Operation Wormwood

by Helen C. Escott

  Father Horan loved the historical structure of the rectory but knew it had to be brought up to code in many areas. The rectory was built behind the Basilica of St. John the Baptist. Its construction began after the basilica was finished around 1855. The entire Catholic compound was constructed using limestone and granite imported from Galway and Dublin, Ireland, as well as bricks from Hamburg, and local sandstone quarried from St. John’s and Kelly’s Island in Conception Bay, giving the buildings their characteristic grey colour. They are located on the highest ridge overlooking the city of St. John’s facing toward the Narrows surrounding St. John’s harbour. They were purposely built that way to greet fishing vessels entering through the Narrows. The first things the sailors would see were the largest church buildings in North America at that time. Much of the church and rectory remained the same as when it was built, except for the wiring. The cost of upkeep was staggering. The heat alone cost a king’s ransom. Declared heritage buildings, they had to stay true to their history, thus drafty windows and cold stone walls kept their residents in a constant state of freezing temperatures, even when it was hot outside.

  “What about you? Do you spend a lot of time with him?” Agatha queried.

  “I’ve known him forever. He was the priest at my orphanage when I was a boy.” Horan turned to face her. “He’s the reason I became a priest. After I was ordained, I transferred back to his office to work with him. When he became archbishop, he chose me as his assistant,” he ended proudly.

  “So, you’re like father and son?” The question came out of her mouth before she could stop it. She never understood the Catholic hierarchy but knew it was inappropriate as soon as she asked it.

  Father Charles Horan’s face took on a look of smug authority. “I am his assistant. This is not a father-son relationship. We are priests.”

  Nurse Catania had a feeling that he had answered this question before, maybe many times. She tried to cover her embarrassment by saying, “I need to know his next of kin for his record. He has your name listed, but does he have family who should be making decisions for him?”

  “He doesn’t have family other than the church.” Agatha knew he was lying but didn’t know why.

  “Okay, well, he has you listed, so I will let you know if anything changes.”

  Agatha turned and walked back into the emergency unit. She never looked back at Father Horan but could feel he was watching her. She felt like a schoolgirl who had just been disciplined for talking back. Suddenly, the hair on the back of her neck stood up, and goosebumps formed on her arms. She felt cold and decided that, although Father Horan may be a man of God, he gave her the creeps.

  * * * * *

  Archbishop Patrick Keating was peaceful in his bed when she entered his room. Agatha turned his arm over, tied the rubber tourniquet around his forearm, inserted a needle into his vein, and proceeded to draw blood. She had just finished when he opened his eyes and looked up at her. “I’m taking your blood so we can run some tests to find out what is wrong with you.” Her voice was soothing. She was used to calming people down in the emergency area.

  “I am so thirsty.” His lips were pasty and stuck together. He could barely get the words out.

  “I can’t give you any water just yet, but I’ll get some ice chips. They will give you some relief.” Agatha called out to a nurse who was walking by and asked her to bring ice chips for the archbishop. She returned with a Styrofoam cup full and a small stick with a sponge on the end to help wet his lips.

  Agatha wet the sponge and rubbed it along the archbishop’s lips until they were moistened. At first he seemed relieved, then he licked his lips and began to gag.

  “You’ve put vinegar on my lips!” He tried to spit the water out and wiped his lips with his sleeve. “You cursed woman, where is Charles?” He changed from peaceful to difficult in a matter of seconds. Agatha felt the same air of superiority that Horan had exuded.

  They’re certainly cut from the same cloth, she thought. “It’s ice chips. They’ll make you feel better.” She tried to calm him down.

  “It tastes bitter, like vinegar.”

  She felt like a servant who had done wrong. “Here, try the sponge yourself. It’s soaked in cold water. You can suck on it like a lollipop.” She took the sponge out of the cup and handed it to him.

  The archbishop put it between his lips and spat it out, coughing and sputtering. “It’s vile, woman. Get me some water,” he ordered her.

  “This is water.” Agatha wasn’t afraid to talk back to him

  He hit her hand, and the cup full of ice landed on the floor. “Get me Charles.”

  She stood back from the bed, collected her blood vials, and turned to walk away. When she got to the door, she turned toward him. “You’re quarantined. No visitors.” She placed the vials in the collection tray and thought to herself, I’m not Catholic. He can go to hell, for all I care.

  2

  The radio alarm clock went off at 5:00 a.m. Music blared through the condo, but Dr. Luke Gillespie was already in the shower, warm water rushing over his body. He stood there for a long time, thinking.

  His mind was running through every possible disease known to man. He started at A and ran through to Z, then started over again. He couldn’t connect the archbishop’s symptoms to anything he had dealt with before. He tilted his head back to feel the water on his face, thinking, What am I missing? Help me find an answer.

  His eyes flashed open when he realized that he was praying.

  “Praying,” he exclaimed. “I haven’t prayed in years. Doctors don’t pray, they investigate and find answers,” he told himself.

  Gillespie was a man of science, not prayer.

  Over the years, he had watched families pray and cry, and cry and pray for diseases to be cured, hearts to grow stronger, and life to last longer. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. It was a crapshoot, really, he finally concluded. Did the dedicated prayers of one family bring an eighty-five-year-old woman back from a massive heart attack? Or did the eight-year-old girl he had once treated for childhood leukemia die because her parents didn’t pray enough?

  He didn’t believe in things he couldn’t see. Science made sense to him. God didn’t. He wouldn’t pray for an answer. He would find one on his own. By the time he arrived at the hospital, the archbishop had been moved to the intensive care unit on the fifth floor. Nurse Agatha Catania had just started her shift.

  “They moved him to the ICU just before I ended my shift last night.” She saw him searching through the charts on the front desk in the emergency department and knew instantly what he was looking for. “The test came back negative for hemophilia, too,” she told him.

  Dr. Gillespie was a good doctor. She had worked with him for years. He was dedicated to his patients, but more importantly, he respected the nurses and often asked for their opinion. Not many doctors were willing to take advice from a nurse. Some would rather be wrong than ask for help. Gillespie knew nurses practised medicine on the front line. He understood that some knew more than doctors. He also understood that Agatha Catania was one of those nurses.

  “Did he get worse?” He turned around to face her.

  “He’s lost a lot of blood. I’ve never seen anything like it. I thought we had him calmed down for the night, then he started bleeding from the nose like a geyser. We couldn’t stop it. Luke . . .” She came closer to him and whispered, “It was quite scary. I walked into the room and he was lying there like he was dead, and the blood was just flowing. His gown was covered. I had to feel his pulse to see if he was still alive.” She shivered as the picture came back into her mind. “While I was standing over him, it felt like someone was breathing cold air down my neck.”

  “You’re an Anglican, that’s all,” he joked. “It gives you the willies to stand next to a Catholic archbishop.” But Dr. Gillespie knew what she was t
alking about. There was something about this guy that gave him the same feeling.

  * * * * *

  Dr. Gillespie took the elevator to the ICU on the fifth floor and used his security pass to let himself in. Three nurses were gathered around the main desk talking and looking through files. They all looked up when the doctor walked in.

  “Good morning, everyone,” he greeted them.

  They all smiled back and exchanged greetings, followed by a rundown of every patient in the unit.

  He picked up Archbishop Keating’s file and began to look through it.

  “He had a blood transfusion this morning,” the supervising nurse said as she brought him up to speed. “The doctor who was on last night ordered it. The archbishop was losing so much blood he had no choice.”

  “Thank you.” Gillespie walked over to Keating’s room. There was a man standing outside looking at the archbishop through the observation window. He was a big man. His arms were folded, and he was wearing hospital greens. As Gillespie got closer, he could see the man’s eyes were red and tears were rolling down his cheeks. He looked like he was deep in thought. When he saw the doctor, the visitor quickly wiped his face with his hands and began to walk away.

  “Do you know him?” asked Gillespie.

  The man turned around, embarrassed by his emotional state. He nodded yes, took a deep breath, and exhaled in a broken sigh.

  “Well, we’re trying to find out what is making him so sick and why he has these nosebleeds. Does he have a history of them?”

  “I don’t know,” the big man stammered. “I don’t know him that well.” He stuttered as he corrected himself. “I knew him years ago. He was a priest at my school.” He was shuffling his feet like a trapped rat trying to get away.

  Gillespie’s interest was piqued. “What unit do you work on? What’s your name?”

  “Jermaine. Jermaine Cousin. I work in the radiology department. I heard he was here.” He hung his head and whispered, “I just wanted to see him.”

  The doctor had dealt with religious devotees before and knew he had to wear kid gloves when handling them. “I understand. He’s your archbishop. I’ll make sure he gets the best care.” As an afterthought, he added, “Maybe you can say a prayer for him.” Luke didn’t know where that last sentence came from. He had never uttered those words before.

  Jermaine turned to leave. “I’ve said a lot of prayers for him over the years.” Then he disappeared down the hallway.

  What an odd thing to say, Gillespie thought as he pushed open the door to the archbishop’s room and walked in.

  The archbishop was resting peacefully. Someone had put prayer beads in his hands. The nurses had cleaned him up, and he was wearing a fresh hospital gown. There was no trace of blood. Gillespie continued to read through the archbishop’s overnight report while standing over his bed. He caught something moving out of the corner of his eye and turned in fright to see a nun sitting on a chair in the corner of the room. She was deep in prayer with her own rosary beads and slowly rocked back and forth while she prayed.

  Dr. Gillespie hadn’t noticed her when he first walked in the room. She was dressed in the old-fashioned, black and white religious habit that hung to the floor and had the full veil over the back of her head. He had not seen a nun wear the old-fashioned garb in years. He guessed from the tuft of white hair that formed a bang over her forehead that she was in her seventies. He didn’t disturb her, because he had dealt with nuns before.

  Luke had gone to an all-boy Catholic school run by Christian Brothers. Nuns would visit from time to time to help with Mass or around the office. The boys would jokingly say they looked like penguins and didn’t have any feet. The boys would poke their heads out around the classroom door to watch the nuns walk through the school halls. Nuns never walked, they believed—they glided through the halls. No one ever saw their feet. Luke thought they always looked mad, and this nun was no different.

  She probably still has a three-foot wooden ruler under that tunic, he thought. One false move and I could get whipped across the hands, he thought, then laughed to himself.

  Dr. Gillespie tried to leave the room as quietly as possible. He didn’t want to disturb her.

  “Are you his doctor?”

  Her deep voice startled him. He almost dropped the file.

  “I am Dr. Luke Gillespie.” He reached his hand out to shake hers. She stood up, extending her thin cold hand toward him. Her black tunic reached down to the floor. He was right. Nuns did not have feet. “I treated the archbishop when he came in last night. I’ll be his doctor today.” Nuns still made him nervous, he discovered.

  “I am Sister Pius. I work in the rectory for the archbishop.”

  Something told Gillespie she was more than a worker in the rectory. She had an air of authority about her, and she was no stranger to giving orders.

  “Do you know why his nose bleeds like that?” she asked, like she already knew the answer and was testing him. He felt like a ten-year-old schoolboy being put on the spot by the teacher.

  “No, I don’t. I’m trying to find out.” He studied her face, waiting for the answer.

  “He has these bleeds daily, sometimes hourly,” she said, approaching the bed and smoothing out the hospital gown over the archbishop’s chest.

  She is probably like a maid to him or something, Luke thought. Remembering he was the head of the church, she would expect the utmost respect. He added, “If he bleeds again, the nurses will take care of changing the gown as soon as possible. They’ll make sure he’s kept clean.”

  “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb.” Her statement was loud, direct, and confusing. “His blood is a stain upon the Church.” She walked toward the window facing the busy street.

  Not knowing what she was talking about, but suspecting the Church wouldn’t want its parishioners to know the medical details of their archbishop, the doctor said, “The hospital does not give out any patient’s medical information without consent from the patient.”

  The archbishop began to groan in pain, but his eyes didn’t open.

  “I’ll ask the nurse to give him some more morphine. His chart says he was in a lot of pain all night. He must be feeling it again.” Gillespie felt the lymph nodes in the archbishop’s neck.

  “He has been through great tribulation, but only he has the answer to stop the pain,” the nun added. Gillespie wasn’t sure why, but he sensed she didn’t like the archbishop and suspected she was enjoying his pain.

  The man’s nose began to bleed like someone had turned on a tap. The thick red blood ran over his lips and down his neck, pooling at the top of his chest on his blue hospital gown. It happened so quickly they were both startled. The archbishop moaned again in pain.

  Gillespie grabbed a towel that was hung by the sink in the room. He tilted the archbishop’s head back and placed the towel over his nose, squeezing his nostrils together to stop the bleeding. The nun took a step back from the bed like she had seen something that frightened her to the core. Her eyes were wide, and both her hands covered her mouth.

  The blood stopped flowing, and Archbishop Keating slumped over in the bed. Gillespie pressed the button on the side to tilt the bed up and keep the patient’s head elevated. He didn’t want him to choke on his own blood.

  “Well, I guess he is washed in the blood of the lamb now,” Gillespie said, smirking at Sister Pius, but she didn’t react. Maybe that comment was inappropriate, he thought.

  He was surprised when she didn’t try to clean the blood off the archbishop’s face. Maybe Luke touching him was making her irritable. He picked up another clean towel and handed it to her, but she put her hands behind her back.

  “I don’t want to touch him now,” she said. “Let the nurses clean him.”

  He must be hard to work for, Gillespi
e thought. He tried to make peace with her. “Maybe his time in hospital will make him easier to get along with. Being close to death sometimes makes a person a better human being.”

  “Sickness and death seldom change a man’s heart. They don’t change a man’s desires.”

  Gillespie suspected they were both talking about different subjects, and he had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Why does his nose bleed like that?” he asked her with great interest.

  “Whatever a man sows, he shall also reap.”

  This woman was like the riddle of the sphinx, Luke thought. “You know what’s wrong with him, don’t you?” He became accusatory toward Sister Pius. He knew she was holding something back.

  “Jesus said He would wash us from our sins in His own blood. The blood of the lamb.”

  “If you think he has sinned, why were you praying for his recovery when I came in?” He was surprised at how angry his question sounded.

  “I wasn’t praying for his recovery. I was praying for his soul.” Sister Pius let the words slip from her tongue before she could stop them.

  * * * * *

  What had she done? Sister Pius knew why the archbishop’s nose bled like it did. The same reason several other priests in that rectory had nosebleeds. It had nothing to do with the cold dampness in the air of the building. It had everything to do with the cold dampness in the hearts and souls of these men. Keating and his private club, she thought to herself. She knew what went on now. Years ago, she’d had no idea. She knew the boys feared him, but he was known for his use of the leather strap. All she could do was help the boys after their visits with him when they cried or turned to aggressive behaviour in the classroom. Sister Pius never understood why so many parents allowed their children to go on camping trips with these grown men. On Monday morning she could tell who had been victimized from the looks on their faces and their demeanour. Well, she didn’t know then, but it wasn’t long until she figured it out.