An Unholy Mission (13 page)

“Whoooooeeeee!” whispered Timothea in such a way that only Olympia could hear the accolade.

Much as she wanted to talk to the nun about Luther, now was not the time. With Timothea still there, she didn’t want to start anyone thinking about anything, even her powerfully elegant bilingual cohort.

On Saturday morning Olympia called Jim, and the two talked at length about her conversations with Nancy and Luther and what action might be most appropriate. In the end they decided on a two-pronged approach. Olympia would go directly to Sister Patrick and tell her word for word what Nancy Farwell had described at their last meeting and follow that with Luther’s response to her confrontation of his behavior.

Jim would make good on his offer to arrange a second meeting with Luther and, under the guise of a colleague setting up a field education seminar at the hospital, see what more he might be able to learn about the man and his motives. Following that, and depending on how Sister Patrick reacted to what Olympia planned to tell her and what more Jim might be able to learn from Luther, they agreed it might be necessary to ask Sister Patrick to meet with the two of them.

As they were winding down their conversation, Olympia remarked that she had assumed that when she left academia for a more pastoral ministry, her life would become quieter and less complicated.

“You have a nose for trouble, Olympia,” said Jim, “and you’re always facing into the wind.”

Sister Patrick stepped out of the elevator on the third floor of Boston Women and Children’s Hospital and walked down the corridor to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Few people knew that she came here most Sundays to be with the at-risk newborns. Away from the noise and bustle, she would sit, rocking and singing lullabies to tiny scraps of life whose weary, anxious parents could not be there beside the Isolette twenty-four hours a day. The hospital seemed quieter on Sundays than on other days, and the nun walked softly as she turned into the unit.

“Good morning, Sister,” said the nurse in charge of the nursery. “How’s the weather out there? The light is always so dim in here, I have no idea what’s going on.”

“Absolutely beautiful,” said Patrick, lifting her hands in an encompassing gesture. “It’s definitely getting colder, but it is November, after all. It’s clear and crisp, though, what you’d expect at this time of year. Before you know it we’ll have a snow storm on the way, but not today.  I’ll probably go out for a walk later on.” She looked around. “Got any babies for me?”

“Oh, yeah,” said the charge nurse, getting to her feet, “one of your specialties, Sister. This one’s a mess, poor little thing. The mother is a crack cocaine addict; the police brought her in last night. Somebody found her giving birth in a gas station bathroom. A customer heard the groans, took one look and called 911. She gave up the baby on the spot and left the hospital as soon as she could get up off the bed. God only knows what’ll happen to her,” said the nurse, shaking her head, “but legally we can’t stop her. At least the baby’s got half a chance, once we get her over the withdrawal stage. I feel so bad for these babies. What a way to begin life.” She shook her head. “So much pain, and no one to go home to.”

The nurse picked up a little bundle, tightly swaddled in a pink blanket. Even from where she was standing, Patrick could see this was an undersized child and could hear the familiar thin, frantic wail of an addicted baby. She held out her arms and took the miserable infant to the rocking chair. There she held the little scrap of a thing firmly against her broad chest and began to chant and whisper words of comfort. Within minutes she could feel the tense little body relaxing against her own. The nurse stood watching.

“I don’t know what it is about you, Sister. I mean, not having children yourself or anything, you certainly do have a magic touch. You’re the only one that can quiet these babies.”

Sister Patrick smiled. She was drawing light circles on the baby’s back with her fingertips. “I’ll give you my home number, she said. “I’ll come in any time you need me. Look.” The nun lifted the corner of the blanket away from the wizened little face. “Just look at her. She’s got dark, curly hair.”

Before Luther left on Friday, the hospice charge nurse told him that one of his favorites, Mrs. Daly, would likely pass over the weekend and asked if he wanted to visit with her one more time before he left. On Sunday he called in to check on her and learned that she was still alive, so he decided to go in on his own time and sit with her for a while. Upon arrival at the hospital he went first to the Transition Unit to check on Nancy Farwell. As he approached room 311, Luther paused at the door and saw that her husband and children were clustered around the bed. If there was time after he visited Mrs. Daly, maybe he’d come back.

 The hospital schedule was more relaxed on Sundays, and visitors came and went all day. Luther was a chaplain, and as such he could come and go whenever and wherever he wished. He liked being able to do that.

Sister Patrick had just returned from the hospital and was unlocking the door of her apartment when she heard the phone ringing. She managed to catch it before the answering machine switched on and recognized the voice of one of her chaplains.

“Sister Patrick, is that you? This is Olympia Brown speaking. Do you have a few minutes?”

“I do. Is there a problem? I don’t get many calls at home.”

“I, uh, actually yes, I think so, Sister, but I’d rather talk about it to you in person. Could I meet with you first thing tomorrow before I go over to Women and Infants?”

Sister Patrick carried the phone over to her chair and was kicking off her too-hot sensible shoes as she spoke. The cool floor felt good on her tired feet. “This sounds serious, Olympia. Can you at least give me some indication of what it’s about?”

There was a slight hesitation before Olympia answered and Sister Patrick could hear her taking a long breath.

“I’ve come upon what I think might be an awkward situation involving one of the patients on the transitional unit and one of the chaplains. I need to talk to you and ask your advice, but I really want to do it in person. Please, Sister?”

There was a long pause.

“Luther?”

“Yes, Sister,” said Olympia.

Now it was Sister Patrick’s turn to be silent for a few long moments.

“I usually come in early. Can you make it by seven-thirty? That way, you can be on the floor at the usual time.”

“Thank you, Sister,” said Olympia. “I’ll be there.”

Sister Patrick hung up the phone and sat with her head bowed, one hand resting on the silent receiver and the other hand pressed hard against her lips.

The emergency pager Timothea had tucked into her purse went off at eleven-fifteen Sunday evening. Bleary-eyed and fuzzy from just having fallen asleep, she switched on the bedside light and reached for the phone. When she dialed the call-back number, the night supervisor picked up and told her that a patient had just died, the family was asking for a chaplain, and could she please come in?

Shaking the sleep out of her brain, Timothea told the woman she would be in as soon as she could and then asked who it was.

“A woman on the TU,” said the nurse, “Her name is Nancy Farwell. One of the aides went into check on her and found her dead. The family’s hysterical. They weren’t expecting it. She was scheduled for a liver transplant in the morning.”

“Help me, Jesus,” said Timothea as she put down the phone and heaved herself up and out of the warm, rumpled bed.

Thirteen

At seven thirty on Monday morning, Olympia Brown and Sister Patrick Alphonsus were sitting opposite each other in Sister Patrick’s office. The nun was ensconced in an old wooden swivel chair behind her desk, and Olympia was sitting on the outermost edge of the visitor’s chair. Without asking, Olympia had set down two cups of hospital coffee between them.

The nun thanked her and held out a tin of English Toffee to Olympia. “I know it’s a little early, but have a couple of these. Sometimes it takes more than coffee to get me going in the morning.”

Olympia smiled her appreciation, selected two and began unwrapping the first, stalling for time, not knowing really where or how to begin. The Office of Pastoral Care was in the older part of the hospital, built before everything was made streamlined and efficient out of impersonal polished steel and glass. The walls were paneled in a dark, grainy wood. On one wall, a single crank-out, stained glass window, open about two inches, let in a shaft of early morning sunlight that fell in an elongated, dusty diamond on the wine-colored carpet. There was a small brass crucifix on the wall behind the nun and a gold-washed icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa, a Polish Madonna, on the wall across from the door.

“This is really hard, Sister.” Olympia looked down at the bright spot on the floor, then back up into the broad, Slavic face of the nun.

“I don’t feel right coming in here, telling tales on a colleague, but I don’t feel I have a choice. It’s not my place to try and handle it myself.”

Sister Patrick sat forward in her chair. “What are you talking about, Olympia? Tell me what’s troubling you.”

“Last Friday I was visiting with one of the patients on the TU, Nancy Farwell. She’s waiting for a liver transplant. I may have mentioned her.”

“I believe you did,” said Sister Patrick.

“She’s very ill and may not live long enough to get the liver.”

Patrick nodded, listening.

“Well, it seems that Luther Stuart has taken it upon himself to visit her, as well.”

“He’s been assigned to the Hospice Unit.”

“I know,” said Olympia, twisting and re-twisting the toffee papers. “Sometimes they put a hospice patient in a TU bed. He was up there visiting another patient and then started coming to see Nancy, as well. She wasn’t officially a hospice patient when he started visiting her, although she may be by now. I just don’t know. Something about it is bothering me.”

“I can’t see any harm in his visiting her, other than maybe you’re having some territorial issues.” The nun tilted her head to one side. “Why don’t you describe the problem as you see it, Olympia?” Sister Patrick was holding a pencil in her two hands and rubbing and smoothing it with her thumb. She had emphasized the words
you see it
.

“Last Friday, when I visited Nancy, she was on oxygen and hooked up to a couple of different IV lines, and she was very weak. She asked me to pray with her, and after I did, she told me that when Luther comes in to pray with her, he puts his hand on her heart. She said he told her he does it so he can make a direct connection from his heart to hers.”

“He does
what
?” Sister Patrick dropped the pencil. Her face was turning bright red under her gray head covering. “How long have you known this? Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

Olympia slumped down in her seat. “It happened on Friday, and today is only Monday. Chaplains don’t usually come in over the weekend. That’s why I called you yesterday afternoon. It was probably the wrong thing, Sister, but I tried talking to him myself Friday afternoon. I thought it might be possible that Nancy could have been hallucinating or dreaming, and I didn’t want to make a false accusation based on an unsubstantiated story.”

The nun nodded. Her color was returning to normal. “I can understand that. So you went ahead and asked him about it? What did he say?”

“That’s the really scary part, Sister. When I asked him, he said exactly what Nancy Farwell said. He even used the same words she did, that he does it so he can make a direct connection.”

“What did you say?”

“I reminded him of what you said about touching patients without their permission and about patient transference of feelings, and then I asked him if he was out of his mind!”

Sister Patrick let out a nervous laugh, despite her evident concern, and started smoothing the pencil again.

“What did he say after that?”

“He told me he believes that he’s been called by God to work with the dying, that his hands are God’s hands on earth, and it’s up to him to make the connection. Then he looked right at me, Sister, and said he has no intention of stopping.”

Patrick drew a long, slow breath. “You did the right thing by coming to me, Olympia. This can’t have been easy for you. Thank you.”

“It’s agonizing, Sister, but now what?”

Patrick shook her head. “I don’t know. There’s no doubt that I have to do something immediately to put a stop to it. I don’t want to expose you, if I can help it, but you do understand that I may not have a choice. I suppose I could go and talk to the woman myself, but if she doesn’t  know me, it’s not likely she’s going to tell me that someone is sexually abusing her.” 

“I didn’t think of this as being a sexual issue,” said Olympia. “I just thought it was a boundary thing, but I have to tell you, that messenger of God idea of his makes me really uncomfortable.”

“The difficulty is all of those things you mentioned, Olympia. There’s definitely a boundary issue here, but I’m afraid there’s more. Now I’m speaking to you in confidence. I’ve been concerned from early on that he might be a religious fanatic, and if that’s the case, combined with the boundary issues, the last place he belongs is in a hospital, much less in a hospital as a chaplain. All of that aside, it is most definitely sexual abuse of a patient. The man is putting his hand on a woman’s chest, maybe right on her breast, maybe even fondling it. She did say he touched her heart, didn’t she? Think about it. She’s partially dressed, lying in bed. Oh, it’s a sexual issue all right.”

Olympia stared, wide eyed, at Sister Patrick. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it that way.  I just saw it as a boundary thing.”

“I may be a nun, Olympia, but I’m a woman, and I wasn’t born yesterday.” Sister Patrick clamped her arms across her chest in a gesture that was both confrontive and protective.

“As I said, I’d rather not involve you if I don’t have to, but I may have no choice. Would you be willing to meet with us if I find it necessary?”