Vatican Waltz Read Online Free PDF

glasses of wine, and crossing in front of St. Anthony’s—a place where Revere Street makes a ninety-degree curve—he’d been struck by a car. The driver didn’t stop; the police were looking for him. Father was in the intensive care ward of a hospital in Boston (the same hospital where I’d done my clinical practice and was hoping to work one day); could I give her a ride?
    That news, sent through the phone line in Matilda’s frantic voice, hit me like a beam falling from the roof. I grabbed the keys to my father’s car and picked her up, and we drove into Boston, too fast, and parked in a no-parking zone in front of the hospital (the car was towed) and hurried inside.
    Father Alberto wasn’t conscious, the nurse told us, and wasn’t expected to regain consciousness. No visitors were allowed, but she’d seen me on the wards and she remembered me and I talked to her for a while, told her that Matilda and I were as close as he had to family, and, as nurses will occasionally do in those situations, she bent the rules. Matilda was weeping so hard that she took two steps into the room, made the sign of the cross, and went out again, but I sat by Father Alberto’s bed, watching his chest move up and down in too-small bumps, praying under my breath, glancing up at the heart monitor as if that one pulse were the ticking clock of God’s kingdom on Earth. I put my right hand on Father’s wrist and squeezed, and, as if that touch had all the force of my love in it, his eyes fluttered and opened and I could see him slowly becoming aware of his surroundings. His irises wavered for a moment, as if he were having trouble controlling them, but I squeezed his hand again and he began to focus.
    After a minute or more of just staring at me, he said the strangest thing: “I see who you are.”
    I nodded. “Cynthia.”
    He shook his head, said, “No,” faintly, and let his eyelids drop closed. I couldn’t tell if the shake of his head meant he was trying to tell me there was no hope for him or if his brain wasn’t working right and he was saying “no” to the Cynthia part, mistaking me for someone else. When people are close to death, they sometimes believe they see their mother or father or husband or wife at the bedside, even though that person has been dead for years. Doctors consider it an hallucination, nothing more than a change in brain chemistry brought on by the stress of dying or a combination of medicines. I wasn’t so sure. I loved science, but what I didn’t like was the certainty of some scientific minds, as if the known laws of chemistry, biology, and physics explained absolutely everything. What if those people
were
seeing the spirits of their loved ones? Why, given all the other miracles that surround us—sunrise, for instance, or childbirth—was that so impossible? I squeezed Father’s hand a second time. His eyes opened again, but just for a moment, as if raising the lids required the same amount of will and strength as lifting a heavy weight above his head.
    “Father,” I said. He didn’t respond. I squeezed his hand gently a third time, I waited. Before my throat closed up completely, I said what I hadn’t been able to say to my grandmother: “Thank you.”
    There was a twitch of what might have been a smile at the corners of his lips. The nurse came in, checked his IV line, the heart monitor, then hurried out to fetch a doctor. In the course of my training I’d seen a number of people die. Some struggled. Some, like my grandmother, drifted off into what looked like a peaceful sleep, the burdens of life left behind them like too-heavy luggage on the start of a long trip. Some tried to get out of bed or yelled or screamed, their faces twisted up in terror. I watched Father Alberto for any of those signs, I glanced up at the monitor, and when I looked back at him I saw that his eyes were open again, just barely, a quarter of an inch between the lids. His lips moved. “Can’t give up,” I