Father Don Carleson briefly considered visiting Father Koesler. Further thought convinced him that would not help.
Carleson was deeply disturbed, nervous, anxious, and felt great stress. Any conversation with Koesler would necessarily concern Diego’s death. Definitely counterproductive.
No, he would do what he’d told the police he was going to do: visit the sick at Receiving Hospital.
He parked in the underground garage and took the elevator to ground level but headed for Emergency rather than the general reception area.
Receiving’s Emergency Department was an exemplar of such facilities. In addition to the usual everyday outpatients, there were the medically uninsured who wandered in instead of consulting a private physician they couldn’t afford. Ambulances disgorged the injured of the inner city. The ER staff never knew from one day to the next what fate was about to hurl at them.
In short, the perfect place to distract one from personal preoccupations.
As Carleson entered the waiting and intake area, he heard a fast approaching commotion behind him. He hugged the wall as three occupied gurneys raced past, propelled by EMS personnel. From their faces, Carleson knew this was no ordinary emergency.
The EMS teams peeled off into various trauma rooms. Organized turmoil became routine in each compartment.
Carleson, careful to stay out of the way, listened just outside the doorway of the first room. With the arrival of the gurneys, an overpowering stench had pervaded the entire area. Carleson could not identify the odor. But if the entry doors had not been left open, everyone in the area could well have passed out.
Work in this first unit was cursory. It was obvious this victim was dead on arrival. The staff knew they were just going through the motions. But they went through the motions anyway.
One of the EMS drivers was standing next to Carleson. “Ain’t this somethin’, Father?”
Carleson’s nose wrinkled. “What on earth is that?”
“Oh …” Seemingly for the first time, the driver realized his clothing was tainted. “This stuff? It’s sewer slime.” He grimaced. “I’m gonna take a shower.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how in hell-oh, ‘scuse me, Father-I don’t know how we’re gonna get it out of our trucks.”
“Those people were in a sewer?”
He nodded. “They were supposed to clean it. The first guy barely got down the ladder before the fumes got to him and he keeled over. That sh-uh, stuff was about a foot-and-a-half thick. The second guy went down to rescue him. He keeled over. That’s the guy in here” — he gestured-” who was DOA. Then the third guy went down. Gutsy. He was just barely able to get the first guy up and out before he da-darn near passed out.”
He moved on to the next trauma unit. Carleson followed.
Things seemed less chaotic here. “This-if I remember right-this is the third guy,” the driver said. “The only one who got out safely.” He addressed one of the nurses. “How’s he doing?”
“Pretty good. He’ll make it. He’ll probably be ready to be released after they oxygenate him.”
Carleson could see her relief. “He’s the father of the kid” — she indicated the third trauma room-” in there.”
Carleson and the driver moved on to the last sphere of this three-ring circus. An ant colony was filled with white-and green-clad people squeezing by each other and calling out to one another as they maneuvered.
One of the nurses who had been with the dead man was now taking in the activity. She turned to the two men standing beside her. “It’ll be a miracle if this guy makes it.” She smiled at Carleson. “That would be right up your alley, wouldn’t it, Father?”
The priest smiled and shook his head. Miracles had never been his strong suit, and never less so than lately.
As Carleson proceeded through Emergency, he marveled at how easy it was. Receiving Hospital prided itself on its security. They functioned on the theory that they expected trouble-which expectation was regularly fulfilled.
All well and good when it came to extroverted troublemakers who were loud and/or violent. At the first sign of that sort of trouble, the hospital security force as well as Detroit police assigned to the facility would smother the fracas like foam on a fire.
But what of the casual intruder?
A hospital this size had a staff so large it was virtually impossible to keep track of everyone. Anybody could stuff a stethoscope in a pocket or drape it around his or her neck, and most people-visitors and staff alike-would simply assume he or she was merely a doctor visiting patients.
Or, of more immediate moment, what of himself? What gave him license to walk wherever he wished? Only the sliver of white at the collar of his black suit.
In an institution that boasted of its tight security, anyone in clerical garb could nevertheless travel unchallenged through the general areas of the hospital, such as patients’ rooms.
Of course Carleson had the advantage of being known by many in the hospital, particularly the Emergency staff. As part of his missionary training, he had become a paramedic. This had prepared him to administer, in effect, first aid.
However, it did not suit his personality to observe restrictions when the needs of people cried out for assistance. More often than not in areas he had served, there was no doctor for uncounted miles. So Carleson elected to do whatever he could to respond to the sick.
Even when procedures clearly exceeded his training-surgery and the like-he would pray and then act. In every such instance, if he had not acted, the individual would have died anyway. The worst that could happen, then, would be death on a makeshift operating table instead of death in a hut or in a jungle. More often than not, the patient survived. That Carleson freely attributed more to prayer than to his meager skill.
He never spoke of his medical operations in the bush. It was among those thorny topics better left unmentioned.
Yet, in some extrasensory perceptional way, the medical staff of the average hospital somehow sensed the link that joined Father Carleson to them.
So it was with Receiving Hospital in Detroit. Other religious personnel might be able to enter restricted areas, but they very definitely would be limited in where they could go and what they could do. Nothing of an offensive nature. Just a firm easing of the person out of sensitive areas.
But based on that implicit camaraderie, Carleson virtually had the run of the place.
Today the hospital was doing for Carleson what he had hoped-distracting him from his personal concerns and letting him lose himself in the lives and pains of others.
All Emergency personnel who were not otherwise engaged were either inside or at the door of Trauma Room Three, where a senior resident, numerous interns, nurses, and technicians were doing everything possible to save a young man who had been overcome by toxic fumes.
Carleson continued on his unplanned tour through Emergency toward the hospital proper. He smiled as he passed a gurney on which sat a rather good-looking man engaged in a seemingly reasonable discussion concerning treatment for pain. The doctor was insisting on a prescription for Motrin. The patient was arguing, with decreasing composure, in favor of codeine.
Carleson well knew the powerful difference between the two analgesics. He also knew the young man was going to need a fix of something soon or he would slip into withdrawal symptoms.
At this point there was still an element of humor in the exchange. Before long, the black comedy would disintegrate in the face of the patient’s desperate craving for drug release.
There was nothing Carleson could do about it. No prayer or blessing, no offer of understanding and friendship could supersede the patient’s yearning for oblivion.
The young doctor was being quite resolute … although in actuality, there was little else he could do. Inevitably, what was now a fairly amicable difference of opinion would segue into a demeaning-even violent-pleading, demanding in the face of intractable refusal.
Carleson moved on.
An elderly man whose face testified to his having weathered many an intemperate northern season sat gingerly on a gurney. Loudly he gave witness that these doctors and nurses were badly underpaid. For this unsolicited testimonial he received affectionate support from the staff. At Carleson’s approach, the man generously included the priest among those insufficiently compensated. Carleson thought the man didn’t know whereof he spoke. Nonetheless, the priest gave him a bright smile and a thumbs-up.
The attendant, about to wheel the man to surgery, informed Carleson that the patient had tucked a pint of liquor in his back pocket, then absentmindedly plumped himself down on a cement curb, thus emptying the precious liquid directly into the sewer to the delight of thirsty rats. And, of course, lacerating his rump.
He certainly didn’t seem to feel any pain. Undoubtedly he had consumed some of the contents before the container smashed.
Last in the parade of trauma scenes was a gurney holding a naked man covered only with a hospital-issue sheet. Standing at the patient’s head, an intern attempted to determine what was wrong. Had he been drinking?
“A beer … maybe two.”
“C’mon … two?”
“Two! Maybe three. No more’n three.”
The intern began inserting a nasal-gastric tube through the patient’s nostril. The patient began to gag.
“Swallow, man, swallow,” the intern urged.
Suddenly, the patient began throwing up. Quickly, the intern turned the patient’s head to one side so he wouldn’t drown in his own vomit.
To Carleson, it was a repulsive sound and a nauseating odor. A nurse standing nearby obviously was similarly affected. “I’ve seen it a million times,” she said, “but it still makes me gag.”
Carleson was grateful.
A heavy, pungent odor permeated the room. “Three beers, eh? Smells more like whiskey to me,” the intern said.
At the foot of the gurney, a nurse shook her head with certainty. “Jamaica rum!”
Before leaving Emergency, Carleson glanced back. Trauma Room Three remained the center of activity. The beehive continued to swirl and an attentive audience was absorbed in the goings-on.
That’s what it was all about. The life of one person. The most sophisticated and expensive machinery available-and the most knowledgeable and dedicated personnel-bent to the purpose of saving a life.
Carleson thought again of his work in regions that were considered advanced if there was clean water available. If there was electricity, one felt that one had entered the twentieth century.
The TV series “M*A*S*H” referred to near-frontline doctors’ work as “meatball surgery.” Compared with what went on here in Receiving, the Korean front was rudimentary. But measured against Carleson’s capabilities in the jungle, “M*A*S*H” was the Mayo Clinic of the Far East
Whatever, his journey through Emergency accomplished the hoped for. His own concerns and problems were forgotten for the moment.
He left ER and proceeded to the pastoral care department to check on the patients he hoped to visit.
There weren’t many. Most on his list were people who, after previous casual visitation, had asked him to return. Actually, only one elderly man was a bona fide parishioner of Ste. Anne’s.
Checking further, he found that quite a few on his list had been released. One had died. That left only five, including the parishioner, to call on.
As luck would have it-as his luck frequently had it-four were not in their rooms. CAT scan, X rays; two in physiotherapy.
But good old dependable Herbert Demers was in.
Herbert seldom went anywhere. Doctors periodically tried to have him transferred out, claiming that the treatment he was getting in the hospital could just as well be administered in a nursing home. And-this was an extended busy period-they needed his bed.
But, inevitably, just as arrangements were complete, Herbert would lapse again into a critical condition, requiring extensive, sometimes intensive, care.
Herbert’s condition was further complicated by an order to resuscitate.
That had come about shortly after he was admitted. Herbert’s family consisted of a grandson and the grandson’s wife. A doctor didn’t want to take the time and trouble to explain to them the various options available. So he used the catchall, “Do you want us to do everything we can for your grandfather?”
The couple would have been perfectly disposed to waive extraordinary measures and let Grandpa expire in peace. If Grandfather had been able to express himself, he very definitely would have been of the same mind.
But Herbert couldn’t express himself. And the family could not bring themselves to come right out and say, “No, we don’t want you to do everything you can for him.”
The doctor won that one. He was spared having to take the time to explain that, under certain circumstances, he could direct that if Herbert were actually dying, the staff could be ordered not to attempt resuscitation. Herbert could mercifully be allowed to do what his body demanded-die.
So Herbert lingered on. The vital signs were there, Just barely. He did not need oxygen tubes; intravenous tubes connected his frail body to medication and nourishment.
No one knew what, if anything, was on his mind.
To Carleson, Herbert was the ultimate source of motivation. No matter what problems or troubles one experienced, there was always Herbert Domers. Nothing haunted Carleson as much as the thought of having his soul imprisoned in his body rather than animating it
Herbert occupied a semiprivate room. The bed next to the window was empty. Carleson hesitated at the door. “What happened to Mr. Girondello?” he asked a passing nurse.
“Oh …” She stopped to recollect. “… he expired during the night.” She continued on her course.
Carleson mulled that over as he stood in the doorway.
Did Herbert know his roommate was gone? Did he understand? Could he understand? Had he heard Mr. Girondello breathe his last? Had Herbert wished it had been himself?
Who knew?
“So then, Herbert, how goes it today?” Carleson expected no reply. His goal today, as always, was to try to provide a little distraction for his parishioner. Without knowing whether the man could even understand what was said, the priest did know that Herbert could hear and see. Those were simple functions to test.
Carleson laid his overcoat and hat on the chair near the window and drew one of the more comfortable chairs close to Herbert’s bed. “I bring you greetings from the Ambassador Bridge,” Carleson said. “You remember the Bridge … from a little distance, especially at night when it’s all lit up, it looks like a rainbow. And if it were a rainbow, I guess your house would be the pot of gold … ‘cause that’s where it is: right at the foot of the bridge.
“Your house looks fine, Herbert. Just the way you left it.”
Herbert’s home indeed was in good repair for a structure that went back nearly a century. He had taken exquisite care of it for as long as he could-which was up to only a few years ago. And though no one had taken over Herbert’s careful maintenance, his work endured even now. The priests of Ste. Anne’s were hopeful some young couple would buy the roomy home and raise their family there. Hope for a renewed neighborhood was part and parcel of the Ste. Anne’s community whose pastor fervently declared that he did not come to Ste. Anne’s to be curator of a museum but pastor of a parish.
“There’ve been some people-some young people-looking at your house, Herbert. Be nice if they moved in, wouldn’t it? Your father raised his family there and so did you. Now, please God, it should be somebody else’s turn.”
Carleson considered it futile to pretend with Herbert that he would ever return to his old home. If the old man was aware of anything, it was that he was going nowhere except heaven.
“Herb, did you hear the one about the priest who visited a parishioner in a hospital just about like this? The patient had oxygen tubes in his nostrils and seemed to be asleep. The priest leaned over the bed to get a better look at the man.
“All of a sudden, the guy’s eyes popped open. He gasped a few times. And the priest thought, ‘Oh, my God, the poor guy is breathing his last’ The patient made a motion as if he wanted writing materials. A last message to his loved ones, thought the priest, as he slipped a pad and pen into the poor soul’s hands.
“And while the guy scribbled on the pad and wheezed and gasped, the priest anointed him. Just as he finished absolving him, the guy gave one last gasp and died.
“‘What a blessing and grace it was-really providential-that I could be with the poor man just as he breathed his last,’ the priest thought. ‘I’ll just have to get this final message to his family.’
“So the priest slips the pad out of the guy’s hand and looks at what’s written there. It reads, ‘You’re standing on my air hose!’”
Carleson looked at Herbert. Nothing. That was what the priest had expected. But, against all expectations, he had hoped for some sign. A twitching at the mouth. Something in the eyes. An alertness.
Nothing.
Was he talking to a vegetable? Was there any use to this? He might as well be talking to himself.
He’d felt this way on previous visits.
“You know that bishop I’ve told you about, Herbert. You remember him, don’t you?”
Nothing.
“Ramon Diego’s the name. He certainly wasn’t what I bargained for when I signed up for Detroit. I know I’ve told you all about this before, Herbert, but something big has happened, and you’re about the only person I can confide in.
“At first, Herbert, I figured it wouldn’t be too bad. Somehow, as it came out of the mouth of Cardinal Boyle, it sounded as if the diocese was giving me a break.” He smiled. “It must be that soft, Irish brogue he can’t quite get out of his speech.
“Anyway, I should have known better, but as Boyle explained it, it made some kind of crazy sense. I had all the experience I’d ever need for working with a Hispanic group. But I was kind of light on ministry in a big American urban setting.
“That’s where Ramon Diego was supposed to come in. His Texan background was supposed to fill in the gaps for me.
“And I bought it! Can you imagine!” He shook his head. “I thought, well, maybe I’ve spent just about all my time in the sticks, but it can’t be that hard to get used to a big city and racial instead of just economic prejudice and bigotry.
“Maybe it was because Boyle mentioned this experience-gathering would be only for a limited period of time.” He shook his head again. “ When he didn’t put a cap on it-a few weeks, a month or so-I should have tumbled … and renegotiated.
“But … I didn’t.
“I certainly should have realized that life is going to get very complicated if I let a bishop look over my shoulder all the time. But … I didn’t.
“I should have checked with some of the priests working in the Latino community and found out just what kind of guy this Diego was. But … I didn’t.” He looked directly at the motionless figure in the bed. “And there you have it, Herbert: I set myself up. But in my wildest dreams I couldn’t have guessed how bad it was going to get.
“Oh, it’s not just that he’s not a good bishop … he isn’t even much of a Christian.”
He stopped and sat in thought and then, as if shaking himself, continued. “But then, I’m not getting down to what I have to tell you, Herbert. Especially not when I talk about Diego in the present tense. It’s not that Diego isn’t much of a Christian; he wasn’t much of a Christian.
“And this is what I want to tell you, Herbert: Bishop Diego is dead. Murdered. What do you think of that, Herbert?” He sat back in his chair. “Now I’m going to tell you what happened to him.”
Carleson had been talking to Doners but for the most part not quite focusing on him. Now that he was reaching the essence of his story, the priest shifted in his chair and pulled it closer to the patient And, with this newly paid attention, he noticed something for the first time.
Demers was moving his fingers. Almost imperceptibly, but there was some sort of movement. “You’re moving your hands, Herbert. Are you trying to tell me something?” Carleson was suddenly excited.
Demers seemed to catch Carleson’s intensity and feed upon it. Now, unmistakably, Demers was making a motion with his right hand that clearly simulated writing.
“I’ll be damned! You were listening to me after all! You want to write me something? A message?”
But Demers appeared to be able to do no more than give the slightest indication that he wanted to write. Quickly, Carleson grabbed a white, disposable bag. It would have to serve as a pad. There was nothing else immediately available, and he didn’t want to waste a precious second. Propping the bag atop a small tissue box, he fitted the makeshift writing pad into Demers’s left hand. From his jacket pocket, Carleson took a ballpoint pen and inserted it between the thumb and forefinger of Demers’s right hand.
The priest watched spellbound as Demers tried feebly to put pen to paper. There were a few wavering passes, but no contact. Finally, defeated, he let the pen fall to the sheet.
This was not going to work.
“Can you tell me, Herbert? Try! Try to tell me!”
Demers let his head fall to the right so he was directly facing Carleson. His lips twitched faintly. Carleson placed his ear as close as he could without blocking Demers’s lips.
Nothing.
Carleson turned his gaze toward Demers. “Try to move your lips! I’ll try to read your lips!”
He watched intently. There was a slight movement. “‘Heh … heh …’” Carleson spoke trying to articulate the expression forming on Demers’s lips.
“‘Heh … hel … help …’ ‘Help? ‘Help’ … is that it?”
“‘Help m … help me …’ ‘Help me’? ‘Help me’? Is that it, Herbert? Help you what? What do you want me to help you with? Another word, Herbert! Give me another word!”
“‘D … da … die.’ ‘Die’? ‘Help me die’? You want to die?”
Of course he does, stupid, Carleson told himself. Wouldn’t you in his condition?
Demers, having delivered his message, relaxed. He seemed to sink back into the pillow as if he were part of the headrest.
“I’ll tell the doctor what I just saw you do, Herbert. Maybe the doctor can help you die now that we know what you want. Hang in there. I’ll do everything I can.” Carleson took the man’s right hand and held the bony appendage firmly.
He had serious doubts that anything would come of this. The doctor would have no proof of Herbert’s desire other than the word of one priest. Carleson was certain Demers could not repeat his performance. Carleson was certain the status would remain quo.
This poor man wanted only one thing: release. Eventually, of course, God would take him. Meanwhile, he would be imprisoned in his shell of a body.
But, wait. Domers had asked him. The old gentleman had said it with all the strength he could summon. “Help me die.” That’s what he’d said. “Help me die.”
It was a desperate plea that would continue to haunt and torment the priest.
Could he? Would he?
Carleson had no immediate answer.