Bishop as Pawn Page 0,22

the driver moved on to the last sphere of this three-ring circus. An ant colony was filled with white-and green-clad people squeezing by each other and calling out to one another as they maneuvered.

One of the nurses who had been with the dead man was now taking in the activity. She turned to the two men standing beside her. “It’ll be a miracle if this guy makes it.” She smiled at Carleson. “That would be right up your alley, wouldn’t it, Father?”

The priest smiled and shook his head. Miracles had never been his strong suit, and never less so than lately.

As Carleson proceeded through Emergency, he marveled at how easy it was. Receiving Hospital prided itself on its security. They functioned on the theory that they expected trouble—which expectation was regularly fulfilled.

All well and good when it came to extroverted troublemakers who were loud and/or violent. At the first sign of that sort of trouble, the hospital security force as well as Detroit police assigned to the facility would smother the fracas like foam on a fire.

But what of the casual intruder?

A hospital this size had a staff so large it was virtually impossible to keep track of everyone. Anybody could stuff a stethoscope in a pocket or drape it around his or her neck, and most people—visitors and staff alike—would simply assume he or she was merely a doctor visiting patients.

Or, of more immediate moment, what of himself? What gave him license to walk wherever he wished? Only the sliver of white at the collar of his black suit.

In an institution that boasted of its tight security, anyone in clerical garb could nevertheless travel unchallenged through the general areas of the hospital, such as patients’ rooms.

Of course Carleson had the advantage of being known by many in the hospital, particularly the Emergency staff. As part of his missionary training, he had become a paramedic. This had prepared him to administer, in effect, first aid.

However, it did not suit his personality to observe restrictions when the needs of people cried out for assistance. More often than not in areas he had served, there was no doctor for uncounted miles. So Carleson elected to do whatever he could to respond to the sick.

Even when procedures clearly exceeded his training—surgery and the like—he would pray and then act. In every such instance, if he had not acted, the individual would have died anyway. The worst that could happen, then, would be death on a makeshift operating table instead of death in a hut or in a jungle. More often than not, the patient survived. That Carleson freely attributed more to prayer than to his meager skill.

He never spoke of his medical operations in the bush. It was among those thorny topics better left unmentioned.

Yet, in some extrasensory perceptional way, the medical staff of the average hospital somehow sensed the link that joined Father Carleson to them.

So it was with Receiving Hospital in Detroit. Other religious personnel might be able to enter restricted areas, but they very definitely would be limited in where they could go and what they could do. Nothing of an offensive nature. Just a firm easing of the person out of sensitive areas.

But based on that implicit camaraderie, Carleson virtually had the run of the place.

Today the hospital was doing for Carleson what he had hoped—distracting him from his personal concerns and letting him lose himself in the lives and pains of others.

All Emergency personnel who were not otherwise engaged were either inside or at the door of Trauma Room Three, where a senior resident, numerous interns, nurses, and technicians were doing everything possible to save a young man who had been overcome by toxic fumes.

Carleson continued on his unplanned tour through Emergency toward the hospital proper. He smiled as he passed a gurney on which sat a rather good-looking man engaged in a seemingly reasonable discussion concerning treatment for pain. The doctor was insisting on a prescription for Motrin. The patient was arguing, with decreasing composure, in favor of codeine.

Carleson well knew the powerful difference between the two analgesics. He also knew the young man was going to need a fix of something soon or he would slip into withdrawal symptoms.

At this point there was still an element of humor in the exchange. Before long, the black comedy would disintegrate in the face of the patient’s desperate craving for drug release.

There was nothing Carleson could do about it. No prayer or blessing, no offer of understanding and friendship