Last Things Read Online Free PDF Page B

whose order had founded it; now it was part of some national chain of nominally Catholic hospitals.
    Andrew asked, “Should I go in?”
    â€œA doctor and nurse are with him.”
    â€œThey come and go.”
    Like Michelangelo. How professorial Andrew looked: blue sports jacket, open collar, chinos, and massive tennis shoes. She had stopped minding that he resented her success as a writer. His own stuff was impossibly self-indulgent, mannered, “look Ma I’m writing.” Is that what he taught his students? Jessica had avoided writing courses like sin and took the bare minimum of courses in English in which pompous young men treated fiction as grist for their critical mills. She had majored in chemistry and now worked in a pathologist’s lab, testing tissue like that they had taken from her father some years ago. Did she ever think her findings related to someone waiting here for the bad news?
    â€œHe asked for Raymond.”
    â€œI left a message on his answering machine,” Andrew said.

    Her mother said to Father Dowling, “He hasn’t been to the sacraments for years.”
    Good God. But the priest only nodded. “I’ll talk to him again.”
    â€œIt won’t do any good,” Andrew said. He might have been defending their father against what?
    â€œWe’ll see. I’m Father Dowling.”
    She nodded. “Jessica.”
    â€œThe novelist.”
    A little leap of pleasure. “How did you know?”
    â€œYour Aunt Eleanor told me.”
    â€œEleanor?”
    He nodded. That was all. Why did she feel she could bare her soul to him? Because she was flattered he knew she had published novels? No, that wasn’t it. There was a serenity about him she liked. She looked at Andrew. “Did you call Eleanor?”
    He hadn’t. Should she? She wanted something to do. “I will.”
    â€œWhat for?”
    â€œAndrew, he’s her brother-in-law.”
    She went outside the waiting room and called Eleanor on her cell phone. “Daddy is in the hospital, in intensive care.”
    â€œOh my God.”
    â€œHe’s being looked after.” Intensively. “He’s awake.”
    â€œI’ll come.”
    â€œSt. Mark’s?”
    â€œOf course.”
    Father Dowling had come out to talk to the doctor, nodding as the doctor spoke. He turned to Jessica, and she went to him as the doctor scampered away.
    â€œHe has had cancer for years.”
    â€œIs this his first heart attack?”
    â€œHeart attack?”
    â€œDidn’t you know?”

    She looked at him. “I didn’t even ask. He has prostate cancer …”
    She had assumed the cancer was his reason for being here. “He is stabilizing, they tell me. Is Raymond the priest?”
    â€œThe former priest. He’s why my father …”
    â€œAh. Is he coming?”
    â€œYes.” She said it firmly as if that committed her brother to come from California to be at their father’s bedside. “If he is in danger,” she added.
    â€œIf he were younger, they would operate.”
    The priest knew more than any of them, made privy to it all in moments by the staff. Of course it would be easier for them to talk to a stranger. “Let’s go in.”
    She followed the priest into the cubicle where her father lay. Her father’s eyes tracked him to the side of the bed. In a slurred voice he said, “I don’t believe in God.”
    â€œWell, he believes in you.” Again the hand on her father’s forehead. His lips moved like her mother’s in prayer.
    â€œI want Raymond.”
    As a priest? Was that the condition of his faith, that his son should regain his?
    â€œI understand he’s coming,” Father Dowling said.
    Her father smiled.
    â€œYou are not in immediate danger, but the prospects are not good.”
    The old man’s eyes were fixed on the priest.
    â€œI am dying?”
    No need to say