Kyle let out a small breath. They didn’t need a pediatrician here; they needed a gerontologist. “You have to eat, Father,” he informed the old priest, as if the poor man could understand a word anyone was saying. “You need to stay strong, to pray for all of us. We need your prayers.” The old priest trembled, but that was the palsy. As far as Kyle could see, there was nothing in there; he was gone already, and his body was trying to follow. He turned his attention to Brother Peter and summoned up the nerve to just tell him the truth. “I am not an expert on the maladies of the elderly, far from it,” he admitted. “I suspect the dementia is advanced and is an associated cause of the lack of appetite, but I cannot say anything for certain. I do have several colleagues whom I can consult about this. Unfortunately, I just got here fifteen minutes ago, and I haven’t even had time to put my things in my room, and I need to do that, and catch my breath, and then make a few phone calls. Would it be possible for me to see him again, later in the day or even first thing tomorrow? I apologize, I really do feel like I’ve been caught flat-footed and I don’t want to make a quick diagnosis under the circumstances.”
“No apology is necessary. On the contrary, I should apologize to you. Of course you need a moment to orient yourself. We should have been more considerate.”
“You should have, perhaps, found yourself a different doctor. I’m not at all sure I’m the right man for this.”
“That is for God to say,” Brother Peter observed. He smiled at Kyle with a quiet confidence which suggested that they both understood that this was, and would always be, the real truth of the situation. Then he placed his left hand under Father Timothy’s trembling arm and helped guide him off the gurney and out of the room. The old man could barely shuffle to the door. He doesn’t need a gerontologist, thought Kyle, he needs an undertaker.
That’s for God to say, his brain reminded him. Kyle felt his internal thoughts splinter and come together with a sardonic edge. If only God really had an opinion about things, about anything. He remembered how easily his mother used to toss that phrase around—That’s for God to say, Kyle, honey; finish your cereal—but for years it had been buried underneath all the other inanities he was taught as a child. Learn to share. Clean your plate. All you have to do is work hard and do your best. That one was really a joke. Working hard and doing your best wasn’t all you had to do; not by a long shot. If it were, what was he doing here, surrounded by all these failing monks? He sat on the edge of the examining table, wondering how he was going to pull this off. The sheer challenge of the medicine would have been enough; on top of it, the nearness of so much apparently authentic spirituality was unnerving. This wasn’t just the easy pieties he and his neighbors recited every Sunday at Mass. The muscle in his head which reduced his patients—necessarily reduced them, otherwise how else was he supposed to do this terrifying job—to blood and bones and muscles and bacteria felt frozen, bewildered. He thought about just walking back out into the parking lot, getting in the Volvo, and jumping ship.
Instead, he just sat there. Moments later he found himself in the capable hands of Brother Luke, who informed Kyle that he had been asked to show the young doctor to his room in the dormitory of the retreat house. As he followed the brother at a respectful distance—it seemed to be expected somehow—he took more careful note of those ubiquitous brown and white robes. The simple design of the hooded brown shift tied at the waist over a long white robe looked both practical and holy, a light and comfortable cotton linen which was machine washable while simultaneously whispering of the eternal nature of God’s grace.
His cell—there was no other word for it—was predictably Spartan. White walls, a window, a dresser, a bedside table with a lamp, and a single twin bed with a simple orange coverlet. There wasn’t even a chair, which he found weird until he thought about whether or not he would need one. Do you really sit in a chair, when you’re in a bedroom? No, you sit on the bed. Then you don’t actually need a chair, do you? The voice in his head was more and more bemused; its judgmental edge seemed to be tempering those swift and nasty observations Kyle had come to accept as second nature. That plain room was inexplicably comforting.
“Cell phones do work here, but we try to observe silence in the retreat areas and the dormitories. There is an area out by the parking lot which people use to make their calls. We hope that won’t be an imposition.”
“Not at all.” The idea that he would have a room all to himself, where no one could speak to him, even on a cell phone, felt like a miracle.
“Would you like a few minutes to unpack? Or would you prefer to see the rest of the complex? It isn’t large.”
The possibility that the rest of this place might reveal itself to be as mutely appealing had in fact already occurred to him. “I’d love to get the full tour, if you have time,” he admitted.
“Of course.” The brother nodded, content, even pleased in a gentle monk-like way. As Kyle set his single bag beside the single bed, Brother Luke drifted out into the narrow white hallway. Kyle followed.
The monastery grounds were apparently large, as it had previously functioned as a working farm. Black-and-white photographs of monks in those timeless robes riding tractors and holding up garden hoes lined the walls of the small hallway adjacent to the cafeteria. The carpeting was industrial gray, and the few chairs stacked in the corner were monotonous, standard-issue office furniture, the kind anybody could pick up in the back of an OfficeMax or Staples. Institutional Catholicism always looked the same, he thought. Bad furniture, fluorescent lighting, industrial carpet, men in dresses.
“This is Brother Albert, you’ll see him often as he is usually here at the front desk,” Brother Luke told Kyle. “This is Doctor Wallace, he is going to take over the infirmary this week, while Dr. Murrough has his operation.”