by Ellen Cooney
I heard no snoring, no utterances from the depths of some dream, but that might have been happening because my ears had stopped being able to take in sound. I was fully muffled, I realized, in a cocoon of a hush that was just like the hush of the chapel.
You can’t enter the dreams of someone else to say hi and wish them well and It’s dark but we have to believe there will be light, and we will be right about that. If I thought I could knock on the doors of people’s dreamlands, I’d be going around the medical center every night with my hand raised for the act of knocking.
But this wasn’t just any night and I wasn’t at the medical center and these sleepers were not people.
My prayer for them came to me like words of a song I’d already known the melody of. I was telling them all that I hoped they did not have the sense, in their not-cages, they would be there for the rest of their lives. I was telling them about the librarian and her clot and how afraid she was and how I’d be seeing her again soon. I was telling them about the lawyer and his cloud and his joy. I was telling them about a forever-broken-body boy who was young enough to not be broken in his soul, or maybe it was because, lonely as he was, he was born to luck out with the power of an ocean. I was telling them about Mrs. Copp and how I believed that what was holy to her was her own self.
I was telling them what I had not been able to tell the librarian in my awful silence before I lucked out myself and saw she had talked her way into sleeping: whatever they’d been through already, whatever they felt in their darkest moments, Please imagine what hope is, and please then have it.
And may you all in the morning go outdoors in sunlight and roll around like Teletubbies, I was praying, as I was moving along, a little faster, to the other wing.
The wing of the cats!
I passed a large room with walls largely made of window glass. I saw cages, cat shapes, cat fur, orange, gray, striped, black, white, not all sleeping: shiny eyes, looking my way, perhaps sensing me? But I wasn’t going into that room, although I would have liked to.
I was headed for … a parlor?
That’s what it looked like: an old-fashioned parlor with furniture that might have come from someone’s grandparents, or an estate auction or yard sale where, at the end, they give away stuff for free, just to be rid of it. The door was open. A card on the wall said, “Meet and Greet Room.”
I saw a darkly upholstered, saggy, frayed-edges sofa and a pair of old armchairs with vinyl coverings that looked almost like leather. The walls were softly yellow. There were no lamps, just a ceiling light of a bulb in a dome, low-wattage, giving off a gentle sheen of light. The pictures in frames on the walls were photographs of people with pets: dogs on leashes heading out of the building, cats in carry-crates or in someone’s arms.
I entered. On the couch, a woman was sleeping, in a seated position, her head neither tipped back nor bowed. It looked like she hadn’t meant to doze off.
The rug on the floor was a braided one, oval, the fibers so worn, the braidings were smoothed out and flattened. A dog was lying on this rug, on her side, eyes closed, a pillow under her head: a bed pillow, no doubt brought here from someone’s home. The pillowcase was flowery, all pink and light green.
She was a dog in the category of Large: black and brown, a mix, partly German Shepherd, partly mastiff, partly a little boxer too. Her body was thin. She wasn’t so thin that her ribs were showing, but her ribs were showing almost. Her muzzle had the gray of old age. It appeared her health had been poor for quite some time. But she did not seem in pain.
On one of the vinyl armchairs was a sheet of paper. The lettering was in thick black marker.
THERE IS NOWHERE ELSE TO LEAVE THIS DOG.
SHE IS NOT OKAY.
IT IS ALL TOO MUCH TO HANDLE.
PLEASE DON’T THINK WE’RE BAD PEOPLE.
THANK YOU.
Her breathing was slow, almost languid. A bowl of water was on the floor. A small square of terrycloth was in the bowl too. The sleeping woman, I realized, was a shelter staffer, keeping a vigil, giving water to the dog by squeezing the cloth.
And finally I was ready to look at the other armchair, at the dog sitting there, his whole self wide awake. He was meeting my eyes as if asking the question, What took you so long to find me?
“Hi, Eddie,” I said.
I was bursting with questions. Had he ever lived in this place? The agency had taken him in as a stray, I remembered. Was he adopted from here? Had he fled whoever adopted him, and if so, why? I was sure he’d never do anything without a good reason. Did he know this dog?
All I could do was hope he understood I knew he’d brought me here to be a chaplain at a passing.
I was able to descend to the floor, to hover by the animal whose name I didn’t know. It was the same as if I’d entered the ER to be with someone brought in with no identification.
I glanced again at the woman on the couch, and saw the face of someone overcome by exhaustion. I imagined the touch of that woman’s hands on animal fur, the sound of her voice, soothing a frightened dog, a confused dog, a lonely one. Maybe she was a night-shift regular. Maybe she had worked all day and her shift had been extended, and someone had left their sick old dog here, perhaps outside the front door. Perhaps she had strained herself, carrying the dog indoors. Perhaps the pillow was her own, for naps on that couch.
The woman seemed another version of Eddie’s pregnant handler, not that she was pregnant in a beach ball jersey. She was a little overweight, her body shaped like a pear. On her feet were bright-purple Crocs. She wore denim overalls, baggy, far from new. A folded bandana served as a headband. Her hair reminded me of my own—but on her it was an Afro. She was lightly brown, and freckled, the tiny darker circles dotting her face below her eyes.
The bandana had slipped down a bit, on the way to becoming a blindfold. I wished I had the power to go over to her and gently, gently push it back in place.
Eddie left the armchair and settled down beside me. His breath was going in and out in the rhythms of the dog on the floor, and so was mine, as if he and I were a little sedated.
Then I saw that the eyelids of the dog on the floor were lifting, so that her eyes were neither all the way open nor all the way closed.
“You’re full of grace, and I see that, you beautiful animal,” I told her.
That’s what I used to say all the time to Bobo Boy. Eddie just watched, just observing, like a medical student. I was under no delusion either of us could break through to her, but suddenly I knew she was aware of us. Here, now, it didn’t matter what could be seen or unseen in the way of physical eyes.
I watched that dog gather up whatever force she still had—her whole self became focused on sending a signal. She was willing herself to speak, somehow. And just when I thought the effort would fail, she managed some movements: a slight little rise of her tail, up and down a few times, with the sounds of soft, mild thumping.
I heard those sounds, when all along in my hush, I couldn’t hear anything else. I heard the thumps on the braided rug, like a talking tail in action.
The dog was saying a hello to us, like a patient in a bed, glad and surprised to have visitors.
Maybe this was just me, reading something into the dog that really wasn’t happening, but I felt that she was thinking of the sleeping woman, of her kindness, her touch. She wanted to hang on. I felt that, if she were close to the place of last moments, she was hoping she wouldn’t do her passing in the moments before the woman woke. She didn’t want the woman to open her eyes and her ears to the new stillness.
I think Eddie’s presence gave her strength. I think he knew that, like that was his job.
I felt myself turning. The two calico cats had just appeared in the parlor doorway, silently, one stout and one lean, watching. It seemed to me they knew exactly what they were doing, and why they had felt they needed to make the journey from the front counter: to help out with the vigil.
“You did great. I think it’s time for us to
go, Eddie,” I said.
He looked like he agreed with me that we needed to return to the feel of our own heartbeats, like beats of a background percussion, tapping and tapping, like the dog on the floor, moving her tail again, in just very small sounds. But it seemed a whole band was playing music, and all the instruments were drums.
Twenty-two
It’s so bright!
The light on the ceiling burned whitely into my eyes, not that I knew at this moment where I was, or how I came to be here.
A woman in Housekeeping had just found me in the stairwell. She did not seem alarmed that the night chaplain was blinking her eyes in a daze, and appeared to be stuck. I was lying on the steps at a very odd angle, as if I’d tried to coast down on an invisible sled, and managed only to run into the railing.
The housekeeper showed no surprise when the first thing I did was ask a question she could not have expected.
“Where’s that dog?”
She had only just arrived. She was sorry, but she hadn’t seen one. And that was a pity to her, because unlike most housekeepers, she was fond of having them around, in spite of the extra required cleanup. You always have to be on the lookout for shed fur, so awful in terms of being sanitary in a hospital—but it’s not like the therapy animals go around dropping pieces of their coats on purpose.
She had witnessed the effects they have on patients. Bringers of smiles, they are. She had lived by herself since her divorce a few years ago, and her children were grown and had flown the nest, so she took the plunge into having a companion: a brown-and-black Chihuahua she adopted from a shelter. She had thought about having him trained for therapy work, but he does not have a positive outlook about anything outside their home. He enjoys most of all to run around yapping and expressing his opinions; he thinks humans are stupid and dangerous, except for her.
But there might have been a dog a little while ago on these stairs, seeing as how the reverend has said so. She sniffed the air. She couldn’t say for sure that she wasn’t picking up a little bit of an odor. They do leave smells behind.
It seemed the reverend had not been injured. And thank God for that!
She was coming into the hall from cleaning the waiting room when she heard a strange thump. She thought that someone carrying a heavy object had dropped it. She had decided to investigate only because she worried she might have imagined it. Some nurses were right nearby, and did not detect a thing.
“And look, the box no one dropped is you, Reverend,” she was saying.
I felt I was being ministered to. I was shaken, light-headed, dizzy, and afraid to stand up. She realized I had fainted, had lost consciousness. And here was this person, talking and talking and talking, wrapping me in a cocoon of words, in the melodies of a soft, friendly voice.
I saw a wide, smiling face, so pale white it seemed to me for a moment the woman might actually be a patient. A pale-blue hair scarf covered her head, tied in the back, fitting her snugly, as if she’d lost her hair due to chemo—but that was wrong. She wore the loose, tunic-type top of the housekeepers, the same color as the scarf.
Everything about her expression was saying, “I will help you, not judge you.”
“Reverend,” she said, “should you go and let a doctor or a nurse have a look at you? I can tell you’re not hurt, but what if possibly you hit your head? A neighbor of mine took a fall in her yard not long ago and thought nothing of it, as she landed on grass. But it was a nasty thing afterward and she was found to have a concussion. I only say so out of concern. You and I have not crossed paths before but I know you’re well regarded. I don’t think Our Lord would want you to ignore any harm that might come to your brain.”
“Thank you.”
I was well regarded!
I was now able to shift myself to a sitting position on a stair. I had not hit my head. My backside was achy, but I was not in pain. I remembered that I had not become the chaplain of the mason from the roof collapse. I remembered I had slipped on the stairs and fell.
And I walked in the night.
“You said shelter,” I told the housekeeper. “What’s it called?”
“Oh, Reverend, you’ve got me there. I’m drawing a blank. It was my daughter who brought me.”
“What did it look like?”
“Brick. I recall a brick building. They painted it over with white, but you could still see it was brick. How are you feeling now?”
“I really am all right,” I said, concealing my disappointment.
The housekeeper took hold of my hand, enfolding it with both her own, like a sandwich. She helped me up to my feet.
We parted after a quick, warm embrace and an offer from her to have tea together one of these nights, which I accepted. I wasn’t so shaky I couldn’t continue down the stairs.
“Please still be here,” I was saying, like a prayer. “Please please please still be here.”
The gray light of dawn was everywhere outside the windows I passed. I could smell breakfast being made below in the kitchen, coffee and bacon and doughy things being baked, overwhelming all the usual smells of the hospital. I felt the day beginning to wake, vibrating all around me. I felt what it’s like to know a day is like a country I had to take my leave of.
There they were.
If I hadn’t turned a corner that moment, on my way to the consultation room, I would have missed them. They were headed for outdoors: the pregnant handler and the boxer.
“Hey! Eddie!”
He turned his big head. Do animals smile?
Yes they do.
His jowls were relaxed; he was showing a bit of teeth. And there was his tail, going from stillness to the hello of a quick back-and-forth, as a human would wave a hand.
Once, I sat with a man who ran a sanctuary for horses. Some had been in racing, some in the carriage-ride trade, some in circuses. Some were elderly, and turned out of their stables by owners who wanted those stalls and pastures for animals young enough to ride. The man had grown angry in his illness, which had reached a point of being untreatable. He had asked for a chaplain because he wanted to talk about God—but not in relation to how sick he was.
He had left the medical center for hospice care, at the sanctuary. He could prove to me that God does not take part in life on Earth, he had said. All you have to do is think about the fact that animals cannot speak to humans in words. Or to put it another way, humans cannot speak to animals the way animals speak to each other.
Maybe, he had hoped, he’d be lucky after his passing. He wanted to be a ghost with the power of finding out from his horses everything about their lives they had not been able to tell him when he was alive. He wanted to move among them like he was taking notes for their biographies. He wanted to let them know it had sometimes made him yell and kick the ground and raise his fists toward the sky like a bellowing, bearded Old Testament prophet, or a raging old king in something by Shakespeare. “Why,” he would yell, “why, why, why can’t we walk up to an animal and have a conversation?”
“I wish you could talk, Eddie,” I whispered to him, bending to pat him.
He raised his head so I could scruff my fingers at his neck, and pat the white bib of his chest. He sniffed me as if I might have a slice of pizza folded up somewhere in a pocket.
“What’s that you said?”
The young woman held his leash with one hand. Her other arm was in a curve at her belly, like a sling. Over her beach ball jersey was a faded-green army-surplus jacket, way too big for her. It was unzipped, though; clearly it couldn’t reach around her belly.
“I was just saying hi,” I answered. “But I’m wondering, as I’ll be seeing him on my shifts, can you tell me anything about where he came from?”
She was impatient to get away. This would be her first baby. She hadn’t experienced morning sickness since the first few months, but all the smells of cooking were making her nervous she’d be sick.
She was about to quit her job. She would become a stay-home mom, so when I e
ncountered Eddie again, he’d be with someone else. Right now though, they had a mission. She was wiped out, but they’d been called to another hospital, one that took in other people from the roof collapse. Their ride was coming, was probably there already.
And please, as she’d deliver her baby here, would I come see her?
She was incredibly nervous about the whole birth and parenting thing. She was just talking to her mother the other day and her mother told her horror stories, horror stories, of what she went through with her, involving two days of agony, and wasn’t it terrible for a mother to say to her pregnant child, “You tried to kill me, and I hope yours doesn’t do the same”?
In fact for years and years in her childhood, her mother called her “Killer Baby,” like that was her actual name. Growing up, she’d been highly active, and for a time, she took lessons in boxing. Also judo. She had never imagined Killer Baby was meant literally.
All through the handler’s low-volume outburst, Eddie stood solemnly, looking up at me, saying nothing. I was almost getting mad at him for not being a human-talking dog.
“If it’s any consolation,” I said, “when my mother was pregnant with me, she thought she was entering menopause. I was probably the only first grader in my school who knew that word. But I thought it meant something else.”
“Wow, Reverend, is your mom, like, old?”
“She doesn’t believe so.”
“What did you think menopause meant?”
“A disease you die from, because there isn’t a cure,” I said.
“Oh, God. But then, it wasn’t death. It turned out to be you.”
“That’s a lovely way to put it. Please, when you come in to have your baby, have me paged.”
“What if I come in and it’s daytime?”
“They’ll call me at home.”
“Will they let you in the labor room?”
“I can go anywhere,” I said. “Can you tell me about Eddie’s background?”
“Sure. But there’s not much to know.”
“I heard he was a stray.”
She nodded, and her expression was very much like the face of the horse man, when he was deeply sad, as an undercoat to his anger.
