Look into their faces.
Gabriel woke with Channa’s admonishing voice in his ears. At some point during the long evening, he had fallen asleep on a sanctuary pew with Christ staring down at him, Eliot stretched out at his feet, and Molly dozing on his head.
He knew what Channa would have expected and the prospect terrified him.
Still, he couldn’t get the voice out of his head. It repeated mantra-like as he fed Molly and Eliot and then walked the dog along the streets of Riverside. It mocked him while he tried to cobble together a sermon. It shamed him while he swept the sanctuary floor and organized the symbols of his office.
“Damn you, Channa.”
Gabriel determined that it was useless to try to do anything else in this state. He locked the church door and began walking to clear his mind.
Fifteen minutes later the priest looked up and realized he was standing before the entrance of the one place he had avoided since Channa’s death—Riverside Hospital. He showed his clergy identification to the security guard before he could change his mind, and entered the lobby.
The hospital had the same smell that he remembered from his numerous visits with Channa. He wondered if they would ever develop an antiseptic powerful enough to overcome the odor of fear, desperation, and guilt. He took the elevator to the third floor—pediatrics.
The elevator doors opened into the waiting area. Here parents and siblings sought cold refuge from the monotonous clicks of IV drips, the smell of puke, and the feel of hot skin. They always came here when they could no longer keep up the pretense of strength, when they couldn’t bring themselves to utter another “Everything is going to be fine” or “When you get out this time we will go on that trip…” This was the truth room, where doctors came to speak to mothers and fathers in hushed tones about red blood counts, liver function, and kidney failure. This was where parents spoke to each other about the most insignificant things because the past was too painful and the future nonexistent. Here brothers and sisters wept silently behind old issues of Sports Illustrated and People magazine.
Fifteen pairs of eyes rose to follow the priest when he stepped out of the elevator. Strangers were a distraction, and any break from the tedium of waiting that didn’t cause pain was welcome. But priests were different. With the exception of the maternity floor, in the hospital the presence of a priest meant death was near, that science had failed and faith would now take center stage.
Gabriel tried to smile encouragement at a few of the faces, but he soon gave up and stared at his shoes. He turned right and read off the room numbers to himself without thinking.
He peered through a patient’s window and his heart raced. For just a moment, he saw Channa in the bed, propped up on pillows with the ever-present IV attached to her arm. He saw Sid and Channa’s sister sitting on either side of their beloved wife and sibling. Sid held a damp cloth to Channa’s head and her sister held the vomit basin. Channa waved to him from the window, beckoning him to join them, but he couldn’t bring himself to enter. Channa nodded her forgiveness.
Gabriel blinked hard and then felt the ground beneath him begin to tip. He leaned against the window to steady himself. When he made contact with the glass, a young mother and father dressed in isolation garb looked up from their ministration to their son. They were surprised at first, but surprise quickly turned to horror, as if he were the Reaper, scythe pulled back and ready to swing. Gabriel tried to mouth an apology through the glass, to explain that he wasn’t there for last rites, but that only made the situation worse.
He backed away as quickly as he could, but every window brought him fundamentally similar scenes of suffering, of mothers and fathers looking down upon the still bodies of their young sons and daughters. Gabriel could hear their despairing questions whispered in Channa’s voice: “What is wrong?” “What did we do?” “Will you leave us?” “How can we make you stay?”
He also saw the children, enslaved by the virus ravaging their bodies. He knew they were listening to these questions, just as surely as he knew they could not answer them. Instead Gabriel heard them ask questions of their own in Channa’s exhausted voice: “Why are we here?” “Why is my family crying?” “Why are you leaving me?”
All these questions. They drowned Gabriel’s spirit. Once that vessel proved too small, they echoed across the hospital hallways and elevator shafts in a fruitless search for an understanding ear until, finding none, they dissipated with agonizing slowness.
Gabriel knew he should not have come. He staggered to the elevator and just made it through the hospital exit as he dropped to his knees. When he lifted his head, the hospital was gone and all he saw was thick gray smoke billowing against him. His breath came in ragged, gasping wheezes.
This is hell, he thought. I have arrived in my hell.
He struggled to his feet and then on through the strangling smoke. One step… another. The priest kept moving forward, oblivious to any other pedestrian. He stumbled twice, but did not fall.
After several minutes the smoke dissipated and his church rose before him. Gabriel made it to his office, where Eliot and Molly waited, and he collapsed into his chair.
He didn’t know how long he had been out before the persistent tapping on his shoulder woke him. He wanted to sleep for days.
“Father!”
Gabriel opened one eye and Andy appeared before him. The boy looked awful—dirt-encrusted fingernails, hollow eyes, three days of blond stubble.
“I’m sorry, but I really need your help, Father,” Andy said.
Andy’s plea brought the priest to his feet.