23. Hospital News

Two scenes merge at a time when the Reverend is having a sudden re-examination of everything he had ever believed in.

23. Hospital News

Nurse Amy Jones adjusted her bra, wishing she could take it off at work for comfort but knowing that if she did at least two of the younger doctors would notice and tease her about it, and she made her way into the small side ward where the two teenagers were recovering from nasty bumps and bruises because they’d wandered into the path of a passing car. The old man, the poor soul who’d been far from pleasant before he breathed his last breath, had been taken to the mortuary and the air was light and airy now that there was no death in the room.

She felt death as if it was a physical thing, which didn’t fit in well with her chosen path through life. But in truth she didn’t actually see life flickering out too often in the wards where she worked. Maybe poor old Nathaniel Cockswain would be next. She hoped not: he seemed to be quite happy snoring his way through the tail end of his life. May he be given that freedom, she thought.

She looked around. She had to check on the two lads with concussion, Jed and Gozza Scumbag. She’d kept an eye on them as they’d changed into hospital issue pyjamas and noted a reaction in the nether regions of one of them as he’d noticed her adequate bosom. She’d seen his eyes following her around , eyes that looked as if they were on bean stalks, apparently aimed at her chest level.

“Hey Miss,” called one of the lads, Jed, she thought, and she already had him down as a bit of a rascal.

“Jed Scumbag, is it?” she asked, smiling at him. She meant the smile as an acknowledgement that she had heard him but he interpreted it as he would have done at school before he left, two years ago, as a teasing recognition of his manliness and an invitation to flirt.

“That’s me, miss,” he grinned, and he actually winked at her, “what do you reckon to a few minutes inside this bed with someone who knows what it’s all about…?”

“My goodness,” she replied, “you are a confident young man…”

“I know my own strengths and weaknesses,” he bragged, “not that I have many of those!”

“You do, do you, you young braggart!” she smiled, “I like a man who knows what it’s for,” she added.

“That’s me, all right,” he boasted.

“I might,” she said quietly as if she was weighing something up in her mind, “It might just tempt me,” she added, frowning thoughtfully, “what you suggested.”.

“Then just get ‘em off and jump in!” he said, meaning it to be an invitation, but to the nurse it actually was something quite offensive.

“I could,” she murmured, slowly shaking her head, “but my husband might not like it and might go out of his way to tell you exactly why…”

“Oh. So you’re married? I din’t know that,” he grinned, “but your old man ain’t here, nowhere near as it so happens, and you might like to, you know, find out what’s what under here…” and he rustled the bed covers.

“Well, let me see,” she pretended to work something out, with a creased brow and shaking her head sadly, “he comes off duty any time now. He works in town, you know, not far away from here so he likes checking that I’m all right, because if there’s something wrong he can do something about it. He’s been a policeman for, let me see, it must be ten years now…”

“Is that you talkin’ crap,” muttered Gozza from the other bed, looking at his brother, “when a chap wants nothing better than to take a nap…”

Meanwhile, several miles away in room thirteen of the Cowslip Retreat the Reverend Barney Pickle was in a most confused state. He didn’t want to spend eternity, which, as he saw it, was one hell of a long time, in Satan’s lair, but Emma… wasn’t she something special? And wasn’t there a sweet and almost holy innocence to her? And the way she pulled him close to her as if the one thing in all the world she wanted was to feel him against her breast, his heart beating so close to her they might merge together as one?

Barney,” she whispered, “what do you think now?”

“I… er. I…” he stammered, in all honesty not knowing what he thought any more. And had that actually been her tongue reaching into his mouth? And hadn’t something, it was horrible to think of this, but hadn’t something urged him to reply in kind, but she had brought the kiss to an end all too soon and saved him from the vileness of even more sin?

And he regretted that! He wanted, deep inside himself, more of the same, but hovering like a dreadful ogre at the edge of his mind was a mental reconstruction of his father from years ago. And he could almost hear the old man, and he must be old by now but he’d had nothing to do with him since his last beating in his teens, cursing him and the thoughts in his mind, the conflict of everlasting torture that was as real and assured as everything else his father had bullied into him, and the sweet fragrance of a woman he already liked, had actually liked for ages but hadn’t realised it, and the sweetness of her kiss, the taste of er in his own mouth, the actual real and assured knowledge that he truly wanted more.

He sat on his bed, head in hands, and started shaking. To Emma it looked as if a war was bing fought inside the man, the good man who never sinned and certainly never robbed banks!

“What is it, Barney?” she asked, quietly, and she sat on the edge of his bed next to him and held one of his hands in her own.

And that was the moment a war was won.

“It was all lies, Emma, wasn’t it?” he whispered, “what my father said? About Heaven and Hell and how we should never sin?”

“If that’s what you want to believe, then believe it was lies, Barney,” she told him so quietly that her voice barely rose above the fluttering of a butterfly’s wing outside the window.

“When I was a boy, you know, little and didn’t know anything, he made me quite sure that everything to our bodies that we keep away from human eyes is part of a conduit to hell,” he muttered, “and the best way of ensuring our future happiness in Heaven at the feet of our Lord is to ignore them, and if we can’t, then cut them off. Dispose of them and dispose of sin and a life of torment at the same time… But what if he was wrong and I was too blind or stupid to see that? I endured a great deal of pain, Emma, so that I would always travel through life on a path free from the poison of sin…”

“You poor man,” whispered Emma, “come closer to me…”

And he did. But the day hadn’t finished with him yet. Just as her lips moved enticingly close to his own there came a knock at the door of his room.

It was Emma who went to answer it because he was in no state to do anything but allow tears of what might have been self-pity or even self-loathing rise up into his eyes.

“Yes?” she asked Father Teatrader, who stood there, frowning, a troubled look on his face.

“I wanted the Reverend,” he said quietly.

“He’s here. But he’s got things on his mind,” Emma told the older man.

“I need to talk to him, It’s personal and important,” replied the Master uncomfortably.

Emma stood aside to let the Father enter, and when he saw the pitiable state that Barney was in the last thing he wanted to do was add to his torment, whatever it was. But some things have to be said. They are important, too important to cast to one side.

“Reverend Pickle,” he said, “I hope you don’t mind, but you need to know this. I heard just a few minutes ago from Brumpton Hospital some terrible news. It’s about your father. I’m afraid he passed away not so long ago.

Barney looked up when he heard that, and out of his misery and the tears of self reproach he produced a smile.

“Thank Heavens,” he said quietly, “the devil is gone to his hell at last…”

© Peter Rogerson 24.04. 24.