Right then, Castle became alarmed to see that Bartholomew’s shirt was filling with blood. He quickly loosened the stretcher straps around Bartholomew’s shoulders so he could unbutton his black priestly shirt and examine him.
Exposing Bartholomew’s chest, Castle could not believe what he was seeing. Accompanying every violent movement of Bartholomew’s body, new wounds were appearing as if from nowhere. Castle’s mind raced. It almost looked like Bartholomew was being wounded from the inside, especially since no one in the ambulance was striking him and there was no outside explanation for why new wounds were showing up right then before Castle’s eyes.
Bartholomew looked as if he were trying to escape by violently twisting this way and that on the stretcher. It occurred to Castle that Bartholomew was desperately trying to turn his body completely around, to flip over from back to front, or even to position himself on one side or the other. Every time Bartholomew managed to twist around enough to expose a new section of his body, fresh wounds began appearing there, inflicted from some mysterious and unseen source.
Castle had never seen anything like this happening ever before, but his mind flashed to Bartholomew’s description of how he had suffered the stigmata. While Castle discounted the possibility it was real, his immediate intuitive reaction was that Bartholomew was suffering a severe scourging, and the thought of ancient Roman whippings came to his mind. Castle’s mind flashed on the scourging Jesus had received at the pillar as part of his torture leading up to his crucifixion and he began to worry that Bartholomew’s neurosis was pushing him even deeper into personally experiencing the passion and death of Christ. Could it be possible that here in the back of the ambulance, Castle and Morelli were watching the scourge wounds appear on Bartholomew’s body, adding the injuries of Christ’s scourging at the pillar to the stigmata in Bartholomew’s wrists?
To stop Bartholomew from thrashing about, Castle quietly injected a second dose of the tranquilizer, again to apparently no effect. Bartholomew’s body continued twitching in spasms of pain, as if he were being beaten.
WITH HIS MIND back in the ancient courtyard, Bartholomew felt like a trapped animal. There was no escape from the repeated blows that drove him to his knees. The instant he fell, the centurions taunted him to get up. “What kind of man are you?” they jeered. “Can’t even take a little beating?”
Since he was unable to get back to his feet, the centurions with the whips stopped long enough to kick him, then grabbed him by his arms and lifted him back to his feet. Once Bartholomew was upright, the beating resumed.
Bartholomew struggled to twist around to expose his front to the whips, thinking the soldiers might not beat him on his chest and genitals, but he was wrong. While he saved his back for a moment from further injury, the centurions whipped his forelegs and chest, not sparing his stomach and abdomen. No matter which way Bartholomew twisted, front or back, he suffered the continued blows of the flagrum, the lead weights tearing his skin away. With his wrists bound to the short marble pillar, there was no escape from the torture. For what seemed like more than an hour, they beat him, the centurions with the whips and the soldiers in the courtyard seeming to get an almost sexual pleasure from his suffering and pain.
“Why can’t you save yourself?” the soldiers taunted, mocking his agony. “Where’s your army now, King of the Jews? Why have your legions abandoned you?”
They laughed as he fell to his knees or fell to the ground, his upper body hanging from the metal ring, his bound hands suspended back above his head by the rope that held his wrists to the ring. “You cry like a woman!” they jeered. “This is the way a child would die. Do you want your mother? Stand up and take your punishment like a man.”
More than once in the throes of his passion, Bartholomew’s mind froze with alarm, realizing how the goal of his torturers was to bring him as close to death as possible, but not so far as to actually kill him, just prolong his agony and intensify his pain. Bartholomew knew this was a beating from which he would never recover. Somehow, he comprehended that this scourging was just the first act in a prolonged drama of death that would have several acts. The soldiers would beat him to a point where the injuries would cover every inch of his body, but he was by no means the first victim these brutes had tormented and he would by no means be the last.
In his horror, Bartholomew realized that these Roman centurions dressed in their military garb, with their wine-red tunics and tight-fitting leather bindings, were not savage beasts. To the soldiers this cruel courtyard was their temple of pain and Bartholomew their victim, with his hands bound by leather to their short marble altar of cruelty.
What they wanted was to intensify and prolong his anguish so as to intensify and prolong their pleasure at watching him suffer.
Even in their most sadistic impulses, these Roman centurions weren’t so foolish as to allow their victim to die, lest they themselves be beaten for ineptitude. Prolonging the scourging was essential to the torment.
Bartholomew’s entire body throbbed, but every time his mind threatened to go blank, the soldiers doused him with water, reviving him for more punishment.
The centurions paused only when it was time to pass the whips to fresh hands. The soldiers competed for the privilege of beating their bound victim, pushing one another aside as they lined up to be the next man wielding the flagrum.
AS THEY ARRIVED at Beth Israel, Bartholomew’s bloody body went limp.
The paramedics moved quickly, fearful that Bartholomew might die before they could get him inside the emergency room. The paramedics moved Castle and Morelli aside respectfully as they pulled the stretcher from the ambulance, lowered the gurney’s wheels, and rolled the injured man forward as quickly as they could.
Once he was inside the hospital, the ER team took over and went to work immediately. Stripping Bartholomew of clothes, they were shocked to see his body was severely injured front and back by hundreds of small cuts.
Pushing his way into the emergency room station, Castle was equally shocked to realize Bartholomew’s injuries crisscrossed virtually every square inch of his body, from his shoulders down to his ankles. Trying to stay in the background so he wouldn’t be thrown out, Morelli pushed himself into the ER right behind the psychiatrist.
Looking closely at Bartholomew’s back as the ER doctors turned him over, Castle could see that the back wounds were about twice as numerous as the wounds Castle had suffered on his front side. Trying to estimate the total number of wounds, Castle picked a small area below the shoulders and counted. He could see dumbbell-shaped wounds clustered in groups of three. Taking into account that the injuries were fewer on his front side, Castle extrapolated and made a quick estimate that Bartholomew had suffered possibly as many as one hundred groups of what amounted to some three hundred separate dumbbell-shaped wounds.
Each wound was nearly identical—less than a half inch in length, with two small circles of injury defining the ends of each wound. Looking closely he could see what looked like lash wounds connected to each dumbbell-shaped wound. His mind envisioned a whip of three thongs that had a dumbbell-shaped weight tied at the end of each thong. He recoiled when he imagined that Bartholomew could have been hit by as many as one hundred different scourge blows. He wondered how anybody could survive a beating that brutal. What he was seeing of Bartholomew’s naked body in the ER explained the anguish he had observed in the ambulance.
Standing in the background behind Castle in the ER, Morelli was coming to the same conclusions. Looking at Bartholomew as the doctors and nurses worked frantically to identify and treat his wounds, the thought flashed through Morelli’s mind that here was the live image of the scourged man of the Turin Shroud.
Moving quietly forward, Father Morelli finally had the chance to begin administering extreme unction. Praying in a whisper, Morelli blessed Bartholomew’s forehead with the sign of the cross and began bestowing on him the Church’s last rites.
For several minutes, the doctors and nurs
es did the best they could to contain the bleeding. Then Bartholomew suddenly relaxed. His breathing became more normal and his vital signs, measured on the monitors, were strong.
“We need to send him to the burn unit,” one of the ER doctors advised Castle. “His wounds cover his body. There’s too many to stitch and we have to stop the bleeding. These wounds have to be cleaned out carefully to prevent further injury. Then his entire body will need to be sterilized to prevent infection. These aren’t burns, but the burn unit has the kind of advanced treatment facilities and wound dressings he needs. He’s suffered massive fluid loss in addition to loss of blood. He could go into shock at any time.”
Castle agreed. Bartholomew would need intensive care for several days. He had the priest admitted to the burn unit and ordered monitoring of his circulatory system and heart. Castle was concerned Father Bartholomew’s obvious trauma would cause hemodynamic instability, with the possibility that the priest’s blood circulation might simply collapse. He also ordered twenty-four-hour monitoring for cardiac arrhythmia. For when Bartholomew could be transferred out of the burn unit to intensive care, Castle requested a private room, or a room in which the second bed would not be occupied. Castle wanted to maintain privacy for the priest and he was worried that a second patient or that patient’s family would begin asking too many questions.
This time, the psychiatrist planned to keep the priest hospitalized for whatever time it took to figure out what was going on. If these injuries were psychosomatic, then Bartholomew’s subconscious might continue inflicting serious injury on his body. Could this mental illness be stopped before Bartholomew’s subconscious inflicted a fatal injury on the priest? Castle was not sure. The wounds he was seeing were so similar to the wounds of Christ’s passion and death—the scourging at the pillar in addition to the stigmata on the wrists—that the prognosis could not be good.
Christ died on the cross. Would Bartholomew die imitating Christ’s crucifixion? Castle tried to remember what he could of the wounds of Christ’s passion and death that Bartholomew had not yet suffered—the crown of thorns, the nail through his feet, the spear in his side. Were these next? Castle didn’t consider Bartholomew consciously suicidal, but subconsciously—that was a different matter.
Stopping by the burn unit, Castle consulted with the physicians and nurses on duty, making sure they understood his instructions.
Satisfied that he had done everything he could, Castle decided he would return to see the priest early in the morning.
As he stepped out of the hospital at First Avenue and Sixteenth Street onto Stuyvesant Square, he was surprised to see a crowd of some 250 people quietly holding lit candles. They had gathered in a silent vigil that Castle presumed was for Father Bartholomew.
He wondered how these people knew Father Bartholomew was here, but he did not have to wonder about that for long.
Catching sight of the doctor leaving the hospital’s front entrance, Channel 5 reporter Fernando Ferrar stepped forward from the crowd with his film crew in tow. Seeing Ferrar rush at him with a microphone, followed by a mobile camera crew complete with bright lights, Castle had the answer to his question. Ferrar either had been monitoring police calls, or somebody at the television station had been tipped off.
The media circus was in full swing, even at this late hour on a Sunday night in New York City.
“Dr. Castle!” Ferrar shouted. “Can we ask you a few questions?”
Castle stopped long enough for Ferrar to shove the microphone in front of him. The lights from the TV crew illuminated the street around Castle in front of the hospital.
“Not right now,” the doctor objected. “I’m not ready for a press conference.”
“You are Father Bartholomew’s doctor, right?” Ferrar pressed on. “Can you tell us what happened? We are hearing from ER that he had scourge marks all over his body. Is this a miracle? Father Bartholomew already has the stigmata in his wrists, so now has he been scourged at the pillar? Is Father Bartholomew becoming Jesus Christ?”
“Father Bartholomew has been admitted to the hospital,” Castle affirmed. “That’s all I have to say right now.”
“Who is Father Bartholomew? Is he the Second Coming of Jesus Christ?”
“I’m a doctor,” Castle protested, “not a priest.”
“But you’re also a psychiatrist,” Ferrar said, playing to the television audience. “Is Father Bartholomew crazy?”
“I’ve said all I am going to say,” Castle said, clearly irritated at being confronted on the street like this by a rude and overly aggressive reporter.
“How badly is Father Bartholomew injured?” Ferrar pressed on, undeterred by Castle’s brusqueness. “Will he live?”
“That’s it for now,” Castle said, his voice bristling with the outrage he felt at this news assault. “Father Bartholomew is my patient and he has been admitted to intensive care. We will hold a press conference tomorrow, or the next day, but right now, this interview is over.”
Castle excused himself from Ferrar and pushed his way roughly through the crowd of people quietly holding their candles and praying.
He grabbed the first cab he could find and headed back to his Fifth Avenue apartment. The circus was gaining momentum.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Wednesday morning
Beth Israel Hospital
Day 14
By Tuesday night, Father Bartholomew had recovered sufficiently to be moved from the burn unit to a private room in the intensive care unit.
On Wednesday morning, Dr. Castle showed up at the hospital early, at 8 A.M., anxious to see how Father Bartholomew was doing.
As his limo approached Union Square, Castle could see that the crowd assembled outside the hospital had not gone away. Several hundred people appeared to be still keeping silent vigil. Determined to avoid another television hijacking, Castle had his driver take him to the private staff entrance underground.
Going directly to Bartholomew’s room in the ICU, Castle was surprised to find Father Morelli standing at Bartholomew’s bed, and a woman sitting on the bed, holding Bartholomew’s hand.
Castle was sure he had given instructions that Bartholomew was to have no overnight visitors. Visiting hours at the hospital did not begin until 10 A.M.
The priest from the Vatican might have talked himself into the room to be present with his fellow priest from New York City, but who was this woman and why was she here?
“She’s family,” the nurse said, reading Castle’s mind as the doctor entered the room. “She says she is Father Bartholomew’s sister.”
What sister? Castle wondered. In their therapy session, Bartholomew said he was an only child.
Wearing his white physician’s coat, Castle first said good morning to Father Morelli. The psychiatrist guessed from the priest’s beard stubble and his rumpled clothes that Morelli had spent the night at Father Bartholomew’s side, sleeping in the visitor’s chair. There was a second bed in the room, but the sheets looked like nobody had slept there last night.
“I thought I said ‘no visitors,’” Castle said pointedly, reproaching Morelli.
“I’m not a visitor, I’m his priest,” Morelli answered sharply in return. “Sunday night, I couldn’t leave Father Bartholomew alone. I prayed all through Sunday night that he would live. Monday and Tuesday, I came to the hospital during the night to check on Father Bartholomew, just to be sure.”
“I told you on Monday that I thought Father Bartholomew was out of danger,” Castle said.
“You did,” Morelli agreed. “But I couldn’t see how it would hurt anything if I spent the nights sleeping in the chair. What if you were wrong and Father Bartholomew had died? I’d never be able to explain to the pope why I wasn’t right here at his side every minute.”
Why argue? Castle thought. Castle knew he was on solid ground when he insisted that Morelli had no place in the analysis room in his office, but this was the hospital. Castle was the physician in charge but Morelli also had a p
oint. In a way, Morelli was “the priest in charge,” representing not just the Archdiocese of New York, but also the Vatican. Actually, Castle felt Morelli might be helpful here, especially if Father Bartholomew woke up.
Next, Castle decided he might as well introduce himself to the young woman and find out about her. But before he could say a word, she stood up from the bed and extended her hand to greet him.
“You must be Dr. Castle,” she said calmly. “I’m Anne Cassidy, Father Bartholomew’s half sister.”
When she stood, Castle could see she was a beautiful and fully mature woman. Before Castle could say a word, their eyes met. Her soft blond hair flowed elegantly down to her shoulders and her deep brown eyes looked alive and vibrant.
He too immediately struck her as handsome, with his neatly trimmed graying hair and beard making him look very distinguished and professional, even more so in his full-length white medical coat.
Both instantly felt out of time and place. To Father Morelli, their meeting appeared a casual affair, nothing out of the ordinary. But for Dr. Castle and the woman he was meeting for the first time, the moment had an otherworldly quality about it.
Castle looked deeply into her brown eyes and somehow connected almost with her soul. He felt he was having the same impact on her. Her eyes locked firmly on his and her gaze seemed to penetrate to the depths of his soul as well. Each of them connected with the other at a level far deeper than words.
Castle felt like he was standing there for an eternity contemplating this bewitching woman, feeling for maybe the first time in his life not fully in command of the situation.
“I didn’t know Father Bartholomew had a sister,” Dr. Castle said, shaking her hand as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.
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