I’d prayed for her. I’d prayed for me.
And now I prayed for the strength to stand without…revealing how dramatically her confession still stirred me.
All animals suffered from temptation. Restraint was the only trait which separated a man from beast when words whispered soft, breaths panted, and a body’s heat threatened to burn the confessional in a sinner’s desire.
But I was neither man nor beast. I was a priest.
And I’d nearly destroyed myself. I’d failed Honor.
The devil sent an angel to tempt me. I didn’t fear it. I’d overcome those weaknesses so I could protect her, prove she could resist the darkness, the confusion…
I’d ensure she was strong enough to resist me.
The day passed in a blur of prayer, frustrations, and headaches. I finally slipped from the church in the late afternoon, and I came to the one man who might have helped.
But he needed no more burdens.
I twisted my rosaries, but I stumbled over the Hail Mary. I never could concentrate in the hospital. Nurses hurried through the halls, pushing carts and checking on patients. It wasn’t a place of rest, and the industrial lighting and disinfectant in the air set me on edge.
When I was ordained five years ago, I looked upon hospitals as a place of great hope. The sick were healed, the doctors’ earned the Lord’s grace, and lives were saved.
I didn’t believe that anymore. Then again, I didn’t wait within the hospital wing. They had moved Bishop Benjamin Polito to the hospice.
That was a different place entirely—a purgatory of morphine and muted televisions, weeping families, and exhausted men, women, and children waiting for the end. Here, the sick didn’t fear the priest roaming the halls. They eagerly awaited him. They were ready to go.
“Father Rafe?”
Anne worked most afternoons. She wasn’t Catholic, but she respected me and the man she looked after during his final days. Her smile was kind, and her voice bubbly, even to those who hadn’t had a reason to hope for a long time. Benjamin liked her as his nurse. So did I.
“He’s awake now.” She gestured for me to follow, though I knew the way. I appreciated her support. Most days, her job wasn’t simply to comfort the patients. She helped those who walked a half-step behind her, hesitating to enter the rooms. “There’s been no change in his condition, but…”
I knew what to expect. “Thank you, Anne.”
“Just call if he needs anything.”
She left me. I waited at the door.
It was supposed to be easier than this—confronting those who were soon to die. I taught and believed that this life became the next, and paradise awaited those with a clean soul.
And yet I hesitated outside his room, preparing myself for what I would find.
That was twice I had faltered—first with the innocent angel who had needed me, and now for the old friend who laughed at me from his bed.
“Rafe, get in here…did you bring that case again?”
Bishop Benjamin Polito was once a man of life, vitality, and one pepperoni pizza too many. He’d always joked that it would be heart disease that finally got him. The pancreatic cancer surprised most of the diocese. It surprised me.
Benjamin waved an unfamiliar, skinny arm towards the empty chair at his bedside. The IV clanked against the bed’s rails, and he muttered under his breath. His laugh rasped into a cough, and he tugged the saline drip.
“Had to make sure it was just the IV…” He winked. “I got tubes coming out of places that’d make Mother Mary blush, if you catch my drift.”
Everyone…everywhere…understood Benjamin.
I sat at his side. “Father, are you feeling…”
“One, don’t call me Father unless you mean it. We don’t need any formality here, Rafe. Second…you know the answer to that question.”
“Are you in pain?”
“Not at the moment…though a rough tug on that other wire might finally get me walking again.” The chemo had taken his hair, but it hadn’t claimed his smile. He batted at me, too tired to reach my arm. “Oh, laugh once in a while, Rafe. It won’t kill you. Now cancer…that’ll do it.”
A laugh felt like sacrilege given the events of last night and how miserable it was to watch my mentor waste away in a hospice bed. But a priest wasn’t selfish. Benjamin had taught me that. The collar bound the man inside, and the priest offered himself to the world, his parish, and those he meant to serve.
I stood and unbuckled the case.
“You’re anointing me again?” Benjamin coughed.
“Yes.”
“There comes a point in a man’s life when he is ready to pass, Rafe.”