‘No,’ I said, and I did my best not to wince as I sat down.
‘I was talking to a woman the other day,’ he said, ‘who lost her daughter to …’ He struggled for the words and eventually settled with gesturing towards me with an open palm. The Lenni Thing. Whatever it is that I have. I liked that he feared naming it in front of me.
‘She said that her daughter was in a lot of pain, towards the …’ Derek gestured again, and then let his hand fall to his lap with a sad slapping sound. Even he had realized that my presence being used as a conversational placeholder for the notion of death was probably not the most comforting thing that had happened to me that day.
‘Anyway,’ he said brightly, as though all things were now forgiven, ‘it made me think of you and I wanted to ask. Arthur doesn’t like to talk about pain, but I do. I think it’s important to be honest about our symptoms.’
‘Do you have a background in medicine?’
‘Well … no.’
His cheeks flushed and I remembered what Father Arthur had said to me when he heard I was going to visit Derek in the chapel: Be nice.
It was easier said than done.
Derek ran his hands across his completely smooth chin. ‘Perhaps we could hold a prayer session.’
‘You mean you’re not already praying for me?’
‘I—’
‘Because that seems a little harsh, Derek.’
‘I’ve asked you not to call me that. I’d prefer you to call me “Pastor Woods”。’
‘But it doesn’t rhyme.’
‘What doesn’t?’
I sighed and looked up at the stained glass window. Give me strength, beautiful purple glass.
‘Father Arthur has the good sense to rhyme.’
Derek clearly didn’t know what to do with this, and I had the feeling that not only had he rehearsed this conversation in his mind, but that I had now made us stray so far from the script that he had no idea how to rescue us.
‘Do you ever wish you had retrained?’ I asked.
‘As what?’ Derek tried to mask the frustration in his voice.
‘A doctor,’ I said, ‘or a nurse. You know, so you could do something practical about people’s pain.’
‘Lenni, what are you trying to imply?’
‘I’m trying to imply that putting a church inside a hospital is like looking at an oil painting to see what the weather will be like.’
He stiffened, opened his mouth to speak, paused and took a sharp breath in. ‘Hospital chaplaincies provide support to those in need. Sometimes that is all we provide; other times, we also spread the love of Jesus Christ. We are respectful to all cultures and religions and, if you can permit me to be so bold, I might suggest that respect is an area in which you are lacking.’
‘Like butter?’
‘What?’
‘You said you spread Jesus’ love. When people say that, I think of them spreading Jesus’ love like they spread butter.’
‘Lenni, it’s not butter—’
‘Jam, then.’
‘Jesus’ love is not jam.’
‘Why not? He can be bread and grapes and a sheep and a lion and a ghost, but he can’t be jam?’
Derek inhaled loudly and then stood up from his place in the pew beside me, navigated past my empty wheelchair and disappeared into the chaplaincy office. I interpreted this as his sign of surrender, but he reappeared moments later carrying a book.
He came back and crouched in the aisle beside me, a position not befitting someone so stiff. Derek belongs on the vertical axis only.
‘Here,’ he said, passing it to me. The book was called Questions About Jesus. On the front were three friends of different races all smiling around a copy of the Bible. ‘Obviously something about the church calls to you,’ he said. ‘Why else would you keep coming back?’ He gave me a shark smile. ‘I put it to you that the thing making you come back over and over isn’t that you like to challenge people, or your fondness for Father Arthur, but that you are searching for something to believe in.’
He stood up from his crouching position and I heard all the bones in his knees click. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I take my leave of this conversation.’
‘Aren’t you going to give me any answers?’
‘I’m going to make my scheduled visit to the Scovell Ward.’
‘But you can’t leave. I have Questions About Jesus!’
Lenni and Margot in Trouble
I WOKE UP in the night and I couldn’t breathe. It felt like I’d swallowed thick PVA glue which had sealed my throat closed. No matter how hard I tried to pull the air in, I couldn’t pierce the glue to make a gap. I could cough out a little, but not enough to clear it, so I was stuck, not able to suck in enough air to breathe and not able to cough enough of the glue out. I got up and pulled my curtain back. Everyone else in the ward had their curtains pulled around them. It was dark, but the light through the open door from the corridor shone on the floor in one large square. If I could just get someone’s attention. My chest was burning and my eyes were tearing up. Not now, I thought, not now. We’re not finished. I still have stories to tell.