Deathbed

by William Kienzle

“Besides, I think he’s so nice he might not dump me even if he wasn’t as clumsy as me. But the thing is, he is. And he’s gonna spend the rest of his life going from one lousy job to another. He ain’t got much of a job now. In fact, it’s a worse job than any that I’ve ever had. But even with all that, he still is a volunteer here at the hospital . . . ain’t that something?”

  “That certainly is something.” Koesler got the image of two people slowly sinking in quicksand and being clumsy about it to boot.

  “That’s why my original promise to myself is so important, Father. I got to keep this job. I got to prove to myself and the rest of the world that I can hold this job. It may be Bruce who stays home and keeps house. That’s fine by me. I don’t mind working outside the home. But I gotta keep this job, Father; I gotta!”

  Koesler was impressed. He had met very few who were more determined than this young lady. Nor few who were more doomed to failure.

  “All of which,” Koesler said, “gets us down to the question that occurred to me when you first began speaking to me. Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Because I thought you could help. Ain’t that what priests are supposed to do—help?”

  For an instant, Koesler wondered if it had all begun in the early forties when Bing Crosby became Father Chuck O’Malley in Going My Way? The fictional O’Malley did, indeed, go around helping. There was nothing he set his hand or heart to that wasn’t helped or fixed. Everything from the local Dead End Kids to the parish mortgage.

  The movie was released two years after Koesler entered the seminary high school, so he hadn’t been intimately familiar with what priests could or could not fix before The Groaner became a clergyman. But Koesler’s many years of experience since his own ordination indicated that priests were by no means able to solve everything. That sort of magic was reserved to the world of fiction. And this was one of those cases whose solution was simply beyond his power.

  “You’re right, Ethel: Priests are supposed to help. And I want to help you. But how can I?”

  “Well, I thought you maybe would talk to Sister Eileen. Maybe talk her out of firing me. You could do that, couldn’t you?”

  “Sure, I could talk to Sister. But this is her hospital, not mine. I can plead your case—and I will—but she’s the boss. Besides, I’m here only temporarily. Don’t you know the regular chaplain, Father Thompson? He’d be an even better go-between than I. He’s here full-time. This is his job. He’d be more familiar with the way this hospital runs. He knows Sister Eileen better than I do. I’m not trying to pass the buck . . . really I’m not. I’m just trying to get you the best help I can. “

  Ethel’s shoulders dropped in an attitude of resignation. “Father Thompson’s a nice guy. He just ain’t here when I need him. By the time he comes back from vacation, Sister will have fired me. I just feel it.” There was a moment of silence, then Ethel spoke again. “It’s okay, Father. You talk to Sister and do what you can and I’ll appreciate it. But I gotta do something on my own. I gotta hold on to this job. That’s all there is to it. No matter what I got to do I got to hang on to this job. No matter what.” She began massaging her forehead.

  Koesler was concerned. “Is there something wrong, Ethel? Don’t you feel well?”

  “Oh, it’s okay, Father. Just a headache. I been getting lots of them lately. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the stress. It’s okay.”

  “Ethel, I really think it’s a big mistake for you to put all your eggs in one basket. Particularly this basket. There are undoubtedly lots of jobs you could do well. Tell you what, I’ll even help you find one.”

  “No, thanks, Father. I’ve gone as far as I’m gonna go. This is where the searching stops. I gotta make it in this job. I gotta make Bruce proud of me. I gotta hold the job for the two of us. And this is the one. It’s gotta be, no matter what. No matter what.”

  Ethel rose from her chair a bit unsteadily. The chair tipped and fell.

  Koesler half-rose as if to help, but she waved him away. “It’s okay, Father. I’m okay.” She picked it up with a “See?” and carefully slid it in place, hitting Koesler on the knee.

  Koesler seated himself and watched her as she left the cafeteria. What chance did she have? None that he could think of. He would keep his word and talk to Sister Eileen in Ethel’s behalf. But he was certain it would do little good. Even if he could dissuade Eileen from letting Ethel go just now, she would go on causing havoc all around here. Eventually, she would have to go.

  He only wished she were not sticking so single-mindedly to this specific position. Even with her penchant for clumsiness, she probably could wander from one job to another until money from something like Social Security would rescue her.

  A vast pity, too, he thought, that she intended to marry practically a cloned klutz. She might have married someone who could have cared for her and removed her from what had become her enemy—the job market. Pity. A great pity.

  Koesler now was virtually alone in the cafeteria.

  What was it that nurse had said: something about a patient in trouble. Something she had said had struck a chord in him. The room number, that was it. Twenty-two something—what was it? Oh, 2214. Yes, that was it.

  Fortunately, he had his patient chart at his side. Number 2214 . . . who was in that room? Alva Crawford and Millie Power. He remembered them now. Alva had been his wild-goose chase. The lady who might have wanted to go to confession if she had been a Catholic. And the other one, Millie Power, had, as he recalled, pneumonia. She was the one who claimed Dr. Jesus as her physician.

  Koesler wondered which of the ladies was in trouble: Millie, who had seemed to be recovering nicely from a bout with pneumonia; or Alva, who probably had had her operation during which she would have to swallow a dreaded tube. On the face of it, Koesler guessed the crisis patient must be Alva.

  He was wrong, as he discovered upon entering Room 2214. There was a great deal of activity going on around Millie Power’s bed, while Alva Crawford intently watched her small-screen TV. Evidently, Alva considered this problem to be none of her business and she was not about to get involved.

  Nevertheless, Koesler approached Alva’s bedside. Actually, if he were going to move at all in that small room, the only direction open to him was toward Alva’s bed. Reluctantly, she took her eyes from the television and glanced at him briefly.

  “What happened, Alva?” Koesler asked softly. He did not wish to disturb the consultation that was being stage-whispered around Millie’s bed.

  “She got sick.” Alva nodded toward Millie.

  “Do you know what’s wrong?”

  Alva shook her head. “I guess they don’t either.”

  “Oh.”

  Alva returned her attention to soap-opera time. Koesler remained standing near the head of her bed. It was the only place in the room whence he could have a clear vision of Millie.

  She certainly looked gravely ill. She appeared to be unconscious. At least her eyes were closed as her head moved slowly from side to side on the firm white pillow. Then Koesler noticed her hands. They were restless, moving up and down her arms, seeming to scratch endlessly. He could hear only snatches of the conversation going on around her bedside.

  “Did you change her medication in any way?” The speaker appeared to be a doctor. The telltale stethoscope. But more than that, the imperious attitude one occasionally finds in a doctor. He was angry. Obviously, his patient was not doing well and it was up to him to discover the reason.

  “No, Dr. Wilson,” said the brunette that Koesler had noticed earlier in the cafeteria.

  “I don’t understand it,” Wilson whispered. “I don’t understand it at all. Her blood pressure has dropped out the bottom. I don’t understand. There’s no reason for this to be happening.”

  No one responded. Perhaps, Koesler thought, no one else could understand it either. At least none of them offered any possible solution. Wilson whispered something to the others. It sounded like he was giving instructions .
But Koesler could barely hear the doctor, and the little he could make out was, to him, unintelligible medicalese. When Wilson finished, all the medical personnel left the room.

  Koesler approached Millie. Clearly she was in great distress. He tried to touch one of her hands, but Millie shook him off and continued her ceaseless scratching.

  Koesler strongly suspected she could hear him. He began slowly and loudly to recite the Twenty-Third, his favorite Psalm. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want . . .”

  He thought she seemed more calm. Her expression appeared to have relaxed somewhat.

  “. . . And 1 shall dwell in the house of the Lord for years to come.”

  He paused. She lost the little serenity she seemed to have gained. He took out the small booklet, Pastoral Care of the Sick, and turned to a Blessing for the Sick.

  “All praise and glory is yours, Lord our God, for you have called us to serve you in love. Bless Millie so that she may bear this illness in union with your Son’s obedient suffering. Restore her to health, and lead her in glory. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

  He looked long at the suffering woman whose affliction remained undiagnosed. Silently, Koesler commended her to the care of her personally selected physician, Dr. Jesus.

  Peculiar how quickly the fortunes of life could change, thought Koesler, as he walked slowly up the corridor to the nurses’ station. It was just yesterday that Millie was, to the nonmedical eye at least, in fairly good condition. Indeed, it was Millie who had gone out of her way to assure her roommate, Alva, that an operation would go well. Now Alva, who seemed well, had, as promised, successfully undergone her operation and was divorcing herself from Millie’s predicament.

  At the nurses’ station, Koesler shuffled through the patient lists trying to organize the order of his visits so he would not be constantly doubling back and forth. As he did so, he became aware of someone very nearby talking, but not to him. He looked up to see the same two nurses whom he’d recently observed in the cafeteria. They were again conversing and once more disregarding his presence.

  “. . . Just the same, it’s not fair. How can he blame you for something that isn’t your fault? As a matter of fact, it’s probably his fault.”

  “Maybe he’s just frustrated. After all, she was doing just fine yesterday.”

  “That happens. I’ve seen it a zillion times. When you’ve had as much experience as I have you’ll know the signs.”

  “Come on, now, I didn’t pass boards yesterday. I tell you this one’s different. It’s like she came in with one problem and overnight she came down with an entirely new and different illness.”

  “Even that. I’ve seen that, too.”

  “Maybe you’re right. But then, why was Dr. Wilson so bugged? He certainly must have encountered this before. I mean if you have—”

  “Malpractice. They’re all running scared of malpractice suits.”

  “You think she could sue?”

  “If she survives, sure. If not, watch out for the relatives. How bad is she anyway?”

  “Pretty bad. Blood pressure dangerously low. Looks as if she’s about to slip into a coma. Keeps scratching herself. Why would she be itchy? She certainly wasn’t yesterday.”

  The blonde grew thoughtful. “Blood pressure dropping, and itching. Hmmm . . . I don’t know. Sounds like an allergic reaction to something. There was a patient here, oh, about four or five years ago, who had the same kind of reaction. I know the doctor had a hard time of it. At first he couldn’t . . .”

  Koesler stopped listening. He was distracted by a memory. What was it the blonde nurse just said? She knew a patient who had had “an allergic reaction to something” and, as a result had ended up with about the same sort of symptoms as Millie Power.

  Why did that ring a bell? Hadn’t Millie told him something to that effect? Something that had happened to her after she was admitted to the hospital. Somebody had asked her something. If she would be in some kind of test program. And she was about to agree to it when she remembered that she was allergic to penicillin. So they had taken her out of the program. Was it possible? It didn’t seem likely. But it certainly seemed possible.

  “Excuse me . . .”He spoke up, interrupting the two nurses, who looked at him somewhat startled. “Excuse me,” he was speaking to the blonde nurse, “but did you just say something about a patient who had an allergic reaction or something . . . and that it produced symptoms something like what Millie Power has?”

  The blonde nodded. It was obvious from the roman collar beneath his hospital jacket that he was with the pastoral care department. Her expression was a blend of “What’s it to you?” and “Where did you come from?”

  “Well,” Koesler said almost apologetically, “I was just wondering: When I first visited with Millie, she mentioned that shortly after she was admitted, a doctor asked her to be a part of some hospital experiment. And she was about to say yes when she remembered that she had an allergy to penicillin. And she would have been given penicillin if she had been in the experiment. Do you suppose there could have been some mix-up and she got included in the test? And that what she’s got now could be a reaction to the penicillin?”

  With a look of great incredulity, the brunette slowly extracted Millie Power’s chart from the file drawer, carefully opened it, and studied it.

  “Well . . . I’ll be damned,” the brunette said. After a brief pause, she added, “Oh, excuse me, Father.”

  10

  “It was all a matter of timing.”

  “Timing!”

  “Yes,” affirmed Whitaker. “The timing was off just a bit.”

  “Bah! “ said the Third Man. “That’s like a weather forecaster saying that if only the day had lasted forty-eight hours, his prediction of rain would have come true.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Hear him out,” said the Fourth Man.

  “Everything worked!” Whitaker said in a tone of incredulity. “It worked just as I had it planned. They gave her the penicillin routinely, without asking any questions or informing anyone else. Just because her chart indicated she was in that study group, they gave her the penicillin. And she had her allergic reaction to it. She got sick and she was getting sicker as time went on.”

  “So what was wrong with the timing?” the First Man demanded.

  “I’m getting to that. I was watching her very carefully. I was waiting for her to get sick enough so that they would really worry about her dying. Then I was going to get a note to that reporter—Lennon—and inform her of what was going on. That a patient was dying because the hospital messed up her chart and, even though she told them she was allergic to it, they were giving her penicillin for her pneumonia. Once the reporter got involved in saving the woman from the hospital’s mistake, she would have to report what’s going on there. And just as soon as the media started getting in there, the lid would come off.”

  “He’s right, you know,” the Fourth Man said. “When a Catholic hospital refuses to follow the clear teachings of the Catholic Church, that’s news. All we have to do is show them what’s going on.”

  “Oh, yeah?” the First Man said. “If that’s so, then why didn’t that reporter write up the hospital’s policy on birth control? She knew about it. You led her to it. Or so you said!”

  “I did lead her to it! And she did see what was going on! And after that . . . I don’t know!”

  “Quiet down,” the Fourth Man cautioned, “or that guard will come over and break up our meeting.”

  “I don’t know,” Whitaker repeated in a more restrained tone. “I really don’t. Somebody told me she was working on a feature story on the hospital. But I don’t know; if she changed her mind and was going to do a story on the immoral birth control, she would have just done it. Don’t you think?”

  “All I can think of is that the nun must have charmed her, or scared her, or something. But I’m positive Lennon could not look the other way if I could have handed her the story of h
ow the hospital was killing one of its patients. And we would have had it all—the story would have been out and Lennon would have stopped the experiment before it had gone too far and killed the patient!”

  “Okay,” the Third Man said, “if, as you claim, you finally did something right, what happened? What threw your goddam timing off?”

  “Watch your language!” the Fourth Man cautioned. “There’s no need to take the Lord’s name in vain!”

  The Third Man shrugged. “What threw your timing off?”

  “That priest! Koesler!”

  “What! How?”

  “Somehow he found out what was going on. I don’t know how. But he told one of the nurses that the patient was allergic to penicillin. The only thing I can figure is that the woman herself must have told him. It’s the only way he could have known. Just lucky!”

  “Was he ‘just lucky’ when he saw through our plot to even the score with those seminary professors a few years ago? Was it just luck that put us in here?” the Third Man challenged.

  “You’re right,” the First Man said. “You’re absolutely right. Koesler is a clear and present danger to us. He’s going to ruin our plan again.”

  “Unless we do something about it!” The Third Man’s meaning was evident.

  “Now, wait a minute!” Whitaker said.

  “Yes, wait a minute!” the Fourth Man agreed.

  “Why not?” the Third Man pressed. “We are just trying to do God’s holy will and Koesler keeps getting in our way."

  “He’s a priest!” Whitaker protested.

  “So? What was it, you know, Peter O’Toole said—Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?”

  “Yes,” Whitaker said, “and they went out and killed Thomas à Becket. And he became a saint.”

  “That was different. Henry was wrong. And we are doing God’s work. I only brought that up to show that it’s possible to at least think about killing a priest.”

  “The whole thing makes me shudder,” Whitaker complained. “We are doing God’s will. We’re not trying to kill anybody.”

  “We may have to.”