One Night Two Souls Went Walking

by Ellen Cooney

  That was as far as I got before we were interrupted.

  An orderly in gold-colored scrubs was approaching. He was young, burly, and sort of military in his bearing. His head was shaved except for a short patch on top. His forearms were covered with intricate spiderworks of tattoos, the lines and squiggles all black, all stark against the whiteness of his skin. Why couldn’t someone have come along I knew?

  The robe in Mrs. Copp’s hands looked like something being formed into a weapon. She was bunching it up, raising it. She appeared ready to throw it at this man. I could not tell which was more powerful in her expression: anger or fear. She seemed to understand he had arrived to take her out of the hall.

  “Whoa,” said the orderly. “I’m your friend.”

  He turned to me, his nostrils flaring. He was smelling the odor of urine.

  “Is this the dementia patient? Is she unstable? I’m supposed to ask, like, if she needs to be secured.”

  Perhaps he was new. Perhaps in his training, no one told him not to speak of a patient as if the patient isn’t right there.

  “Mrs. Copp,” I said, “please tell him what you told me, about being admitted.”

  The old woman refused to speak. It was the same as if she were deaf.

  Then he addressed her directly, slowly, in a softer voice. He could have been an adult trying to reason with a rowdy, unpredictable child he was determined to be gentle with.

  “I’m taking you for a ride, dear, seeing as how the bed you’re sitting on has wheels. You and I are going to a room and we’ll get you settled in. Then they’ll be taking you to another one, to run some little tests. They won’t hurt one bit.”

  “Stop a minute here,” I said. “She hasn’t consented to treatment. Or to being admitted. Did her nursing home come through with information?”

  “I don’t know about that,” the orderly answered. “You work here?”

  My name badge was right there on my jacket. I pointed to it.

  “I’m in the chaplaincy.”

  “So you’re not a next of kin or something.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “Well, she’s down for admission. Looks to me it’s not open to debate. She’s booked for a CT, blood, the whole works.”

  “Please,” I said, “will you find out if any information came in? And I know Mrs. Copp wants to speak to the physician who examined her.”

  Reluctantly, he went back to the ER, and Mrs. Copp lifted one hand from the clutch of her robe, to prop up her top plate again.

  “Go … home, Chaplain. No … cat.”

  “A CAT scan, do you mean? You’ve had one before?”

  A nod, two nods.

  “I don’t think you’ve been a patient here before.”

  “An … other hos … pital. But all are … the same. And no … cath.”

  It was not a repetition of “cat.” She saw my confusion.

  “Cath is when … can’t go to … bathroom. For the lab … tech … ni … shun.”

  “A catheter? Mrs. Copp, are you talking about something that was done to you?”

  “Sample. Couldn’t … go. They said … have to give … sample.”

  “Did you have urine drawn with a catheter? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “They put it … in me. A tube. You know? Way in. You know … what I mean?”

  “I do. I do know what you mean. I promise you, it won’t be done to you again.”

  “It hurt.”

  “Yes. It would have.”

  “Bad.”

  “No one is going to hurt you,” I said.

  I reached for the robe, intending to help Mrs. Copp put it on. But she was holding it with a tight grip. I realized that she had taken a turn to a dark place in her memory. Her top plate of teeth had slipped again. A hardness came over her face, like a new paralysis.

  Whatever she was feeling was exhausting her, on top of the aftermath of her stroke. She had lost the strength to sit upright. She let herself sink back, her head landing on the pillow as if her whole body had fallen lengthwise.

  I had made a mistake in moving for the robe. She had thought I meant to take it away from her, like robbing her. She thought I couldn’t be trusted.

  What to say? What to say? What to say?

  “Mrs. Copp? Will you tell me about the dog you saw?”

  She relaxed immediately. I was back in her graces. Her thumb was in her mouth again. “Want dog … want him … to come back.”

  “Can you tell me what he looks like?”

  “Boxer. He’s … spes … shell. He’s big.”

  A big boxer?

  The ghost of Bobo Boy could not by any stretch of the imagination resemble such a dog. I felt silly for thinking that way.

  “Special how, Mrs. Copp?”

  “He can … be … in … visible.”

  “But you saw him, this boxer?”

  That’s when we heard another person in the hall. A physician I knew slightly was passing by, speaking into his phone, walking in long strides. He wore a long white coat, unbuttoned, billowing out around him.

  The seizure might have been gathering all along, its power slowly building. It began to happen in the split second before it was clear that the physician took no notice of Mrs. Copp. He turned the corner, vanished.

  There was a gasp, like a swallow of too much air. The head on the pillow tipped upward, eyes opening wide, wider. The old woman’s hands flailed at the air, briefly, then came to a rest at her sides.

  A stiffness went through Mrs. Copp’s body. Her mouth opened wide. Her top plate of teeth jutted forward, like a partly open drawer. Swiftly, reflexively, as if I’d handled someone’s teeth many times, I removed that top one, then the bottom, which had fully come loose.

  I looked at the pink fragility of the old woman’s mouth, toothless like a bird’s. I remembered reading somewhere that birds became birds only when their ancestors stopped having teeth. It was the lightness of their mouths that let them be airborne. It wasn’t just about growing wings.

  “It’s all right,” I whispered. “I know you can hear me. I know it’s all right.”

  There was no way for her to answer the questions I wasn’t asking. Do you want me to call a code on you? Do you want me to bring people running? Do you want to be hooked to equipment, to have needles put into your skin, to let powerful drugs course into you, to perhaps have your heart shocked with voltage from paddles? To have a tube put into your throat, old as you are, mute as you are right now? Do you want to be taken upstairs in an elevator and kept alive?

  “Go in peace,” I whispered. “All is well.”

  With the dentures in my hand, I bowed, to be closer to the face so strangely tilted, the eyes looking up at the light. I touched the side of my face to that other one, feeling with my own cheek the old, thin, well-worn skin.

  Then I let out my own breath. I hadn’t realized I was holding it in, as if I had jumped in a dive, into deep, dark water. My heart had fisted up in my chest, but now it was beating again.

  I picked up the pink bathrobe. I placed the dentures in one of the pockets. I never had the chance to ask what was holy to her. But I think she would have answered, “My own self.”

  In a moment, after calling out an alarm, I’ll be speaking to the gold-scrubs orderly, ER people, the nurse who was only here because a roof had collapsed. The orderly will turn his head, looking away from me, but not before I see his eyes pool up. I will learn he’s new. I will slip my hand into his: a chaplain to a young man seeing his first death.

  And again I’ll be paged.

  Sixteen

  It shouldn’t have hurt but it did. It really hurt.

  You’re not a priest. You take off hat collar, you hear me?

  The man in the bed, age sixty, had been injured by debris in the roof collapse. When he asked for a chaplain, he might have been confused about which hospital he’d been brought to.

  No religious affiliation was listed on his intake forms, which an
yway, given the circumstances, were incomplete. He was being stabilized, and possibly would need surgery.

  He had been shopping at the store on his own. Calls to his wife at home had not been answered. He had given the information that their habit was to turn off the ringer when they retired for the night. He had not given any other contact names or numbers.

  Newly an inpatient, he found himself in a zone of lonely strangeness. No one in his life knew where he was, or what happened to him. Apparently he had slipped out of bed and gone out to the sale as a secret.

  He ran a small masonry business. After years of never having the time or inclination to build a patio behind his house, he had decided to do so. Money was tight in his family. He had seen a commercial that the store was offering wrought iron patio furniture at a price for a whole set you would normally pay for just one chair.

  Out he had ventured in his pickup, planning to hide the furniture under covers in his garage, which his wife almost never went into. He meant the whole thing as a surprise. If he had stayed outdoors on the lot, where the furniture was, he would not have been a victim. But he’d gone in because they said on the loudspeaker they were giving away free barbecue equipment. Also, the cushions for the chairs were inside.

  He was revived at the scene by paramedics, after being found unconscious.

  In the medical center, reports were coming in about victims knocked down and hurt by a rush of shoppers acting in what sounded like a stampede. The man had refused to tell his nurses how his serious bruising and damage occurred. Although he’d been sedated, he was waging a battle against falling asleep, and he was winning.

  He wanted a chaplain to talk to him about Jesus and the parable of the Good Samaritan. He’d been specific about it to one of his nurses, like he was sending out a work order for the chaplain to contemplate on the way to his room.

  He had worked as a mason all his life, he had said, and never once, until now, had he experienced the feeling that his soul, inside him, was as heavy as stones he had lifted and held. His nurse had felt he was telling her this to put a special emphasis on his need for spiritual help, maybe in case the chaplain was busy with other patients.

  He had wanted to flag his work order as an emergency.

  He was a man of faith, he’d said.

  His religion meant everything to him, he’d said.

  The consensus in his unit was that, trying to escape the collapse, he fell, or he was pushed. His location was near an exit. He had not been hidden under rubble. Most of his injuries would fit a theory of being trampled. He must have huddled on the floor as an obstacle, perhaps holding out his hand for help, expecting someone in the crowd to stop and help him.

  The Gospel of Luke was in my mind as I hurried to his side. It had moved me deeply to know that the mason was reaching out for comfort this way. I did not have a Bible but I didn’t need New Testament text in front of me. I could either recite the story, or list off he elements and then talk about it.

  Jesus is approached by a lawyer. His question is, How does one gain eternal life?

  And the story of the beauty and the power of compassion follows, with its solid and solemn truth. There is kindness. There is hope. There is faith. There is the figure of the Samaritan, a giant in the world of all stories, without a name of his own, not that he needs one. He becomes his own actions.

  A certain man went out one day and he was badly wounded.

  It all begins with a lawyer, I was planning to say, knowing how aware I’d be that in another part of the hospital, the lawyer of the cloud was hours away from his release.

  Reaching the mason’s doorway, I steeled myself to get ready, glad that I’d been given a heads-up on his appearance, his condition. The room was dusky, the shape in the bed quite still. His head was bandaged. I stepped toward the foot of the bed so he didn’t have to turn his head to see me.

  What part of me did he see first? My hair, the hair of a woman?

  My chest inside my jacket, and the swell of a woman’s breasts?

  My neck, bearing a white collar?

  From the expression on his face as he stared at me, I had the thought that if he had held an object in his hand, and had the ability to throw it, he would throw it at me, like Mrs. Copp with her bunched-up nightgown.

  But I felt that a weapon in his hands would not be soft. He might have been, all along, a violent man, the violence perhaps always just under his surface. I saw that I outraged him. I was not what he had ordered.

  “You’re not a priest. You take off hat collar, you hear me?”

  The weakness of his physical self and the effects of the drugs he’d been given did not diminish the intensity of his voice, bursting all around me. I considered for a moment trying to speak with him anyway—but two nurses came running in.

  It was personal. I didn’t want it to be, but it was.

  “We’re sorry, we’re sorry,” murmured those nurses. The bellowing voice had stunned them. They looked like they’d been wounded too. But their job was taking care of the patient, not taking care of me.

  I entered a small waiting room at the end of that hall and there I sat, in the center of an upholstered sofa, feet flat on the floor, arms crossed at my chest like I was hugging myself: the chaplain who didn’t minister to a man who had claimed his soul was heavy like stone.

  I leaned back. The sofa was far from new. The cushions were saggy, dented from the weight of many who were here before me. I was too tired to cry, I felt, even though I’d tanked up on coffee in my office.

  Then there was my phone. A text.

  “I got up to pee. You there? You okay?”

  My sister.

  “I’m here,” I typed. “Taking a break. Just have a minute.”

  “Well I got a feeling something’s wrong.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m fine.”

  “I have a checkup next week. Tests & stuff.”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah. I hate them so much.”

  “I know. I’ll come with you.”

  “Thanks, got it for early a.m. when you’re post shift & you’ll be wiped but I’ll treat coffee.”

  “Just coffee?”

  “All right a whole breakfast. Don’t tell anyone about the appt.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  “Me too!”

  “Remember that day you faked you passed out, the soccer tryouts?”

  I never know what memory she’ll pull out, waving it around like a flag. That particular one is a sore spot, even though it happened almost thirty years ago. But that’s the thing about a family. The past is never the past. It just all keeps on being right there.

  “I do remember that day,” I typed.

  “Good. I was just thinking about it. I want you to know I forgive you.”

  “Wait. YOU forgive ME?”

  “That’s right. And guess what. My gym’s having a special for new members. I’m thinking, I’ll cover the cost. Don’t you think it’s time?”

  She never gives up on this subject. Join my gym, work out!

  “No thanks.”

  “You need exercise.”

  “I get it. Plenty.”

  “You don’t. You’ll turn into a human dumpling.”

  “Got to go.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Did someone just die?”

  “Don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Who was it?”

  “A woman. Old. I’m sad.”

  “Were you with her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She was lucky to have you and that’s a fact. Have a good rest of your shift. Bye!”

  Getting mad at her is the same as being mad about a change in the weather and expecting it to change for the better, just because of a feeling. Last year, when her mammogram showed something that could be serious, I was the only person she told.

  She made me promise that, if she were dying, before she ever had th
e chance to be amazing at being elderly, I would become her chaplain and sit with her. My one duty would be to keep away anyone who might come into her room and try to cheer her up. She would want to use the last of her energy to stay mad that she was losing her energy.

  The scare wasn’t cancer. But she was still afraid. My big sister. And what if she were here, and she knew how the mason hurt me? She might not care about his injuries and what he’d been through.

  Yet she had texted that moment, giving me her presence.

  And a memory.

  It was a Saturday morning, spring, newly spring, like now, and I had locked myself in a stall, in a row of several porta-potties along the edge of a soccer field.

  And there was my sister, thumping the side.

  It was registration day for the little-kid teams. I hadn’t known that. I had thought I was being dragged to the field to be a spectator, same as usual. I would lie down on the grass and look up, up, always up. I would think my fairy would stir in me if I kept watching clouds go by.

  I would believe I could feel the earth below me, turning and tilted, revolving in its orbit, slowly, slowly through space. “Me and my soul are riding our planet,” I would say, as if I had draped myself over a giant ball, suspended in the sky.

  I thought that staring at clouds might be magical, might bring that other thing. I never felt that running through a soccer field kicking a ball would quite manage to do it.

  Probably my sister was babysitting me that morning. Then I realized I wasn’t brought here to watch her play, or watch a team she was coaching.

  The toilet stall stank of chemicals and a trash bin that had no lid. I had locked the door anyway.

  “Get out of there right now!”

  Thump, went those hands on the side. Then thump even more on the front.

  My sister was a giant then. If I didn’t come out, she was going to tip over that stall.

  I came out. I felt I’d been captured. I knew that all you had to do to qualify for a team was run down the field and not die. I knew what dying was.