The Safety Zone (A Novella by Bob Racine) - Chapter 5

Chapter 5              Refusing Unsolicited Counsel   

A short while later Cara is visited by a hospital chaplain and learns from her conversation with him that he comes to her at the request of Vernon, a fact she does not relish.  What is this joker of a brother up to? 

It was about a half hour later.  Emerging from the bathroom, she discovered a man standing next to her bed, a total stranger, who had a small metal cross hanging on a chain around his neck and displayed against his chest. 

“Cara Hutchins?”

“Yeah.”

“Cara, I’m Luke Blanchard.  I’m one of the hospital chaplains.  May I sit down a moment?”

“I suppose so.”  She knew not what else to say.  She was surprised that he addressed her by her first name.     

A minister!  A self-designated holy man!  Cara knew that his visit was something she should welcome and appreciate, but she was uneasy with it.  Incitement to prayer and posturing of any kind was something she did not need at that moment. 

He was not a young man; she was certainly grateful for that.  He had many years on him.  He was practically bald, with a broad forehead, a prominent but slightly pug nose, and a mouth quite relaxed and gracious. She could not imagine that anything like the fiery sermons she heard as a kid would ever come forth out of that orifice.  He looked the part of a bedside minister, one who spoke gently and consolingly to one distressed individual at a time. 

But one can be fooled by gentleness, as she had learned from both of the men she had married.  At least, she thought, he had not acted as if he owned the room.  He had asked permission to sit down.

Once seated he said, “I find your brother Vernon to be most affable.”

She was astounded to hear this, and a little on her guard.  What had Vernon gone and done?  Did he and this chaplain just by coincidence bump into each other?  Have the two of them cooked up something against her wishes?  Or had he sought out the man to talk with him about his sister Cara?  She strongly suspected this last, until the chaplain spoke again and removed all doubt. 

“He came by the chaplaincy office a little while ago and asked to speak to someone.  I happened to be the one on duty.”

“What did he want to see you about?” she asked.  “Is he getting religion all of a sudden?”  She half hoped that was the reason and not the one she feared it must be.

“We never spoke about his religious life.  He just wanted to talk.”

“About me, I suppose!”  She brazenly begged the question, but if he was startled or offended by her directness, he gave no sign of it.  “It was me he talked about, wasn’t it?” 

A disarming smile preceded his inquiry.  “Does that upset you – to learn that?”

That confounded brother, she thought, as she crawled back into bed!  How much of the two conversations with him and Nurse Macy had he told to this stranger?  How much of a weirdo had he made her out to be?  Has he lampooned her before a man of God the way he did before the nurse? 

She could not look the chaplain in the face.  She felt once again like crawling under the bed or hiding beneath the covers.  Since she had already sounded the note of candor in this conversation, she thought it the better part of practicality to stay with it. 

“How much did he tell you?”

“He intimated that you were under some kind of stress and asked me if I would talk with you to see if I could be of any assistance.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.  That was the crux of it.  The conversation about you only lasted about three or four minutes at most.  The other fifteen or so minutes he was there we got into talking about baseball.  Turns out we’re both fans.”  Then, as if reading her thoughts he added, “He didn’t tell me the nature of your stress.  He gave me no details.  Just asked me to stop by, and then he let loose about how his favorite batter had disappointed him, taking the walk at an inappropriate time.” 

She supposed that chaplains are committed to telling the truth, whatever else may be less than hunky dory about them, and saw no reason not to believe this one.  She tried not to let on how much she cared about the extent of Vernon’s report of her and how relieved she was to hear that he had not spilled the beans.  The chaplain did not need to know about her ordeal. 

Dagne had put an end to that ordeal anyhow.  It was Dagne she wished to talk to at that moment more than any strange cleric.  So she just bowed her head and in a low voice said, “I’m sorry you came.”

“You are?  Why is that?”

“Because I’m okay now.  He shouldn’t have bothered you.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, obviously not fully convinced.  “I have  plenty of time.  As long as you’re a patient here, you’re my parishioner.”

“I have a minister” was her lame and dishonest response.

“I believe Vernon said that you two are the only primal family each of you has left.  Did I understand that right?”

“Yeah.  But we do okay.”

“Would you like for me to pray with you before I go?”

“No!”  Her response was so swift and emphatic it felt curt and maybe rude, so she tried to smooth it down.  “No, that’s all right.  I’d rather you not.”

She was pushing him away, and she knew it, but she was in no mood to retrace the trajectory of her mental and emotional trip over the past twenty-four hours – a span of time that seemed to her like twenty-four days.  She had neither the will nor the inclination for it.  What was is now yesterday! 

“How much longer do you have in here?” he inquired.

“I’m having surgery tomorrow morning.  Then, if all goes well, I may be checking out later in the day.”

“Well, I’ll look in on you again tomorrow,” he promised, as he got to his feet.  “Pleased to have met you.”

He then walked around and had a look at Dagne, as if she might be another potential “parishioner.” 

Oh, please go, she thought to herself.  Dagne is mine.  Please don’t interfere with what I’ve got going with her. 

But within seconds he was back.  “She seems to be asleep.  Good thing to do the same day as the operation.”  He looked at Cara, as if he expected her to respond to the remark, but she said nothing.  Then he signed off as she would imagine was his habit.  “I’ll certainly be prayerful about you both and for your safe and successful surgery.  You have a good night’s rest.”  With that he exited the room. 

At once, the absence of him weighed a little heavily on her, much to her surprise.  For a fleeting second she felt all alone and it hurt a little, but she reasoned that that feeling was sure to be dispelled when Dagne was awake enough to talk.  She was encouraged to learn from the chaplain that Dagne was sleeping behind the curtain, not shutting herself off and brooding, as she had started to fear might be the case. 

The chaplain’s visit had reminded her that her religious life had been very spotty in recent years.  Her grandmother had been an active member of an Assemblies of God congregation, when Cara was a child, an affiliation of necessity pressed upon the granddaughter. 

Under pressure from the old woman she had made a perfunctory profession of faith at the age of twelve, though she had been more enervated and frightened than inspired by the ecstatic and uninhibited mode of worship and assembly to which that home church had exposed her.  On up until the age of fourteen, when the grandmother had died, Cara had tagged along most Sundays.  After that, her attendance fell off considerably, and once she got married to husband number one, she abandoned the Holiness variety of faith practice altogether.

After her second marriage came about, she began attending the Episcopal church with which her second husband was nominally affiliated, more to be near him and share his lifestyle than to pursue any regimen of religious activity.  Its formality suited her reclusive personality.  She preferred a mode of worship more elevated and remote.

She had, nevertheless, been so spasmodic in her attendance, even in her chosen high-church congregation, that she and the rector of her parish had a very distant acquaintance.  He probably did not even know that she was presently hospitalized.  She thought of him as very taciturn – a man with no sense of humor to speak of and wed most devotedly to ritual and liturgy, though she surmised that he might be altogether different in informal surroundings.  She knew she had never really given him a chance to show her.