Читать книгу And Then There Were Nuns - Ellen Saxby - Страница 5

The apartment building that housed the nursing students was a city block away from the hospital. The first thing that Sister Jonathan saw, when she walked into the large foyer of St. Martin Hall, was the cigarette machine. It was in a corner tucked under the stairs and far enough away from the reception desk. The desk was always manned, but it occurred to Sister Jonathan immediately that she could easily buy a pack without being seen.

There was no decision. No inner battle being waged in her soul. Only the search for the quarter which would bring her back to Winston after all these years. She waited until she was settled into her tiny room in the back of the building and the four other sisters had each gone to their rooms for the night prayers that closed the day. Her room was at the end of the corridor and was the only one with a window leading out to a blind alley. It was so perfect.

It was five years since she had lit a cigarette and they still called to her. While still in her first year as a postulant, she often sat in her cell, rolling up pieces of paper and blowing puffs of imaginary smoke. The second year novices had told her that on Christmas Day the Novice Mistress gave three cigarettes to each new postulant who had been a smoker.

They had not meant to be cruel. They just had never been there, had never watched the curl of smoke dance with the steam rising over a cup of coffee. Never hiding on the roof of a tenement and lighting up with your best friend, never gathering pennies and nickels from under the bed to go out and sneak a pack, never finding a store that sold ‘loosies’ - three for a nickel. They just didn’t know. They couldn’t understand.

Throughout that long Christmas day, she had waited patiently. After midnight Mass she wasn’t even thinking too much about it but during the ‘after breakfast’ meeting she could hardly breathe with happy anticipation. By the afternoon she was becoming frightened that this had been a trick. By nightfall it was all too clear. While the other postulants contemplated the Holy Babe in the manger, she kept thinking about her three lost cigarettes.

The full remembrance of that horrible day came back to her as she dropped her quarter into the machine and selected a pack of Winston filtered cigarettes. “All things come to the sinner who waits,” she thought. Within half a minute she was back in her room. No one saw her. She was sure. She looked out at the blank wall. With the window open just a crack, she lit up and took a deep drag. It was pure heaven.

“I think I’m going to like nurse’s training,” she thought.

Despite this initial hope, and despite the calming effect of her nightly meeting with Winston, she did not like nurse’s training. In fact she hated it. The Chemistry class was painfully beyond her. She could make no sense of the complex formulas that were so clear to her classmates. Anatomy was not so hard but Pharmacology made absolutely no sense. She could not remember the barbitols from the cillins. Touching bodies made her queasy.

She prayed at morning Mass with as much fervor as her guilty mind would allow her to summon. The Chapel at the hospital was large and cold. The Priest acted as though it was a great bother for him to go through the motions of saying Mass. So it was not easy to frame the heartfelt words or to gather any inner sentiment that would set her own prayer in motion. She wasn’t even exactly sure what her petition was.

“Please, get me out of here,” didn’t say it accurately, but it was close.

“It’s just the adjustment, “ she thought. “It’s bound to get better.”

There were five Sisters in nurse’s training along with almost one hundred lay students. The student sisters didn’t fit in with the faculty nor did they really fit in with the lay students. They were a tiny island unto themselves as they hunkered in their little breakfast nook in the corner of the hospital cafeteria. The lay students called it the ‘nun booth.’ Sister Jonathan looked up to the other sisters who were in training with her. They seemed to really like what they were doing. They were good at it. They talked about the surgeries that they scrubbed in on, the drama of the night shift and which doctors they felt were the best.

Sister Jonathan wanted to talk about existential philosophy or Shakespeare or the writings of Thomas Merton. She was lost in this sea of medical jargon. As she poked at her corned beef, she could hear the constant, pleading voice over the loudspeaker, “Dr. Ryan for Dr. Livoti. Dr. Ryan for Dr. Livoti.”

After four months it was no better. She was failing Chemistry, had no idea what a CBC was, hated Pharmacology and still disliked touching bodies. She gathered her courage and made an appointment with the Novice Mistress. She was sure that once she expressed the serious nature of her situation, the course would be clear. It was humiliating to admit defeat but she had no choice. As she knelt beside her Superior, wishing she could be seated like an adult, she poured out her heart.

“I think I’m in the wrong place,” she said, fighting the tears that had been lurking behind her eyes since the first day of training. She explained her despair in as much detail as she could muster and waited with some relief for the words that would free her from this strange, impossible dream. But the words that came rocked her soul even more.

“This is a temptation of Satan…”

All the rest was a blur and Sister Jonathan heard very little of the actual words. She nodded politely, distancing herself from the tears that would have humiliated her all the more. The appointment ended with a prayer and only the fact that Winston was waiting kept the lid on her private emotional volcano. Leaving the convent was not an option for her since that portion of her life was not in doubt. She was wedded to her vows. She could see this through.

She used the steel she had developed on the Brooklyn streets, the avoidance of the gangs, the occasional drunk, the usual terror of walking home at night from the parish dance. She could walk this walk to wherever it would take her. She was not afraid and not alone.

Every day she received Holy Communion in an ecstatic meeting with the Beloved and then after a quick breakfast, fortified herself to meet the enemy - Miss Keenan, whose job it was to terrify, humiliate and badger all the potential nurses so she could weed out the timid, the probable failures. Sister Jonathan had not survived the streets of Brooklyn for nothing. She could focus. She could hang tough. At least for a while. She could deal with strokes and wounded bellies and heart attacks, at least for a while.

She watched the young women who were her classmates. They were beginning to coalesce into informal but definite groups. The foremost group included four tall, rather beautiful and smart young women. One blond, three brunettes, all sure and confident, in control of themselves and their place in the class. Next were the few who had less confidence, less beauty and less savoir faire. And finally, there were the lonely, the confused ones. These were the ones who usually sought out Sister Jonathan for comfort, conversation and advice. She had none to give. All she had was a ready ear because she understood their fear and their sense of inadequacy. She was the least adequate of them all and it allowed them to trust her.

The classes tired her and made her drowsy. She learned how to sleep sitting up with her book propped up before her, feigning attention. It was not easy and it was an accomplishment for which she was unabashedly proud.

After the first three months of classes, the freshmen were assigned more hours on the Unit, expected in that short space of time to have learned how to deal with the rigors of illness, healing, death and dying. Sister Jonathan was awed by how well her classmates handled themselves as though they had been born to this awful work. Most of them were eighteen years old. They were all young Catholic girls even more sheltered than she had been, yet here they were, managing catastrophic issues like saints and wise women.

Sister Jonathan felt herself bumbling along, her fellow students often filling in for her lack of knowledge and ability like fellow conspirators.

“We’ll foil Miss Keenan,” they seemed to say.

She was assigned to bathe and care for Mrs. Kerrigan who was dying. Mrs. Kerrigan was old, and suffering the throes of end stage liver disease, her belly swollen, her skin yellow and taut. She was in great pain. Great anguish. Sister Jonathan was terrified of her, of touching her, of doing something to make her suffering worse, of being totally inadequate to stand up to the reality of dying and death. Somehow Mrs. Kerrigan seemed to know this.

Sister Jonathan had to think through the procedure. Wash basin, soap, towel, wash cloths. As Sister Jonathan washed her arm, timidly and tentatively, Mrs. Kerrigan said, “Sister, I’m not afraid to die, you know. It’s okay. Don’t be afraid for me.”

Sister Jonathan looked into her eyes in a way she had never looked into the eyes of any human being. Time stopped. She was sure that she saw a sixteen year old on her first date, a young married woman in the thrill of romance, she saw a widow broken with grief, she saw a mature woman cradling her first grandchild, she saw an old woman who had lived an entire life filled with the diverse faces of love. And Mrs. Kerrigan knew immediately that she had been seen.

“Sister, you’re a good nurse. Don’t be afraid to love your patients.”

The rest of the bed bath was a blur of conversation. Where are you from? Where did you live? Who is your favorite composer? What was the name of your first boyfriend? It wasn’t even clear who was asking whom. They both gloried in this meeting of totally unabashed friendship. She wrapped Mrs. Kerrigan’s feet in a warm blanket and kissed her on the forehead.

At 3:30 when the shift was over Sister Jonathan went into the cold, drafty chapel and sat in her usual pew on St Joseph’s side. She just sat. And sat. And sat. She had homework and a test pending but could not move from her spot. No thought. No prayer. Finally, the long shadows of the afternoon showed through stained glass windows and she re-emerged from the deep. She nodded to Saint Joseph, left the cold, darkened chapel and walked slowly down the curved marble stairway and headed to the cafeteria where her confreres were already ensconced in the ‘nun booth,’ wrapped in delicious conversation. She filled her tray with the unnamed entree, which she recognized as goulash, and joined them.

At supper, she actually entered into the conversation.

As she poked at her food, she noticed a few new faces in the cafeteria at the long table across from them. The new interns, or maybe residents who were not yet on the level of attending doctors, took their meals with the student nurses. She could see some curious stares. The supper was a disaster. She hated goulash and ate two slices of bread to compensate. She wanted to go and visit Mrs. Kerrigan. Instead, she walked back to the residence with her classmates, and talked of this and that as the December evening breathed its chill into their bones.

The foyer was a warm relief from the windy, wintry night, with the usual chatty and friendly greeting from the receptionist. There was a poster opposite the front desk advertising a new singing group called Peter Paul and Mary. One of the tall beauties teased Sister Jonathan about it and invited her to come to the concert.

The following week, the freshmen went back to the Unit and were given their assignments. Sister Jonathan was assigned to care for a young woman who had been admitted for tests. She had to ask a fellow freshman a few times about how to fill in the spaces of the requisition, where to put it so that it would be picked up, how to document it, all the while worrying about her former patient.

Finally, she had the nerve to ask and was told that Mrs. Kerrigan was close to death. She was in an oxygen tent, breathing her last. As Sister Jonathan walked down the hall with her stethoscope, she passed Mrs. Kerrigan’s room. Mrs. Kerrigan was gasping, barely breathing. Sister Jonathan was centered from her youth in Catholic theology, which told her that the last moment was crucial to the soul. A whole life of imperfection could be washed away in the critical remorse of the last moments.

The teaching of Jesus made it clear that complete compassion was hanging, hovering in the moment of dying waiting only for the soul’s asking. Sister Jonathan believed that teaching with her whole heart and without hesitating climbed up on the bed, pulled back the oxygen tent and cradled Mrs. Kerrigan in her arms. She whispered into her ear.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you my heart and my soul.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, assist me in my last agony.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I breathe forth my soul in peace with you.”

And Mrs. Kerrigan died. And Sister Jonathan, still cradling the lifeless body, wept like a babe.

The hospital Chaplain, who usually seemed so distant, arrived at the bedside after the last breath. He anointed Mrs. Kerrigan with oil and pronounced the last absolution and final blessing. He told Sister Jonathan in an unusual burst of kindness, that she had done well.

During the supper hour, she was grateful for the closeness of the other nuns with their unspoken understanding of her pain. They walked back to the residence together and she allowed the quiet conversation and gentle banter wash over her. Her small room held a new hint of what was to come since she had a second farewell to perform. She knew for sure that she would part with Winston forever. That night, as she blew the final clouds of smoke out of her window, Sister Jonathan decided to become a nurse.