Monday, July 24, 9:45 a.m.
Outside of the church, the eastern sky was the color of claret and birdsong filled the air like a distant children’s choir. Heat-devils, however, swirled across the asphalt parking lot and Ohio was already as hot as a blast furnace. Fortunately, a strong northwest breeze kept the treetops dancing and flags snapping, making the swelter bearable.
Entering through the backdoor of the rectory, I explained to Colleen that I had to run an errand and hoped to be back in time for lunch. She was the part-time housekeeper and my Girl Friday at Sacred Heart Church. Colleen told me that my sister felt better this morning and had taken her son to the playground for an hour, so I brushed the cat hair from my cassock, jumped in the parish’s old Toyota, and drove to the Emergency Room at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Lorain.
Like most inner city ERs, the place was jam-packed and chaotic. The triage nurse directed me to a small waiting room reserved for families in crisis.
I knocked softly and opened the door.
A uniformed police officer whipped around in his chair and pointed a finger at me.
“Get out!” he growled. When he noticed my clerical collar and cassock he added, “Ah, give me a few minutes, Father. Be done as soon as I can.”
I closed the door and leaned against a wall in the corridor where I remained for almost half an hour, wondering what the heck was going on. When the officer finally emerged, I knocked again and entered the room.
A woman in her late teens or early twenties sobbed softly as she teetered on the edge of a couch, her elbows on her knees, head down, eyes fixed on the floor. She wore a tight pink halter top above a bare midriff and low-riding shorts tight enough to stop the circulation to her long, tan legs. Unaware of my presence, she ran her fingers through jet black hair, highlighted by a pink streak on the left. Her fingernails were painted in neon colors. Large gold loops dangled from both ears, flanking full, cupid-bow lips.
A man with bronze skin reclined against the couch cushions, his head cantilevered onto the sofa back, his eyes glued to the ceiling. Below a barrel chest, his beer belly was wedged into a wife-beater T-shirt stained with sweat. Red boxer shorts peeked out above filthy cutoffs. His heavily tattooed arms were thick but flabby. His left hand gently massaged the back of the young woman’s neck.
They struck me as the odd couple—a scantily clad Snow White oozing pheromones, comforted by Dumpy, the eighth dwarf.
The door clicked closed behind me and their heads snapped to attention. They both sat up.
I approached them and said, “Dr. Taylor told me that a terrible thing has happened. May we talk for a while?” Two nods. “I’m Father Jake Austin from Sacred Heart Church.”
The man extended a callused, moist hand. He was also young, though his face had lost the angles of youth. One glance told me that his life had been hard.
“Gracias, Padre. I am Miguel Hernandez.” He wore the wrinkled forehead of a worried man. “I go to Mass at Sacred Heart sometimes.”
The young woman tried for a smile without success. “I’m Martina, but everyone calls me Tina.”
I’d seen Miguel at church. Never Tina. She was a striking woman and I would have remembered. Unlike Miguel, she had no accent and did not appear Hispanic. Her complexion and facial features suggested a European heritage, maybe German. She had a mole on her left cheek and except for her hair color, she reminded me of the actress who played Ginger on the old sitcom Gilligan’s Island.
I pulled up a chair and sat. Miguel’s body odor assaulted me, but didn’t mask the smell of alcohol on his breath.
“Please, tell me what happened.”
A long silence. Tina broke it.
“It’s like a nightmare, Father.” She fixed me with enormous ebony eyes made darker by copious eye shadow. “I had the day off from work, first time in forever, and we were watching some tube while our baby slept.” Makeup followed tears down both cheeks like black jet contrails. “We got no air conditioning and the apartment’s a damn oven, so I moved the fan from our bedroom into little Pablo’s ….”
When she said the child’s name, she choked on the word. More tears. Her eyes grew puffy, as though she was allergic to the memory, and she rubbed them so hard I feared she might gouge them out.
Tina rested her head on Miguel’s shoulder until she finally composed herself.
“I plugged the fan in, fed him, and he conked out, you know, sound asleep on his belly, snuggled up with his teddy bear. When I came back to check on him, he was real quiet … too quiet.”
Her upper teeth slid over her lower lip, and it blanched when she bit down.
“I didn’t want to wake him, so I bent over the crib rail,” she said. Her voice was strangled and so soft that I had to lean forward to hear her. “I couldn’t see his chest moving, so I picked him up. He was floppy … like a rag doll.”
Tina became formless, dissolving into the couch.
Visions of my nephew building sand castles on Huntington Beach and chasing a Slinky down the rectory steps flashed through my mind. He was the closest I would ever have to a child of my own. The thought of seeing him gray and lifeless on a stainless steel morgue table chilled me to the core. I ached for this young couple.
Miguel said, “I called 911. Took ’em forever to get there.” Miguel swallowed hard. “I tried the CPR stuff you see on TV but didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I mean, Pablo was blue! And he’s so tiny, I was afraid to push too hard on his chest.” He cradled his head in his hands. “Diós mío. Ay! What a dumbass I am.”
He moaned, then suddenly raised his head and stared at me.
“Where the hell was Jesus when my baby couldn’t breathe? Huh? Tell me that, Padre! How can God let this happen?”
I had no answer. I’d asked the very same question when my mother died in a house fire and when my friends were killed in the war. Although I’d learned to accept the Almighty’s passive silences over the years, I wasn’t happy with the arrangement.
Reverting to my seminary training, I pontificated about faith and the Lord’s incomprehensible plan, expounding with enough conviction to almost convince myself. The words sounded hollow and tasted bitter. I gave them the best that I could muster, wilting a bit with every time-worn phrase.
When I’d run out of platitudes, Tina said, “Help us, Father. The nurse sent us in here. They’re working on him, keeping him alive, but … we need to be with our baby. Soon.”
“I’ll see if they’re ready for you.”
“Push ’em hard. We been here a long damn time,” Miguel added. He stood, his face still flushed with anger. “And you can tell me why that cop treated us like basura, like garbage, like this nightmare is our fault. What the hell was that about?”
“I have no idea, but I’ll try to find out.” I felt I’d helped them so little that I added, “Do you want to speak with a hospital grief counselor?”
Tina shook her head.
Miguel looked down and took a deep breath. “Sorry I went off. It’s not your fault. We’d rather stick with you, Padre, if that’s okay.”
“Of course.” I wrote down my phone numbers and gave them to Miguel. He extended his hand again and thanked me for all I’d done.
Some days I hated my job.