reluctant to spoil their Christmas eve down there. If she got thirsty enough there was a bathroom in here, although she knew getting out of bed was discouraged.
She switched through the TV channels. Jimmy Stewart was praising Clarence. A stupid dating game of wall- to-wall innuendoes. On the movie channel,
Searching, she passed channel Eight again, on to channel Nine, but she switched abruptly back.
Was that a person seated in the front pew, on the left?
Devin frowned. Yes, had to be, though the dark shape’s stationary pose didn’t help her much. Some old patient gone into the chapel for a bit of comfort? Must be. It looked as though the person was a woman wearing a kerchief on her head…unless that was a nun’s habit.
Well, this development hardly made channel Eight any more exciting. Devin moved on…
A nurse came in to take Devin’s vitals again. Once more, Devin did not inquire about her baby’s whereabouts. The young woman asked, “Can I get you anything?”
“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” Devin said. “Lonely in here tonight, huh?”
“It’s real nice and quiet up here, but I hear there was a horrible scene down in emergency. This young woman was brought in…dead on arrival. Somebody strangled her.”
“Strangled?”
“Yeah. Horrible. They said the cord cut right into her neck. They don’t know who did it. Scary. Glad I don’t live in this town.”
“I guess.”
The nurse left, and Devin frowned at the doorway after her. Strangled. Yes…horrible.
It was now eleven-fifteen, and Devin again grew restless with the meager offerings on TV, jaded as she was by cable. She switched around the dial. In so doing, she grew curious about whether that woman was still praying in the chapel.
There were several figures in the pews now. Three? Four? Devin wasn’t sure in that grainy gloom. But at least two of the newly-seated people seemed also to be nuns. Well, it was St. Andrew’s Hospital. Was there to be a midnight mass, after all?
Even as Devin watched, that indistinct door in the corner opened and a figure moved out of it, a shadow against shadows. It drifted to the altar. The priest, no doubt. But when were they going to put the lights on? Maybe this was yet another nun, judging from the conical look of the head. Well, whatever…Devin lost interest again, flicked forward to Eleven.
The news was on. A space heater fire had killed three children. Merry Christmas. Devin hurried onward. Where was Ernest when you needed him?
A distant baby wailing again. Devin was tempted to get out of bed to go close her door, but she had had an episiotomy to facilitate delivery and the pain-killers had diminished. Soon enough, however, the crying faded away.
God, even the poor offering of channels conspired to narrow her world, aggravate her sense of isolation, of being trapped in this bed. She clicked through the selections, impatiently going in circles. Seven again, Eight…
Pious assholes, she thought; something was indeed up tonight. She watched the silent scene. Where was the sound? What comfort was watching services if you couldn’t hear them? Might a microphone be on but the people in the chapel so quiet that their movements were inaudible?
A few new shadowy forms were gliding out of that vague door in the corner, slipping into the pews. The priest or nun was now sitting at his throne behind the altar, resting perhaps until everyone arrived. Was that the bottom of a great cross above his head? Was it an all-denominations chapel? Devin hoped so; where would Jews, Buddhists, Muslims take their comfort, otherwise? Only because it was Christmas eve and this a hospital founded by Catholics did she assume it was a Christian service.
Devin glared at them, her fingers on the dial. Sure, celebrate the birth of a baby born two thousand years ago…but my son is in hell right now, according to you, because he didn’t live long enough to have a little water sprinkled on his head.
Some would say only limbo, not hell. How comforting. The bottom line was, the unbaptized infant didn’t die in God’s good graces. Born with the sin of the world already in him…baptism a kind of exorcism. Wasn’t that how it went? Do something compassionate, you elitist scum, she mentally raged at the screen. Baptize my baby. Cleanse him of these so-called sins so he can be free. Go on—you’ve got your magic water in there, don’t you?
Good thing she didn’t really believe he was cursed to some void…damned to eternal suffering. That would be a horror too great for her to recover from, short of remaining in a hospital of another sort forever.
Eleven thirty-five now. She was not at all tempted to go down to the end of maternity to the chapel and sit in on their midnight mass…but maybe, just maybe, she’d watch it on TV. Just for the hell of it.
* * *
A woman sobbed softly, in forlorn moans. Devin was awakened by the sound, her first thought having been that it was the voice of a woman in another room, a woman who had lost her baby tonight. Then she wondered if perhaps it had been her own voice. But also, for some odd reason, she had the impression that the sound had come from the speaker of her television. However, that was impossible, of course, because there was still no sound coming from channel Eight.
Devin sat up. Apparently mass had not yet begun; the pews she could see were nearly full, though the lights had yet to be brought up. She glanced to the time. Eleven-fifty.
Ah, something was happening now. A robed figure proceeded up the central aisle toward the dais, carrying something behind him. Another figure had its end, as if it were a stretcher they transported between them. Indeed, it looked like a stretcher. Were they bringing in some poor old woman who couldn’t walk to mass? Why not a wheelchair, then?
God, Devin thought. Perhaps this wasn’t a Christmas mass after all…but a funeral mass. The shape upon the stretcher the two figures carried resembled nothing so much as a human body covered entirely by a sheet.
She pulled the TV nearer, squinting at the screen. Shut off her personal light, the resultant gloom making the image slightly clearer. Watched as the stretcher was brought up upon that stage. They lifted the sheet reverently, like a flag folded at a military funeral, and spread it out on the floor at the foot of the altar. Then the body—yes, it was a body—was lifted from the stretcher and laid upon the sheet on the floor.
Granted, Devin was not a religious person, but she had never heard of this ritual before.
The figures set a candle at the head of the body, another at the feet, and lit them. The light didn’t do much to illuminate the chapel or its congregation, but it did define the body on the floor a bit better. Devin saw bare feet outlined; she could imagine how cold they must feel. The toenails were so dark, they must be painted. The feet of a young woman. Devin never painted her nails in winter…but this mundane thought was quickly gone from her mind as she concentrated further on the head of the corpse.
The young woman’s long dark hair was draped around her neck and across her shoulders. Her mouth hung open wide. Devin couldn’t believe that her features hadn’t been made composed. This body hadn’t been prepared for a funeral. Was this to be some ceremony prior to the mortician’s work?
The candlelight seemed to glint on something at the woman’s throat. A necklace under her hair? No, Devin realized. It was a wet glistening.
That wasn’t entirely her hair across her throat, darkening it, hair upon the shoulders of the white gown she wore. It was blood so dark it looked black. Soaking into the gown. Winding down her neck. Still drying. And now Devin knew whose body this was. She didn’t know the young woman’s name…but she knew how she had died. Been murdered, rather.
“What is this?” she breathed aloud, then regretted her words, as if afraid the congregation would hear her eavesdropping and turn to face the camera in unison. And then, as they stared back at her, she would see their faces. And suddenly, intuitively, Devin did not want to see those faces.
A final figure had come up the aisle carrying a smaller bundle, which was passed into the hands of the officiating priest, who had risen from his throne. The new figure helped unwrap the parcel, and then the priest held it high above his head.
It was too dark to make out what he held. But something dangled from it. A short length of…rope?
Again, intuitively, Devin knew. It was a length of umbilical cord, sliced at one end but the other still wound
