She is not Catholic, but there is a beautiful old church that she passes every day on her way to and from the hospital. It always catches her eye, with its stately spires and garden-like lawn, and she imagines its peaceful interior. As a resident, she has little time to spare, but she always spends a moment or two admiring it on her way to and from work.
On a particularly bad day, after a particularly horrific night of thunderstorms and car wrecks, this tired young doctor finally enters the church’s quiet darkness at noon, after escaping on a pretext from the surgical intensive care unit. The pews, nave and altar appear empty, except for the statuary, and the gruesome image of a man hanging in pain, and she casts a sidelong glance at the small box of the confessional.
Feeling slightly blasphemous, but somehow compelled, she opens the light wicker door, and almost without volition, sinks down on the musty velvet seat of the tiny booth, and lets the door fall. She faces the screen, looks at the black stretched cloth, knowing that the priest’s place is empty. In a whisper, tentatively, with a self-conscious smile, she begins, as if playing a game by herself.
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned, it has been all my life since my last confession.”
The accepting silence, not broken, but only rippled by her tentative vocalization, settles and smooths itself around her. Perhaps this is what gives her the courage to continue in a serious vein: the quiet, the accepting silence, the faint smell of old cloth and incense. And of course, there is the fact that there is really no one around to hear.
“Bless me Father…and Mother…and forgive me…How can I keep on doing this job? Where are the thoughts, words, prayers, that can sustain me? I too, have been damaged, and need to heal. I’ve spent this past night and day as an automaton, my hands on autopilot, my brain functioning frozen, every heart beat awash in horror.”
“This night… they brought in a mother of three with her children…a car accident… all four ejected. The kids were just wrecked, seizing in the trauma bays…Her husband, the belted driver, is stunned, he’s wandering the halls, not a scratch on him. His burden hasn’t settled yet… asleep at the wheel.”
She rubs her face. Her lips feel numb.
“As I helped the paramedics unload the mother-saw the extent of the facial damage- and I realized that- thank God!- she was DOA…for one weird and awful moment I wished I was her…instead of being me. You know, she was just done, just at peace, nothing more for her to do. No more struggles to face…released from all reckoning, laying quiet…with her teeth in her forehead.”
She chokes, and a single sob issues from her dry throat. She girds herself.
“The thought of turning from her and helping to salvage her injured children just seemed beyond me-out of my power. I just froze. I couldn’t face it… I couldn’t move. I wanted to run out of the ER. I could hear the teams shouting, dashing from bay to bay…attending to that ruined family’s wounds.”
She lifts her chin slightly, expression shocked, and then faintly proud, and a little defiant.
“But then I did move. I did my job—and where were You?”
She looks down at her hands, tightly clasped and sweating in her lap, and pauses. She begins anew, begins in a whisper, which slowly rises almost to a wail.
“And what about my job? Have I allowed it to damn me? In the hospital I’ve done all manner of things, some good and some awful. I’ve killed as well as healed… I have dragged the half-formed from the womb at mother’s request…touched the fragile, vein-traced epidermis, the partly-defined limbs, and wondered, what is the difference between this poor soul and a trout on the line? There is none, none.”
Her voice cracks, climbs an octave, breaks off. She cannot continue. Her throat feels constricted.
A rhythmic small noise is half-perceived in the background, and she allows it to settle her: Tock!—Tock!—Tock! It brings briefly to mind the beloved grandfather clock of her childhood home.
“So,” now her voice holds a hint of sarcasm, “How do I handle this? Quit? Become Right-to-Life, or a vegetarian? Drink nothing, eat nothing, join a convent?”
She emits a short laugh.
“Close myself, open myself, cleanse myself? Impossible.”
She sighs heavily. The she lifts her chin once again, less defiance, more supplication.
“I can only be…I don’t participate in capricious cruelty, I ease suffering the best way I know how, by my own lights, no matter how dim or unschooled they may be. I show those I take care of that I see their struggle, and respect it.”
Now a shadow passes over her face, and she shudders.
“And what about the poisoned ones, so damaged, that their pleasure is taken in another’s pain? Because yes, I have met these too. Please God, can’t you heal them, or if they can’t be healed, can’t you protect the less able to protect themselves? It is so hard to accept that some just cannot be saved.”
She drops her head back against the wall of the confessional and finishes.
“Please God, can you save me? Please forgive me my arrogance, the times I have chosen badly, or tried to guess Your Will. I can only do what I can do…and I am so tired and afraid…”
She is so weary, after almost 36 hours on call, that she dozes for a moment or two, her crown against the wooden wall. Then she starts, looks about dazedly, rises, glances at her watch and hurriedly leaves the booth. As she strides down the nave towards the door, she is caught by an unexpected motion high to the right in her peripheral vision.
Wheeling, alarmed, fearing discovery, she faces the statue of the Virgin, and feels her world spin-pure vertigo- as she catches a glimpse of Mary’s face; a drop of moisture is sliding down the cheek of the impassive marble countenance. The doctor falls to her knees, with an inarticulate cry of terror and wonder.
Then, Tock!—she sees the next drop fall from the air above the statue, and impact the stone brim of the Virgin’s crown. Tock!—The drop dangles, finally falling to the slightly-averted sculptured face. The young doctor follows the trajectory of the just-fallen drop up through the gloomy interior of the church to the old, high ceiling. She can just make out the patch of spreading darkness on the ceiling that represents the wet wood around the leak. She then notes the puddle at Mary’s feet, and finally, realizes that her own knees are wet. The carpet is soaked. She remembers last night’s downpour. Trembling with fatigue and reaction, a strange mixture of disappointment and relief, she gets to her feet. She rubs her pounding temples, and cries quietly to herself for a few minutes.
Then she leaves the church, blinking at the light outside. She is composing herself as she walks next door to the rectory. The priest himself answers her knock. He smells faintly of tobacco, whiskey, and looks to be about 80 years old.
“Father, the roof of the church is leaking.”
The priest eyes her scrubs, her wet knees, red eyes, pale face. In a faint brogue, voice roughened by years of cigarettes, he replies kindly,
“Thank you, my child, I know, and the roofer is on his way. We had to cancel the noon mass, because of the damage.”
He hesitates.
“You came to pray…do you seek Holy Communion? We hope to have the six o’clock mass on time.”
She smiles wanly. A perceptive man, he tips his head, and so encourages her to engage his eyes.
“Child, we all heard about the Butler family’s car accident from Father Edward. Do you need to come in?”
“No, Father, I can’t. I’m not really even supposed to be here.”
He touches her arm.
“Everyone needs to come to church—sometimes one needs it most when they are ‘supposed’ to be somewhere else.”
She nods, but her expression grows absent. She is now thinking about her charges back in the hospital. It is almost time to reassess her patients, review their latest labs, and analyze her patients’ inputs and outputs.
“Thank you, Father, but I must go. I am needed elsewhere.”
They shake hands and he watches her stride hurriedly up the street, squaring her thin shoulders. The priest senses, correctly, that she is bracing herself. The young doctor makes good time on her way back to the surgical intensive care unit.
Paula Lyons, MD
7-09-96
10 Responses
Wow. Love this
A very emotional story. Carol
Beautiful Paula and very moving. It brought tears to my eyes.
Could it be a personal experience? Or that of a friend? Or a sample of what the medical profession has gone through this past year with COVID?
The central event of this family’s single vehicle car accident occurred exactly as stated here, although of course, their name was not Butler. They were travelling home from a trip to Disney World, and decided to push through the night to get home more quickly, instead of stopping at a hotel. The mother and children were sleeping and unbelted, and the baby was in the mother’s lap. I was actually a medical student at the time, not a resident, and it was my first real exposure to a multiple trauma event at Grady Hospital. There was no such thing at that time as “post-traumatic debriefing” or counseling for students or providers, so we each did our best to absorb this tragedy in our own way, generally alone. In those days, it was considered a sign of weakness, and perhaps unsuitability for medicine, for medical students to show distress, or fail to perform in such a circumstance. As you can see, it has stayed with me for many years.
Paula, this brings back so many memories of my years as an RN caring for patients in ICU and Hospice and being involved with their families. Special experiences that never leave our minds but allows us to realize that being a ‘listener’ is important to families in these situations.
A story so wonderfully expressed!
Ah, Paula! Where to start? A soulful, sensitive narrative, eloquently painting the portrait of a naïve young care-giver-in-training, thrown to the wolves! Your walk-home journey took you by a house of worship that became for you, at a time when you needed it most, a sacred place of refuge, a “sanctuary.” Right Time! Right Place! Who are the “heroes” of this life-adventure? For me, Paula, who has spent three generations dealing with birth and death, from delivering 32 children (one in an ambulance) to twelve years as a hospice physician, for me, one of the heroes was the priest, a caring, consoling, gifted being – Right time! Right Place! And, of course, Paula, the naïve medical student, who did a beautiful “random act of kindness” (“Father, your church roof is leaking!”), “toughed it out,” and went back to work (and to learn.)
The author, Voltaire, gave us a gift when he wrote Candide, putting the lie to “All Things Happen For The Best.” I much prefer an old Jewish proverb that tells us, “Let’s try to make the best out of all things that happen.” And one of the things I’d like to see happen is to have your story, “The Confession,” used as a text for a class for first year medical students before they enter the ER, ICU, Trauma arenas, to prepare them for how to gird their defenses for what they are inevitably going to be exposed to. Do think about sending your story on to your professors. You might be fishing for whales in a bathtub, but who knows, you might just see it do as much for them as it has done for you, even if you waited twenty five years to write it. Brava, Paula! I’ve read it four times, as I was thinking about how to “comment” on it. It gets better each time.
Luv,
Uncle Marvin
Marv believed, as I did, that this story was a personal anecdote of Paula’s. She says no, but there’s a lot of her in that story, a caring wonderful Dr. who did her best for her patients, as did Marvin when he practiced. (especially with Anita).
Biggie
Hi Biggie,
I think I may have accidentally given you the wrong impression-there is a reply to your first comment/question on the Anecdotally Evident site (April 23rd, 11:10 a.m.) that may help straighten things out. This family’s car accident WAS a personal anecdote and occurred just like the story relates, but I was a medical student at the time, not a resident. I made this young doctor a resident, as she also confesses later in the story to deeds that I hadn’t yet performed as a medical student (i.e. performed 2nd trimester abortions, cared for psychopaths on the jail ward who had injured others) again, these later things come directly from my own experience as a resident doctor. In point of fact, all my medical stories are based on real happenings-as they say, “Ya’ just can’t make this stuff up!”
There WAS a beautiful Catholic church that I would sometimes spend stolen time in when things got rough- I also used to go up to the neonatal intensive care nursery and spell the overworked nurses by volunteering to bottle-feed some of the older and healthier premature babies- we called them “the feeder and grower babies”-who needed to gain more weight before going home with their parents. These were some tricks I used to regain a measure of perspective when things got too weird or stressful. The nurses were glad to get their hands free, and it was very therapeutic for me to feed and hold those new little humans, saved by my pediatrician colleagues.
As regards the momentary illusion of thinking the statue of the Virgin had tears on her face, all I can say is that when I’ve been very sleep-deprived and stressed, I’ve seen (or imagined) things even stranger than that, as I’m sure we all have!
And thank you for thinking I was a good doctor!
Love you,
Paula
Absolutely amazing and yet ever so true.
Thanks for sharing.
Faith Ann