Heavens to Betsy (16 page)

“What happened?”

“She lost consciousness and fell. We’re running some tests, but it doesn’t look good.”

Of course it doesn’t look good. The woman is ninety-four. Falling is not exactly a recreational activity at her age. But I refuse to believe that anything is going to happen to her. Not to Velva.

I don’t care that my hair is sticking up in three directions or that I’m wearing my tackiest sweats. I grab the car keys and my purse from the table beside the door and race into the night.

The emergency room is the great leveler of the human race. Rich, poor, black, white, English as a first language, and English as a second. Knife wounds, weed-whacker mishaps, flu, and broken bones. Everyone here is suffering.

After passing through the metal detector, I check in at the desk. The words, “I’m looking for one of my parishioners” are the universal pass code to get beyond the waiting room.

Velva’s in one of the treatment bays with a curtain pulled partially around the bed. I wince at the sight of her hooked up to multiple monitors, an IV tube attached to her hand. The worst thing is that they’ve had to intubate her. An oxygen mask covers her face, and she’s unconscious.

It hurts so much. I know I’m supposed to be professional and maintain my equanimity, but this is my Velva. I move to the side of the bed opposite the IV so I can take her free hand. Her fingers are cool and stiff in mine.

She rouses at the pressure of my fingers. Her eyes flicker open, and I realize she’s regaining consciousness. She pulls her hand away to reach for the oxygen mask and the plastic tubing they’ve run down her throat.

“No, Velva. You can’t.” I grab her other hand and hold it in mine. Her
eyes
are two pools of pain. “I’ll get the nurse.”

“No. I’m her pastor.”

The nurse purses her lips. I don’t have the time or the inclination to take umbrage at her disapproval of my profession. She can purse all she wants as long as she keeps Velva from pulling that tube out of her throat.

“Is she going to be okay?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.” The nurses hair is slicked back into a merciless ponytail, but she’s about twenty years too old to have any hope of the hairstyle making her look younger. “HIPAA, you know.”

I’d like to get my hands around the throats of the fools who wrote the so-called Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the new federal guidelines for sharing patient information. It’s hard to get permission to disclose medical information from a sedated woman who’s got a tube shoved down her throat.

“Please. I won’t say you told me anything.”

The nurse takes pity on me, perhaps because my hair actually looks worse than hers. She glances back over her shoulder to see if anyone is listening. And then in a conspiratorial whisper, she says, “We’re waiting for the results of the MRI. She’s having TIAs, and her hip may be broken.”

She confides the information as if she’s telling me the best place to score heroin, but I don’t care. It’s so unfair. A broken hip at Velva’s age can be deadly, and the TIAs, or ministrokes, mean she’ll only be that much more unsteady if she does manage to get back on her feet.

“Just help her. Please.”

She does. After five more minutes of struggle, some doctor authorizes an increase in the medication. Velva slips into a chemically induced sleep. The ER buzzes around me, a typical Saturday-night festival of gunshot wounds, vomiting teenagers, and wailing mothers. I pull up a rolling stool and claim my spot by Velva’s bed. The staff can shoot me as many dirty looks as they like. I’m not going anywhere.

Around 1:00 a.m., two orderlies arrive to move Velva to a regular room. She’s been admitted to the hospital. At 2:00 a.m., the floor nurse orders me out of the room and tells me to come back tomorrow. At 3:00 a.m., at home in my own bed, I drift off to sleep, with a vague remembrance that I have to preach in the morning.

The alarm didn’t go off. I can’t believe this. Why in heaven’s name didn’t the alarm go off?

I scramble from my bed forty minutes before the early service at Church of the Shepherd is scheduled to begin. I’d planned to spend
my Saturday night carefully laying out my clothes, pampering myself with a bubble bath and a loofah, and going over my sermon. Instead, I spent it in the ER, and now I’m flying around my bedroom, digging out my black pumps from under the bed, and yanking my funeral suit from the overstuffed closet. My shower lasts approximately thirty seconds, and there’s no time for six styling gels and a straightening iron to achieve my hottie hairstyle. Instead I let my curls go wild. There’s not even time for coffee. I’ll have to make do with the battery acid they serve in the fellowship hall.

My car rolls into the parking lot with fifteen minutes to spare. I clutch my sermon manuscript in my hand and race to the sanctuary to make sure the deacons remembered to prepare Communion and to do a sound check on the mikes. The silver trays rest reassuringly atop the communion table, and for once the microphones have decided to abandon their fondness for feedback. I fling my sermon manuscript onto the pulpit and make a mad dash to the sacristy for my robe.

Back in the sanctuary, I switch into minister mode. “Good morning. Good morning.” The early service file in, and I make the rounds, greeting each of them. It’s the golf-and-Depends crowd at this service, all thirty or so parishioners in a sanctuary that will easily hold five hundred people. You would think they’d all sit at the front, huddled together against the vast emptiness of the arched ceiling and the echo of the stone walls, but no. They space themselves evenly throughout the pews as if they’re afraid of catching a disease should they come into close contact with one another.

On my second Sunday here, I had the brilliant idea of roping off the back half of the sanctuary for the early service. I couldn’t believe
no one had hit on this strategy before. Dr. Black smiled and nodded at me in an indulgent fashion, and I soon discovered the reason for his amusement. As the parishioners came down the aisle, they simply lifted the ropes, ducked under them, and settled into their accustomed places.

Mr. and Mrs. Christopher have claimed their usual spots on the back row in the corner. After the service they’ll both complain that they couldn’t hear the sermon. It will be all I can do not to suggest in a catty manner that perhaps if they sat closer to the front, they might improve the odds of their hearing aids picking up some sound.

The Judge appears in the narthex and, with all the pomp and circumstance of his former office, makes his way down the aisle to his place in the second pew. He has no reservations about sitting right under the preacher’s nose. Most of the time when I preach, I expect to look up at the end of the sermon and see him holding a scorecard. Seven out often if I’ve done really well. Lower if I’ve stumbled.

I’m not ready, but it’s time for the service to start. The organist sounds the chimes, and I step up to my seat on the chancel. There’s no procession at this service, no choir in robes. Just the lonely sound of the organ echoing off the mostly empty pews.

We sing only one verse of the opening hymn at this service, and the prayer and Scripture reading are brief. I stand to ascend the pulpit, and when I look down at my feet, I realize I’m wearing one black pump and one navy one.

Too late I realize I forgot to put my customary cup of water on the little ledge below the lectern. Suddenly my throat feels dry. I bite my tongue to get the saliva flowing. But I bite a little too hard and taste the sharp tang of blood in my mouth.

I place my hands on either side of the pulpit, cling for dear life, and open my mouth to begin.

Only there’s a slight problem. My sermon manuscript is gone. Not again.

Panic surges through me, and I feel like one of Pharaoh’s charioteers watching the inevitable wall of water loom over me.

“Good morning.” I smile brightly to compensate for my panic. The congregants mumble back something that might be construed as a reply, but it sounds more like the three witches in Macbeth murmuring among themselves.

I search my brain, trying to remember the opening lines of my sermon. That’s another thing I normally do on Saturday night—memorize the first thirty seconds of the sermon. I can’t think of anything. What do I say? A joke. That’s it. I’ll tell that joke David sent me.

“How many women ministers does it take to change a light bulb?” I even deliver the punch line with a straight face.

No one laughs. In fact, the congregation looks at me as if I’ve just flipped my skirt up over my head. It feels that way to me, too.

In desperation I try another joke. One about Saint Peter and the Pearly Gates, but that one, too, sinks like a stone. And then my throat closes up, and I feel it coming. A coughing fit.

Relax. Breathe. Or, as an alternative, cough as if you’ve been condemned to a TB ward. This appears to be my choice.

It goes on forever, and each raspy hack echoes off the cold stone of the sanctuary walls. My eyes cross and water. There’s probably something coming out of my nose. I can’t stop.

“Excuse me,” I choke out, and in humiliation, I step out of the
pulpit. I’m headed for the water fountain, when I hear a resounding
thunk!
I look down at the second pew, and The Judge has disappeared. No, not disappeared. He’s collapsed. Fallen over onto his side. Oh, heavens. He’s having a heart attack.

At the late service I’d have my pick of a cardiologist, an internist, and an ER doctor. But this early I’m limited to a dentist and a podiatrist. “Call 911,” the dentist shouts, and I fly down the chancel steps, out the side door, and to the nearest telephone.

I fling open the door to the sacristy. To my surprise, Edna Tompkins is there. She jumps when I enter. Her cheeks are flushed.

“911,” I gasp.

“What?”

“The Judge! 911.”

She stares at me blankly, so I shove past her and dive for the phone. You always see people on television calling the emergency number, but I’ve never done it before myself. My damp hands fumble with the buttons, and the receiver slips in my fingers.

“911 operator. What is the nature of your emergency?”

“I need an ambulance. Church of the Shepherd on Broadway. The sanctuary.”

“I’m sorry. Can you hold, please?”

Hold?
Can I hold?
The operator doesn’t wait for an answer. The line goes silent.

This is not how it works on television. About that time the sacristy door swings open behind me. When I turn around, the dentist is there, looking grave. Oh, heavens. I’ve killed The Judge. Or at least let him expire on my watch. They’ll fire me for sure.

“It’s okay, Betsy,” the dentist says. “We don’t need the ambulance.”

He smiles. “Not unless he wants to play a round of golf with the deceased.”