William Kienzle - Deathbed

Koesler strongly suspected she could hear him. He began slowly and loudly to recite the Twenty-Third, his favorite Psalm. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want . . .”

He thought she seemed more calm. Her expression appeared to have relaxed somewhat.

“. . . And 1 shall dwell in the house of the Lord for years to come.”

He paused. She lost the little serenity she seemed to have gained. He took out the small booklet, Pastoral Care of the Sick, and turned to a Blessing for the Sick.

“All praise and glory is yours, Lord our God, for you have called us to serve you in love. Bless Millie so that she may bear this illness in union with your Son’s obedient suffering. Restore her to health, and lead her in glory. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

He looked long at the suffering woman whose affliction remained undiagnosed. Silently, Koesler commended her to the care of her personally selected physician, Dr. Jesus.

Peculiar how quickly the fortunes of life could change, thought Koesler, as he walked slowly up the corridor to the nurses’ station. It was just yesterday that Millie was, to the nonmedical eye at least, in fairly good condition. Indeed, it was Millie who had gone out of her way to assure her roommate, Alva, that an operation would go well. Now Alva, who seemed well, had, as promised, successfully undergone her operation and was divorcing herself from Millie’s predicament.

At the nurses’ station, Koesler shuffled through the patient lists trying to organize the order of his visits so he would not be constantly doubling back and forth. As he did so, he became aware of someone very nearby talking, but not to him. He looked up to see the same two nurses whom he’d recently observed in the cafeteria. They were again conversing and once more disregarding his presence.

“. . . Just the same, it’s not fair. How can he blame you for something that isn’t your fault? As a matter of fact, it’s probably his fault.”

“Maybe he’s just frustrated. After all, she was doing just fine yesterday.”

“That happens. I’ve seen it a zillion times. When you’ve had as much experience as I have you’ll know the signs.”

“Come on, now, I didn’t pass boards yesterday. I tell you this one’s different. It’s like she came in with one problem and overnight she came down with an entirely new and different illness.”

“Even that. I’ve seen that, too.”

“Maybe you’re right. But then, why was Dr. Wilson so bugged? He certainly must have encountered this before. I mean if you have—”

“Malpractice. They’re all running scared of malpractice suits.”

“You think she could sue?”

“If she survives, sure. If not, watch out for the relatives. How bad is she anyway?”

“Pretty bad. Blood pressure dangerously low. Looks as if she’s about to slip into a coma. Keeps scratching herself. Why would she be itchy? She certainly wasn’t yesterday.”

The blonde grew thoughtful. “Blood pressure dropping, and itching. Hmmm . . . I don’t know. Sounds like an allergic reaction to something. There was a patient here, oh, about four or five years ago, who had the same kind of reaction. I know the doctor had a hard time of it. At first he couldn’t . . .”

Koesler stopped listening. He was distracted by a memory. What was it the blonde nurse just said? She knew a patient who had had “an allergic reaction to something” and, as a result had ended up with about the same sort of symptoms as Millie Power.

Why did that ring a bell? Hadn’t Millie told him something to that effect? Something that had happened to her after she was admitted to the hospital. Somebody had asked her something. If she would be in some kind of test program. And she was about to agree to it when she remembered that she was allergic to penicillin. So they had taken her out of the program. Was it possible? It didn’t seem likely. But it certainly seemed possible.

“Excuse me . . .”He spoke up, interrupting the two nurses, who looked at him somewhat startled. “Excuse me,” he was speaking to the blonde nurse, “but did you just say something about a patient who had an allergic reaction or something . . . and that it produced symptoms something like what Millie Power has?”

The blonde nodded. It was obvious from the roman collar beneath his hospital jacket that he was with the pastoral care department. Her expression was a blend of “What’s it to you?” and “Where did you come from?”

“Well,” Koesler said almost apologetically, “I was just wondering: When I first visited with Millie, she mentioned that shortly after she was admitted, a doctor asked her to be a part of some hospital experiment. And she was about to say yes when she remembered that she had an allergy to penicillin. And she would have been given penicillin if she had been in the experiment. Do you suppose there could have been some mix-up and she got included in the test? And that what she’s got now could be a reaction to the penicillin?”

With a look of great incredulity, the brunette slowly extracted Millie Power’s chart from the file drawer, carefully opened it, and studied it.

“Well . . . I’ll be damned,” the brunette said. After a brief pause, she added, “Oh, excuse me, Father.”

10

“It was all a matter of timing.”

“Timing!”

“Yes,” affirmed Whitaker. “The timing was off just a bit.”

“Bah! “ said the Third Man. “That’s like a weather forecaster saying that if only the day had lasted forty-eight hours, his prediction of rain would have come true.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Hear him out,” said the Fourth Man.

“Everything worked!” Whitaker said in a tone of incredulity. “It worked just as I had it planned. They gave her the penicillin routinely, without asking any questions or informing anyone else. Just because her chart indicated she was in that study group, they gave her the penicillin. And she had her allergic reaction to it. She got sick and she was getting sicker as time went on.”

“So what was wrong with the timing?” the First Man demanded.

“I’m getting to that. I was watching her very carefully. I was waiting for her to get sick enough so that they would really worry about her dying. Then I was going to get a note to that reporter—Lennon—and inform her of what was going on. That a patient was dying because the hospital messed up her chart and, even though she told them she was allergic to it, they were giving her penicillin for her pneumonia. Once the reporter got involved in saving the woman from the hospital’s mistake, she would have to report what’s going on there. And just as soon as the media started getting in there, the lid would come off.”

“He’s right, you know,” the Fourth Man said. “When a Catholic hospital refuses to follow the clear teachings of the Catholic Church, that’s news. All we have to do is show them what’s going on.”

“Oh, yeah?” the First Man said. “If that’s so, then why didn’t that reporter write up the hospital’s policy on birth control? She knew about it. You led her to it. Or so you said!”

“I did lead her to it! And she did see what was going on! And after that . . . I don’t know!”

“Quiet down,” the Fourth Man cautioned, “or that guard will come over and break up our meeting.”

“I don’t know,” Whitaker repeated in a more restrained tone. “I really don’t. Somebody told me she was working on a feature story on the hospital. But I don’t know; if she changed her mind and was going to do a story on the immoral birth control, she would have just done it. Don’t you think?”

“All I can think of is that the nun must have charmed her, or scared her, or something. But I’m positive Lennon could not look the other way if I could have handed her the story of how the hospital was killing one of its patients. And we would have had it all—the story would have been out and Lennon would have stopped the experiment before it had gone too far and killed the patient!”