the other nurses—Vivian included—was silent, waiting to see how the confrontation would turn out.

                  “Are you accusing anyone here of stealing the drugs?” she asked.

                  “No one’s said anything like that,” Delilah claimed. “We’re just trying to find out what happened. We need your help.”

                  “If there aren’t any other questions,” Appleby said, “then let’s get to work. Each of the day-shift nurses will fill out an incident report by herself, without talking to anyone else who was present. When you’re finished, give the reports to Mrs. Bancroft. Miss Christopher, since you discovered the theft, I’d like you to come down to my office once you’ve finished writing. The rest of you are free to leave once you’ve done your report.”

                  He turned away to exit the conference room. Delilah followed. Immediately, all the day-shift nurses began to speak.

                  Horst wheeled, bumping into Delilah in the doorway. He reached out to steady her. As she fell, she twisted, trying to grab the door frame for support, and his hand, aimed at her waist, instead cupped her ample breast. The nurses laughed, and Delilah fled, blushing red. Appleby called, “Excuse me!” and ran after her. In a moment he returned.

                  “I said no talking!” he shouted at them. He, too, fled the conference room.

                  His anger made them laugh again, but it gradually tailed off into worried silence. The evening nurses commiserated with their daytime partners and left the conference room to perform their duties. Vivian, Wanda Sue, Prissy-Jo, and Jeannie were left alone.

                  “Might as well get started,” Wanda Sue said.

                  “Yeah, I guess so,” Vivian answered.

                  “What are we supposed to write?” Prissy-Jo asked.

                  “Everything you did from the time you got here this morning until about noon.”

                  “That’ll take hours,” Prissy-Jo complained. “I don’t remember everything.”

                  “My baby-sitter will be pissed off,” Wanda Sue said. “Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”

                  “I’ll make sure it goes on your time cards,” Vivian answered. “It’s the best I can do.”

                  “Well, shoot!” Wanda Sue said. “It ain’t fair! I mean, I could see it if everyone had to do it, it would make sense. But just us don’t.”

                 

* * * 

                 

                  Report in hand, Jeannie knocked on Horst Appleby’s door. It was an hour and a half since she was scheduled to be home. Her uniform stank of sweat and blood.

                  “Come in.”

                  She pushed the door open and stepped into the office. Inside, the carpet was thicker, cushioning her tired feet like a blanket of soft grass. She wanted to kick off her shoes and wiggle her toes in its promised comfort.

                  “Sit down, Miss Christopher,” Appleby said from behind his massive mahogany desk. He did not rise. Nor did Delilah, seated at his right in a chrome-and-cushion monstrosity. Only Sister Mary Catherine Malone, the titular head of the hospital and the Superior of the order of the sisterhood of Mary Magdalene, rose and extended a hand to her.

                  “Good afternoon, Jeannie,” Sister Mary Catherine said. “I’m sorry we had to drag you in here today. We’ll make this as short as possible.”

                  “Hi, sister,” Jeannie answered. She liked Mary Catherine, and grinned at her in spite of the circumstances.

                  “Here, take my chair,” Sister Mary Catherine said, ushering Jeannie to a place at the left of Horst’s desk. “I’ll just sit over here.” The nun half-sat, half-leaned on a shelf of Horst’s bookcase, ignoring her dignity. Jeannie felt the current of resentment from the other two; they had planned to keep her standing throughout the interview. There were only three chairs in the room. But Mary Catherine had foxed them.

                  “Your report,” Delilah said.

                  Jeannie put it on the desk.

                  “Who do you think took the drugs?” Horst Appleby asked.

                  “I don’t know.”

                  “When do you think they were taken?”

                  “This morning, during the code,” Jeannie said. “What are the terms of this interview?”

                  “This is informal, hon,” Delilah said. “We’re just gathering some information. We want to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. You can agree with that, can’t you?”

                  Sister Mary Catherine coughed softly. “I’m afraid, if those are the terms, that I’ll have to ask you to turn off your tape recorder, then.”

                  Delilah looked suddenly very busy reading Jeannie’s report. Horst Appleby stabbed the nun with his eyes.

                  “You shouldn’t look at a nun like that, Mr. Appleby,” Mary Catherine said. “Wrath is one of the seven sins, you know—more serious even than theft, in the eyes of God. Why don’t you bring out your machine so that Ms. Christopher can see that you’ve turned it off?”

                  Jeannie looked at Mary Catherine with new respect. She had known that the nun was, like many of the sisters, a former prostitute, wise with a wisdom not born of the cloister. But it was easy to forget that the Sisters of Forgiveness of Saint Mary Magdalene, wearing the traditional white wimple and black gowns given up by so many nuns, found their inspiration in the life of the Jewish whore who had stood at the foot of the cross. Of course, modern biblical scholars had debunked the myth of Magdalene the prostitute. It was a story introduced by some pope of the Dark Ages, probably because Mary was the first one to notice that Jesus wasn’t dead. Just another trouble-making woman.

                  Every time Mary Catherine did something un-nun-like, she surprised people, including Jeannie. Everyone knew that Mary Catherine prayed a lot. She prayed for the souls of her departed mother and father, both of whom had abused her in her childhood; for the health of her older sister, confined in a nursing home in Chicago; for the peace of the world; for the conversion of the heathen and the fallen; for sensible divine guidance for the Pope; for the ending of the shameful schism in God’s church; for the protection of her unsaved sisters from the violence and disease that ravaged her former profession—but most especially Sister Mary Catherine prayed to her God for the continued existence of the hospital which she, along with the few other Sisters of Forgiveness of Saint Mary Magdalene, tried to run.

                  The cross at which Sister Mary Catherine knelt was the cabal of doctors and professional administrators who continually tried to remove bits and pieces of the hospital from the control of the nursing sisters. There were so few, these days. When the hospital was established, eighty years before, almost all the nurses had been sisters. Now, only a half-dozen nuns were allotted to her from the order. She could see the day coming when Saint Maggie’s would be Catholic in name only, when the administrators and doctors would take over completely. She expected them to change not only the way it was run, which they were trying to do anyway, but also even the name. It would probably become Saint Luke’s, to honor the dear and glorious physicians. If the largest chunk of funding did not come from the Sisterhood, she knew, they would find herself and the other nursing sisters useless.

                  Sister Mary Catherine Malone had been in orders so long that on some days she could not remember her baptismal name. Now sixty-seven, she had spent her youth as a prostitute, working, in her case, the Great Lakes Naval Training Center near Chicago. Other members had served their “training” for the Sisterhood on the strip in Hollywood or in New York’s Times Square or in the red light districts of smaller towns across America.

                  Their order was quite ascetic, a relief after accommodating the endless stream of bodies that had flooded their youths. Their penance was their service to the inhabitants of bodies now broken with trauma or wasted with illness. Most of the sisters knew a scam when they saw one, but they also understood better than most the need to be forgiven.

                  Still, with all the compromises made in the last few decades in the name of efficiency and cost-effectiveness; with authority given up to physicians who needed this and that machine, always more expensive than the last, to do their work properly; with the constant need to raise more and more money to support that machinery and the unholy host of managers, bureaucrats, and administrators that it took to run a modern hospital, Sister Mary Catherine Malone felt more and more that she was back at whoring for a living. It felt good to strike back at one of the pimps. She grinned at Jeannie, trying to say, “We’re in this together.”

                  The grin did not pass unnoticed by Horst Appleby and Delilah Bancroft.

                  “This is a serious matter, Sister. If you’re not feeling well—”

                  “I’m just fine. Get on with it.”

                  Horst and Delilah exchanged a glance meant to pass unnoticed.

                  “Let me say right at the outset, Jeannie,” Delilah said, “that no one wants to involve the police in this matter. In fact—”

                  “Then let’s not,” Sister Mary Catherine said. “Period.“

                  “As Mrs. Bancroft said,” Horst interjected, “we don’t want to involve the police, and we won’t, as long as we feel we’re making adequate progress.”

                  Jeannie found it hard to believe in what was going on in the same way some people found it hard to believe in the devil.

                  “We realize, dear,” Delilah was saying, “how stressful the ICU environment can be. I know you must think that we don’t know all the things that happen there, but we know more than you think, and we’re sympathetic—we truly are. There is a lot of pressure on each of you who work up there. I know that sometimes it must seem as if we don’t care, but we do, honestly!” Delilah shifted her bulk in the chair. At fifty-seven, she was plump with the self-satisfaction of a woman comfortable in her matronly role.

                  Horst leaned forward on his desk and took up the next phase. “You left the narcotics cabinet unlocked for a time, is that correct?”

                  “Yes, sir.”

                  “How long?”

                  “Fifteen minutes, more or less.”

                  “Did anyone go into the medication room?“

                  “I didn’t see anyone,” Jeannie said. “There was a code—“

                  “We know all about the code. Just answer my questions.”

                  Horst referred to his notes. “Who was on the unit during that time?”

                  “Everyone involved with the code. The patients. A visitor. A couple of doctors.”

                  “Was there any other time between then and when you discovered the missing drugs that the locker was opened?”

                  “When we got word that the Curandera was coming up, I went in there to get some medicines.”

                  “But you didn’t notice anything amiss then?“

                  “No.”

                  “Why not?”

                  Jeannie was exhausted from the day’s work and the effort of trying to remember every single thing she had done throughout the day. “I don’t know why not, damn it! I was thinking about the patient and what the doctor might need to treat her. I wasn’t looking for anything wrong.”

                  “So,” Horst said, “you were in the medication room twice during the morning, and—”

                  “Three times,” Jeannie said. “I went back to lock it up after the code was over.”

                  “And you didn’t see anything wrong then, either?”

                  “That’s right.”

                  “Why not?”

                  “Because I didn’t expect to be interrogated about everything I did today. If I had known this was going to happen, I would have taken notes.”

                  Her hair had gone stringy with nervousness and sweat. A strand dangled in her eyes, and she angrily batted it away.

                  “What were you doing all day?” she demanded.

                  “What do you mean?”

                  “At seven-fifteen this morning, precisely, where were you and what were you doing?”

                  “I don’t remember,” he answered, momentarily confused by the intensity with which Jeannie had turned on him. Then he recovered. “But I was not responsible for the theft of narcotics from the hospital.”

                  “Neither was I!”

                  Sister Mary Catherine asked quietly, “Is that an accusation? Because if it is, I will advise Ms. Christopher to leave this room immediately.” Sister Mary Catherine stood up, proudly erect. She looked at Jeannie, who started to rise, confused, from her seat.

                  Horst leaned back in his chair.

                  “I think an apology is in order,” Mary Catherine suggested firmly.

                  “I’m sorry,” Jeannie began, “I didn’t mean—”

                  “Not you, dear,” Mary Catherine said. Jeannie sat. The nun pointed a finger at Horst. “Him.”

                  That finger hung in the air, its tip never wavering. It was over Jeannie’s head, which described how she felt about the entire proceeding, There was something more going on in the room than she knew about. The finger described a small arc in the air, then stilled, aimed at a point between Horst Appleby’s eyes.

                  “I did not intend to accuse Miss Christopher,” Horst said. His voice was wooden, forced, and tight. “I apologize.”

                  “Good!” Sister Mary Catherine said. “Continue, then.” She smiled to herself.

                  “Tell us about your personal life, Jeannie,” Delilah said, glancing at Horst Appleby. He nodded slightly, satisfied with the change in direction that the questioning was taking. “You live alone, is that correct?”

                  “What’s this got to do with—?”

                  “Just answer the question,” Horst said.

                  Jeannie looked up and behind to Mary Catherine, but the nun was looking at Horst Appleby with a new intensity in her eyes.

                  “You live alone?” Delilah repeated.

                  “Yes.”

                  “Any boyfriends?”

                  “I don’t see—”

                  “Any boyfriends?”

                  “No.”

                  “Why not?” Horst asked. “You’re an attractive young woman. Someone must ask you out.”

                  “I don’t have any boyfriends right now.” Jeannie gave them as little as possible, but they were relentless.

                  “‘Right now,’” Horst mused. “Am I to take it then, that you have had boyfriends?”

                  “Yes.”

                  “But you don’t have any right now.”

                  “No.”

                  “Which is it?”

                  “I don’t have a boyfriend right now.”

                  “A girlfriend, perhaps?” Horst asked.

                  “No.”

                  “No one?” he said. “No one to share your day with, to tell the little triumphs and frustrations to?”

                  “No.”

                  “You must be lonely, then,” Horst said. “Are you lonely? What do you do when you leave here?”

                  “Sleep, mostly,” Jeannie said. “When I get to leave.”

                  “Is it difficult to sleep after everything you see here?”

                  “Sometimes.”

                  “Do you ever have nightmares?”

                  “Yes.” Jeannie hated the dreams that came, dreams of helplessness, of not knowing how to save her patients, of standing helplessly ignorant of the simple things that could preserve their lives, while they roiled through agony into death.

                  “We could understand, you know, if you needed some help to try to forget some of the things you see here,” Horst said. “You know that, don’t you?”

                  “I didn’t take your damned drugs!” Jeannie shouted. “Why are you trying to make it look like I—”

                  “Someone took them, dear,” Delilah said. “Someone took them.” In the silence that followed, Horst and Delilah stared at Jeannie in apparent expectation of a confession. It all had the feel of choreography. The unholy duo had planned the interrogation, planned to break her down by innuendo and threat. Inside Jeannie, bone-weary, frustrated, and angry, inhibition collapsed with a snap.

                  Clamping her jaw against the urge to break into tears, Jeannie, already standing, took off her lab jacket and handed it to Sister Mary Catherine. She unsnapped the top of her blue scrub suit, removed it, and handed it to Sister Mary Catherine. She kicked off her shoes, still silent, and stood on first one foot, then the other, to remove her socks. She tucked them neatly into her shoes.

                  Delilah half-rose to interrupt Jeannie’s action. “Jeannie, dear, you don’t have to—”

                  “Shut up,” Jeannie commanded her. “Sit down.” Delilah obeyed, shocked into confusion.

                  Jeannie stepped out of the pants of the scrub suit and handed it to Mary Catherine, who was now grinning openly. Jeannie was wearing nothing but bra and panties. She jumped up onto Horst’s desk, her feet scattering papers onto the floor.

                  “See any needle marks?” she demanded. “Look at my arms.” She stuck her bare arms in front of his face, which had gone white with shock. “Check my legs, too.” She held each leg up, turning it so that all of it was exposed to his gaze. “Look between my toes, too. Sometimes people shoot up there, too.” She put each foot before his eyes, then danced off the desk to stand in front of Delilah.

                  “You want a look, too?” Jeannie demanded. “I’ve heard about you. Want to see?”

                  Delilah moaned a denial. Jeannie moved to the center of the room.

                  “Satisfied?” Jeannie asked, “Or do you want to see more?” Her hands were on the clasp of her brassiere. Mary Catherine was leaning against the bookshelf, biting her lip to hold back laughter and not succeeding. “I want to do everything I can to cooperate with your investigation.”

                  “Cover yourself, please!” Delilah pleaded.

                  “Do you see any tracks?” Jeannie insisted.

                  “No!” from Delilah.

                  “How about you, you useless little Nazi?” Jeannie said to Horst.

                  “Please!” Delilah repeated.

                  “I want an answer!” Jeannie said.

                  “Answer her,” Delilah said to Horst, “before she does anything else!”

                  “No,” he admitted, “no needle tracks.”

                  “Good,” Jeannie said. “May I have my pants, please?” She extended her hand, regal although clothed only in her underwear and her dignity. Sister Mary Catherine handed her the scrub suit trousers. Jeannie stepped into them.

                  “My top.” She again held out her hand. Mary Catherine was enjoying herself. She held the top so that Jeannie could slip her arms into it, then stepped behind her and fastened the snaps that ran up the back.

                  “Your jacket, ma’am,” Mary Catherine said, holding it for Jeannie to put on.

                  “Thank you, Sister,” Jeannie answered. “Just hand me my shoes and socks, if you would.”

                  Mary Catherine obeyed.

                  Jeannie marched to the door, opened it, stopped and turned to face the pair still sitting at the desk.

                  “If I can be of any further assistance in this matter….” she said. Then she extended her middle finger and flipped them off. She slammed the door behind her and stalked through the secretary’s office, carrying her shoes and socks in her hands. She ducked into a ladies’ room in the hall and hurried into the stall. She sat on the toilet while she carefully put her socks and shoes back on. When the simple task was finished, she shook with released anger and frustration.

                  The tears came now, in great racking sobs that she tried, but failed to choke back. She did not notice when Mary Catherine came into the bathroom, but found herself burying her face into the nun’s shoulder, crying with release and anger.

                  Sister Mary Catherine gentled her with maternal care and patience, until the flow of tears became manageable.

                  “You were wonderful, Jeannie,” Mary Catherine told her. “It’s about time someone stood up to those two. And the beauty of it is that they can’t do anything to you. They would have to admit to everything that happened in there, and they can’t do that.”

                  “I thought they would fire me,” Jeannie said. “I figured I didn’t have anything to lose.”

                  “Just go home,” Mary Catherine said. “There won’t be any firing. I still have some influence around here. Fix your face and get out of here. Go home, have a drink—maybe two or three—and come back tomorrow as if nothing happened. There won’t be any flack from this. I promise. Go home and rest.”

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.