by Ellen Cooney
The pizza guy was young and so skinny, he looked like he never in his life ate a carbohydrate. His mood was understandably edgy. He had delivered to the medical center tons of times before on the night shift, but finding my office wasn’t easy—he’d had to go through a maze, and sure, tipping is officially optional, but hey.
The pizza was a large. He had set it down on my desk, which barely had room. The box was sticking out over the side. He took my coins, and did not seem interested in standing around while I searched my drawers, in case I had bills somewhere; Pastoral Care was always taking up collections for something.
I didn’t find any more money, but I turned to go after him to tell him I’d stop by the pizza place soon. I wanted to ask his name. I wanted to see him again, and I didn’t even realize it might have been for this reason: he reminded me a little of Plummy, six years ago.
As I stepped toward the hall, aware he’d made it away by now, I heard him in the distance, letting out an exclamation that sounded like a cry of surprise.
“Hey,” I heard him saying. “Hey dude, what the hell?”
The dog came running into my office so fast, I had to flatten myself at the wall to not be knocked over. At the side of my desk, facing the pizza box, he skidded to a stop, with a bright fabric neck leash trailing behind him. Then he lowered himself to his haunches for a straight-back, head-high sit.
He was big. He was tan. He was a mix, but he was mostly a boxer.
The thrust of his muzzle announced that breed, along with his boxer jowls and the smooth, suede look of his coat, more like skin than fur. His age seemed neither young nor old. He was in his prime. Somewhere in his ancestry, there had to have been a mastiff, and possibly, by the slope of his forehead, and the way it was slightly furrowed, a pit bull as well. His ears were wide, oval flaps, velvety, of a deeper brown than the rest of him. His muzzle was the color of charcoal, and so were the markings that went upward past his nose, and underlaid his eyes. On his chest was a patch of white, like a bib. His paws were rimmed with white too, as if he wore socks. His tail was flecked with dark mini-streaks of brindle, like tattoos.
He was the fittest, most muscular, most athletic dog I’d ever been physically close to. It did not occur to me to be frightened of him—there was friendliness in the bright shine of his dark eyes, on top of his eagerness to be given human food. Already drool was dripping from him, looking like long, thin, melting icicles.
He was clean and well-groomed, and he must have been outdoors recently. He smelled lightly of the night and damp earth.
He didn’t look at me, coming to him, taking small steps, my hand extended.
He took himself seriously, I saw. And he had certainly received an education. Right away, I started thinking of him as Mrs. Copp’s dog, but I knew he belonged to the people of Bobo Boy. I recognized the leash with its tie-dyed colors, and the matching collar, tags dangling. Perhaps, like Bobo Boy, he refused to wear the vest that’s supposed to be the uniform of a therapy dog. He might have shredded one, or maybe several. His teeth were enormous.
He must have gotten away from his handler. I realized I was expecting his human to make an appearance, perhaps out of breath from chasing him. But there was no one.
Dignity. He was an animal of dignity, sitting like that.
“Hi,” I said. “I have to tell you, you’re pretty amazing, but I bet you know that about yourself. If I were you, I’d have grabbed that box. Gooey cheese would be hanging from my lips, not drool.”
I had eaten pizza before from the all-night place, with various nurses and doctors. They made it so greasy, I’d dab at the top with a paper napkin before digging in, but I didn’t bother about that now, because why make the dog wait while I went to find some napkins?
The biggest tag attached to his collar was silver, in the shape of a heart. His name was etched there. Eddie.
I touched my hand to the top of his head, briefly, palm flat. Then I opened the box, saying, “Eddie. You’re Eddie.”
His ears flicked in recognition, but he was otherwise completely motionless.
“I heard about you,” I said. “And someone told me you’re not supposed to be real.”
I loosened a slice and tore off the crust. He didn’t lunge for it. He took it almost delicately. I thought he’d lie down and chew on it like a bone, but he devoured it in a matter of seconds.
I worked our way through half the pizza, giving him, each time, a portion of slices too. He looked sad when I closed the box.
“Sorry, but we’re not going to overdo it,” I told him.
The box didn’t fit into the little Pastoral Care fridge, so I placed the remaining slices inside on their wax paper lining. While I tore up the cardboard for the wastebasket, he stared at me as if he wanted to eat that too.
Got goop?
I… feel I am a… car… toooon.
The voice of Mrs. Copp was playing itself back to me, coming from deep inside me, rising up clearly, exactly as the old woman had sounded in life. Seizing a paper towel from the coffee area, and wiping my hands, I felt all over again what it was like to grasp hold of those dentures. To have the teeth of someone in my palm. To look at the toothless mouth, so weirdly beautiful in its pinkness, tenderness, weakness, babylike frailness, birdlike strength.
It does not make sense to say I felt I held a part of the soul of that person in my hand. That it was doing something to my own—not that I could understand what the something was.
But of course what I really had held was a set of false teeth.
“This is kind of an unusual night, Eddie,” I said.
Tomato sauce was on his chin. He had licked around his muzzle with his enormous tongue, but missed that spot. He let me dab at him with the paper towel.
I had just been paged again—what to do? I supposed I could keep him with me like I’d been newly recruited as a handler. And so, confidently, I picked up his leash and slipped my hand in the loop, trusting that his excellent manners would continue.
But the silent, dignified dog had other ideas. He bolted forward, yanking me so hard, I nearly lost my balance. I didn’t dare let go of the leash. He was my responsibility, at least for now.
He ignored me when I told him to stop. Some training!
But I hung on, thankful he eased up his pace enough for me to proceed at a brisk walk. His head was lowered, nose way down, like we were out in the woods out back and he was tracking. He did not glance back to see how I was doing. What I thought of him and his behavior, he didn’t care.
We passed a small group of aides talking together, pausing to laugh at the sight of the chaplain being tugged along.
A housekeeper pushing a cart of supplies called out, “Reverend, who’s walking who here?”
We turned a corner, another. I could hear him panting, ahead of me. The leash was taut, at its fullest. The loop was digging into my hand.
Then he stopped and turned into a consultation room, which I had often used on the day shift to speak with families and friends of patients in some sort of danger, as well as loved ones of someone who just moments ago had passed, and they couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the hospital. The Consolation Room, it’s called, and there, in one of the plush armchairs, was a young woman who used to be a handler of Bobo Boy.
I hadn’t seen this woman for quite a while. She wore the long, loose, green vest of the agency, the sides pushed back. Her jersey was striped brightly: red, yellow, blue, orange, like a beach ball.
She looked about six or seven months pregnant, possibly more. She was asleep.
I let go of the leash. Eddie finally turned his head to acknowledge me. His tongue was hanging straight down from the center of his mouth, and he flapped it a bit, while his tail moved sideways in a wag.
He looked proud of himself, lowering himself to the floor by the armchair, settling down.
“Well there he is, the devil,” whispered a voice behind me.
It was Guy run, towering above me, his scrubs quite rumpled and s
oiled. He had a mass of hair as white and fluffy as the silk of a milkweed. His eyeglasses were low on his nose, and he was peering down at me, his eyes showing their usual friendly, kind shine.
He was the first male nurse the medical center hired, years before I arrived. His name tag actually said “Guy RN.” The human resources people gave up a long time ago trying to make him wear a normal one.
He had recently remarried, after a divorce I knew he’d taken hard. Briefly, when he had wanted to start dating, he went around with a homemade, larger badge that said, “Fight stereotypes! Women! Ask me if I’m straight!” He’d gotten in trouble for that.
I hadn’t seen him before on the night shift. He’d been called in to help out with all the injuries.
“Could’ve been worse,” he told me, keeping his voice low. “And this dog here, unbelievable. They shouldn’t have brought him in. And just look at him, all innocence. I get it that they’d come to help, comfort-animal like, but they should’ve waited till things were less crazy.”
“What happened?”
“Let’s just say Mr. Boxer there thinks no one should give him orders but himself. This poor woman—she has to wait for someone to pick them up. I don’t think she expected to be thrown out of the ER. Did you know they get their dogs as rescues out of pounds?”
“I knew that.”
“This one,” he said, pointing at Eddie, “was a stray. Lucky for him, someone picked him up before Animal Control did. The agency doesn’t have a clue where he’d been before.”
“I think he has a really high IQ,” I said. “I mean, I’m guessing, just looking at him.”
Eddie had turned his head away. I had the feeling he knew we were discussing him, and he decided it was beneath him to react.
“He’s not beyond redemption, Reverend. We had a store employee freaking out because he couldn’t find his girlfriend. He thought she was still under the rubble, but it turned out, she’s in another hospital. Mr. Boxer went up to him. You know how, when they’re going to do their business, they circle around the spot they’re about to do it on? He did that. Went around and around maybe four times. This man, he had to stop the freak-out, just out of curiosity. Soon as he calmed down, Mr. Boxer was jumping him, hands right up against his chest. I mean, sorry, paws right up against his chest. Slobbered all over him, and the man, what else could he do? He started laughing his head off. He was all, ‘I don’t even like dogs.’ It’s not your usual comfort thing, but it sure did work. How are you doing, by the way?”
I remembered my page. “I think I’ll be glad when this night is over,” I said. “I’ve got to run.”
Guy RN pulled the door of the Consolation Room closed.
“Let’s allow the mama-to-be her sleep,” he said. “And I know Mr. Boxer will stay put in here.”
I wanted to tell him about my feeling he might be wrong about that—I didn’t want to seem irrational. I hurried toward an elevator. I looked out a window I passed, for any sign of gray morning dusk, gathering like clouds of smoke. But it was all just dark, just still completely all night.
Nineteen
“Did you ever see pictures of angels, in books, or in churches or museums?”
A few nights ago, the teller asked this question of the aide who was changing her bedclothes. The aide had nodded yes; everyone knows what angels look like.
“Do you know why angels have arms in all the pictures?”
“I’ll go find your chaplain,” the aide had answered.
But that night, when I reached her side, the teller hadn’t spoken of angels. It was only the usual greeting, the usual sitting.
Her aloneness was all around her like an extra layer of air. She had been ill so long, it was hard to get a sense of who she was before she was sick. Or where she was inside herself, beneath the rough and brittle shell her illness had turned her body into.
She was supposed to be transferred to a hospice place, but it was decided she was too fragile. I knew there were issues about insurance, about who would pay for what. The medical center is not a charity!
I knew what it felt like to hear that kind of thing. Yet somehow people like the teller fell sometimes into the right sort of crack. For her, the crack was right here.
She was being kept as comfortable as possible. She was now in a zone of the dusky space between staying and leaving, the waiting area of passing.
“I’m here,” I said, bending toward her, laying a hand on her arm.
For the first time, there was no response. She wasn’t lying there saying, “Hi. I’m your teller.”
She was in late middle age but looked elderly. Soon after she finished high school, she went to work in a local savings bank as a trainee at the counter, and for almost forty years she remained there, sometimes running the drive-up window, sometimes filling in for a front receptionist on vacation. The bank was folded into a national one early in her employment. She had spoken to a nurse, in a rare conversation, of her old fear she’d lose her job in the takeover, as if there were no other banks she could go to, no other job she could consider.
It was known that she’d been married, but it had ended in divorce. Her next of kin was listed as a brother, who for some reason was unable to come see her. Day shifters had noted in her file that she hadn’t once had a visitor.
Her religious affiliation was given as “I left my church for personal reasons.” But she had indicated she would welcome visits from a chaplain.
Her nights had been restless, as she was no longer aware of day and night. She was admitted to the medical center after someone who worked in the management of her apartment building went to see her, for not having paid her rent.
It turned out that she was treated previously at another hospital, where they released her in the belief she’d enter hospice care at home. But no arrangements were ever made for that—no visiting nurses, no supervision of medications, no aide, no anything. An ambulance had been called, and here she was.
The teller was never interested in talking with me, not even at those times, at four or five in the morning, she was fully a stranger to sleep. So I had tried a different approach.
I created a delusion for us. I told this woman that the bank where she worked was my own. Actually, I belong to a credit union.
“You used to be my teller,” I had said. “It’s okay you don’t remember me. I can’t imagine how many customers you faced all those years. But I certainly remember you.”
After that, I would enter the room and receive a smile.
“Hi. I’m your teller. It’s nice to see you again.”
We had looked at each other in a silence that never felt wrong or awkward. Maybe it was all those years in the bank, side by side with her workmates, speaking always quietly, only sharing bits of small talk in a lull, or saying nothing at all.
Or it was all those years of going home to a place where if you spoke out loud, no one was there to hear you.
“Bye from your teller,” she used to say, when a visit from her chaplain had come to an end.
And now she was entering her last moments. I was in the chair beside her. A nurse had just come in, checking her. Not long now. I nodded, knowing.
As the minutes ticked by, I was busy trying to think of what to say. Should I ask if she wanted prayers? Would the teller want to speak of her soul? Of her life, of what had meaning to her, of what was holy to her?
Then all of a sudden, she wanted to talk.
Lying there, she was bone-thin. She weighed barely more than a child. But not in her own mind.
Her voice was strangely clear, although its tone was a little muffled. She was obviously anxious, worried.
She was telling me that the angel who just entered the room was all wrong, and please, being her chaplain, would I do something about that? It seemed that the angel had been refusing to do what the teller wanted: go away and send in the right one.
The problem, I learned, was a problem with size. It was too little.
I also learned tha
t the angel was neither male nor female, not particularly, not so you could tell. It was very, very slender. And would I take note of its height? How could an angel be so short?
Basically, a great mistake had been made. This angel was unsuitable for the job of carrying the teller off the earth, and then across all the distance to God.
To make things worse, it was standing there scowling and looking angry, as if the teller were busy in her bed with thinking up new ways to insult it. Obviously, the angel had no experience being criticized, never mind rejected.
And would I look at those arms? Those arms were scrawny.
The teller was afraid of being dropped. She didn’t want an angel who might not even have the strength to lift her out of bed.
I listened to her. Her voice was growing whispery and hoarse and raspy. Long pauses took place between many of her words. But she was getting her words out. She could have been back at work, talking about a customer who wanted her to cash a check against an account that did not have the right amount of money, and the customer was refusing to believe her. I could have been a supervisor called over to handle the fuss.
Hesitating, trying to make up my mind which course of action to take, I bowed my head. The teller was watching me carefully, trusting me. Should I talk to the angel from my chair? Should I stand and approach it, speaking directly into its ear, in whispers, privately?
There were three other beds in this room, all occupied. Nurses and aides came and went. The teller’s roommates were newly post-surgical and required much attention.
The curtains around her bed had been partially drawn, so that she was shielded for privacy from the beds opposite and beside hers. There was not much room between the foot of the bed and the curtain the angel was inside of. If I went over to the foot, I would need to figure out a way to position myself. I would need to stand in a space that was not already taken.
I could not allow it to happen that I bumped into the angel—or worse, accidentally knocked it over.
And what tone of voice should I use, even in whispers? Should I be forceful, bossy? Should I be kind and respectful, so the teller wouldn’t worry I’d ruffle feathers that weren’t already ruffled?