got me back in bed. I guess they didn’t think I knew what was goin’ on.
“Then all hell broke loose. People comin’ in here makin’ a fuss over me. Shoot, I was okay by then. And while they’re makin’ this fuss over me, this man—turns out he was a guard . . . at least he had a guard’s uniform—is tellin’ everybody this cockamamie story about how he heard me chokin’ and came in and saved me. I mean, I’ve lived a long and eventful life, but that’s the first time anything as weird as that ever happened to me.”
Koesler was unsure what to believe. It was a wild tale. A bit too wild, he thought, to have sprung out of whole cloth. Perhaps it was true.
“Have you told this to anyone else, Mrs. Walker?”
“No, just you.”
“Why didn’t you tell somebody? The people who were in here last night? Or someone this morning?”
“Don’t want to make any enemies. I’m goin’ into surgery, you know. I want to have at least an even chance to come out of it okay.”
“So why did you tell me?”
“I can trust you. God! If you can’t trust a priest, who can you trust?”
“Well, what do you want me to do about it?”
“Whatever you want. I don’t care. It ain’t my responsibility anymore. If you tell, they can’t blame me. It’s your responsibility. Or if you don’t tell anybody, that’s okay too. I don’t care anymore. It’s your kettle of fish now.”
Koesler shrugged. “Glad to be of help.” He made ready to leave.
“One more thing,” Alice Walker said.
“Yes?”
“Pray for me and my operation.”
“I just did—in the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick.”
“I know. But keep it up. It couldn’t hurt.”
“Right.”
* * *
Father Koesler made six consecutive calls on new patients on his floors, each of whom was otherwise occupied, either with tests, therapy, or being examined by doctors. Time, he decided, for a coffee break.
The cafeteria coffee had its usual severely strong character. So as usual he was more warming his hands from the cup than drinking it. The people who complained about his coffee-making should be made to sample this coffee, he thought. That would teach them to better appreciate his efforts.
While he sat by himself in the nearly empty cafeteria, two nurses seated themselves at a neighboring table. Evidently, they were also on coffee break. They were actually sipping the coffee. Koesler wondered if it just took time to get used to its industrial strength.
The two nurses began chattering away, seemingly oblivious of Koesler’s proximity.
In order to distract himself, Koesler weighed what he might do with the information he had been given by Alice Walker. It all came down to: to tell or not to tell.
Before Mrs. Walker’s revelation, Koesler had heard something of the event. The version he’d heard was considerably less titillating than Alice Walker’s account. He had overheard some talk of the rescue. But the emphasis was on the coincidence that a guard should be passing by a room at the exact moment a patient happened to be choking. Beyond that, there was some comment about the guard’s being able to execute the Heimlich Hug. It was, Koesler had been led to believe, not so outstanding or newsworthy an event.
If one could rely on Mrs. Walker, there was a far more colorful aspect to this rescue now celebrated in the lore of this ancient hospital. Which were it known would undoubtedly trigger a couple of dismissals. Was it worth it to reveal the story and cause a couple of people to be fired?
Probably not, Koesler concluded. Security in this hospital was not the best, to say the least. It would not be improved with the revelation that one of the guards had been horizontal when he should have been vertical. Same for the nurse—or aide, whichever.
Peripherally, he noticed the two nurses changing position preliminary to leaving. “What’s the hurry?” the blonde asked. She seemed to be down to the dregs of her coffee, but not ready to leave.
“I gotta get back,” the brunette answered. “One of the gals in 2214 is having problems.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. No one can figure it out. Just took a bad turn. I promised to cut my break short and get back. I gotta go.”
“Okay, okay. Hold your horses. I’ll be right with you.”
The two nurses departed, leaving Koesler wondering. Something about that room number . . . Ordinarily, there was no reason a particular room would strike any chord in his memory. But, for some reason, Room 2214 stood out. Of course it must have something to do with the patients in that room. But what?
So absorbed was he in trying to recall the patients of 2214 and why the memory should disquiet him so, that he was oblivious to the arrival of someone who seated herself at the table directly across from him. Thus, her greeting startled him.
“Father . . . Father!” Ethel Laidlaw felt as if she were awakening someone.
“Oh . . .” Koesler’s attention came back to the scene. He smiled. “Hello. Sorry; I’m afraid I was distracted.”
“It’s okay,” Ethel said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have sat down here. I didn’t have any appointment or anything like that. I just needed to talk to somebody. Probably a priest. And I kinda thought you might be the one who’d understand.
“Sure, that’s fine. You certainly don’t need an appointment. For the time being, I’m chaplain at this hospital and I am quite literally at your service. But I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Father. No, we haven’t. I’m a nurse’s aide here. I’m Ethel Laidlaw.” Ethel offered her hand. As she did so, she knocked over the saltshaker, spilling salt on the table. “Oops,” she said, “got to avoid bad luck.” With that, she picked up the shaker as if to flip a little salt over her left shoulder. Instead, she lost her grip and the shaker sailed across the room, landing with a smack against the wall.
For some reason, it reminded Koesler of the biblical incident of the two disciples on their way to Emmaus on the original Easter Sunday. In their walk they were joined by Jesus but they did not perceive who He was. It was only during dinner at an inn, “at the breaking of the bread they recognized that it was the Lord.” In this instance, it was the fiasco with a salt-shaker that jogged Koesler’s memory. This one was one of a matched pair. Koesler had watched the couple demolish a meal at least once. And he had been duly impressed with their clumsiness. Ethel’s performance with the salt confirmed the image.
Clearly, she was embarrassed.
“Just an accident,” Koesler assured her. “Nothing to be concerned about.”
“‘Just an accident’!” Ethel mimicked reproachfully. “More like the story of my life. I wonder about that, Father: Do you suppose some people are born clumsy?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that, Ethel. I suppose people have a greater or lesser degree of coordination. I don’t guess it’s any more than that. But that’s not what you wanted to talk to me about, is it?”
“Not exactly, Father, but it’s got something to do with it. Actually, it’s a kind of complicated problem. I don’t know exactly how to tell you.”
“Well, let’s start at the present. What’s the problem right now?”
“The problem right now is I could get fired. In fact I probably will unless something happens.”
“The unemployment rate in this town being what it is, that could be a pretty serious problem. What makes you think you may be fired?”
Ethel shrugged. “Like that saltshaker. I break things. A lot.”
“That many?”
“I guess so. It’s kind of hard for me to tell exactly. I’ve been doing this sort of thing all my life. But, whatever, Sister Eileen said she’d have to fire me if it didn’t stop. Well, Father, I mean it can’t stop. I’ll probably find some way of falling out of my coffin and knocking over all the flowers. That is, if anybody sends flowers.”
“Well, Ethel, if you can’t help being clumsy, you can’t help it. If that’s the way you are, it’s not your fault. But maybe you’re just working in the wrong job.”
“The wrong job?”
