[Coffee]

Vespers

Darren McAllen sat in the waiting room. Although he was dressed casually, the collar he wore around his neck identified him as a man of the cloth. He was used to people’s stares and glances. He imagined that he was something of a community celebrity, in that everyone recognized him to be a Catholic priest. In fact, he was the senior priest at St. Michael’s Catholic Church. He had been in that position for six years, and a priest for thirty.

Darren never liked doctors. When he was younger, he was unafraid of getting sick or, much less, dying. The immortality of youth gave him a feeling of invincibility. He combined that feeling with his faith, a constant in his life, to form a potent distrust of the medical profession as a whole. He reasoned that people should not be too concerned with their physical health, and that God would take them when He chose, so people shouldn’t bother so much with doctors. Besides, he hated being undressed in a bright room.

Darren, before he was Father McAllen, was the son of Alice and Edward McAllen. Ed McAllen had been the owner of a small coffee shop that had managed to provide a fairly comfortable life for his family. Unlike many fathers, Ed had never maintained that either of his sons, Darren or Jeff, follow in his footsteps. Since Ed had been an entrepreneur and struck out on his own, he was conscious of the fact that his boys needed to be able to decide their own paths in life. Both Ed and Alice took great pains to instill this sense in their children, tying everything in with a refrain of, “You can do anything you want to do.”

For Darren’s brother Jeff, doing anything he wanted to do was a problem, because Jeff soon discovered that the only thing he really wanted to do was drink large quantities of alcohol. The first time Jeff tasted whiskey, he felt a strange excitement about the sting and tickle he felt in his throat and nose. He began consuming Crown Royal, Jim Beam, Glenlivet, Jack Daniels, and any other kind of whiskey, bourbon, or scotch he could get his hands on. The McAllens, with their Scotch-Irish background, certainly had a predisposition to alcoholism. Darren’s uncle on his father’s side had been an alcoholic, and Ed himself had only escaped this trap when Alice put her foot down about it. Unfortunately, neither Ed nor Alice could save their older son from the liquid trap in which he was ensnared, and he died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of forty-three.

Watching his brother’s long, drawn-out death had changed Darren’s perspective. He felt something different, and he would not have called it fear, but that is what it was. For the first time in his life, at age thirty-eight, Darren, Catholic priest, discovered that, although he felt sure of his salvation in the afterlife, he was afraid of the actual process of dying. He was afraid of the tubes, the smells, the pain, and the loss of control.

When the headaches had begun seven months ago, Darren had taken some Advil and kept moving. They hurt, but he really did not pay much attention to them because he had been mired in the haggling over the price of the renovation of St. Michael’s. The church’s choir loft was on the verge of being condemned, and several of the walls and struts looked very questionable. At first, it had looked as though the renovations would be done fairly cheaply, but the contractor had apparently undergone a change of heart and decided that St. Peter would not particularly care about this virtual act of charity on Judgement Day. The contractor reneged on the price of the repairs, asking for the price that he would normally charge. Since Darren and the contractor, a disagreeable man named Arthur Jameson, had only had a verbal contract, the only recourse he had was to engage in several extremely heated discussions with Jameson, who finally agreed to the deal at a price halfway between the original and the new price.

Darren supposed that he ignored the headaches for three months, until he noticed that he was taking Advil twice a day, and in increasing doses. When he first went to his internist, a man he blessed in church almost every Sunday, the doctor had simply given him a prescription for the pain, diagnosing them as migraines. It was only at his physical two months later that the doctor became concerned. He referred Darren to another doctor named Jerome Emmons. Emmons, although a Protestant, was, and is, one of the city’s top oncologists. Needless to say, Darren was worried.

Emmons had run an absolute battery of tests on Father McAllen. MRI, PET scan, CT, X-ray, and various other acronyms were all performed on Darren. Darren had only gotten through those two harrowing days because of nearly-constant internal prayer for strength and composure. At the end of the second of two of the longest days of McAllen’s life, Emmons had prescribed him some unpronounceable pain medication and had sent him on his way. The doctor had said that the tests would take a few weeks to process, and in the midst of that, Darren had a church to run. So, he was overdue on the appointment for which he found himself in this waiting room.

He supposed that he should have brought someone along. Darren had never been a very social individual. When he was eighteen, he had elected not to attend his senior prom simply because he was too shy to ask any girl to with him. His associate, David Franks, who went by the nickname of “Father D,” was probably the closest thing Darren had to a best friend. However, Darren had not told anyone about his headaches, and Father D was the only person who probably suspected something was wrong. In the end, he had come by himself because he just didn’t want to go to anymore trouble than he had to.

Two Hispanic women were subtly eyeballing him. He imagined that it was because of the collar, and soon, as the patient’s name was called and she passed by him, they both tilted their heads slightly toward him and said, “Padre.” He returned their nod, almost as if in a dream. In places like this, Darren sometimes forgot that he was a priest. He felt like he was a man first, Darren second, and Father McAllen third. He supposed that this was a trifle blasphemous, but in his study of God, he had come to believe, or at least, hope that the God he worships is completely understanding, being omniscient.

When the nurse called his name, she said all three of his names.

“Darren Michael McAllen.” Darren never liked this very much, but not because he didn’t like his name. For one thing, as with many children, this was the address that was used when they were in trouble. Darren associated the use of his full name with some very long nights, filled with scoldings and an occasional sore bottom.

For another thing, during the course of his priesthood Darren had ministered to some death row convicts. On four or five occasions, he had served as spiritual adviser to the men in their last hours (this was before his brother had died and his feelings about death were clearer). When he read about the executions later in the newspaper or heard about them on television, the journalists would always use the full names of the convicts. Darren never could shake the way it echoed in his head that this had been a living being a few hours earlier.

Darren got up from his chair and walked toward the nurse standing in the open doorway. The nurse held a thick packet in her arm, which was obviously the charts and results and write-ups that Darren had accumulated. Darren marveled that only two days could produce that much paperwork.

The nurse led him to Exam Room 2. The room had the standard leather bound examining table, a counter with a sink and numerous bottles of disinfecting hand soap, and a light board to illuminate X-rays. There was a magazine rack on the wall, filled with out-of-date magazines that were at least six months late.

“How are you feeling today?” she asked, automatically.

“Fine,” he answered, equally automatically.

“Are you still having those headaches?”

“Off and on,” Darren said, reflecting that there was a level of deceit to this answer, in that when he said “off and on,” he was referring to the fact that his headaches came and went several times each day. He also had lied to the doctor earlier about the blurring of his vision that was taking place periodically, but he figured that the doctor was a smart man and did not need that much extra help, being such a hotshot oncologist.

“Okay, Mr. McAllen, well, the doctor will be in shortly,” the nurse said, and then walked outside the room, pausing to place his chart in the rack by the door, and then she closed the door.

Darren sat on the examining table, looking quizzically around the room. He hoped that heaven would be as bright as the examining room, but not smell quite so much like disinfectant. His big toe on his right foot twitched, and he contemplated this foot for a moment. His shoes were very simple, black, and cheap. Darren figured that nearly every priest in America had a pair of these shoes. He referred to them as his “priesters.” He thought that he should perhaps get a new pair soon, since these were really beginning to look bad, but that they could wait at least another week or so.

Darren looked at himself in the floor-length mirror on the wall. He regarded the old man looking back at him, and said his full name aloud.

“Father Darren Michael McAllen.” The old man staring back at him had perfectly mimicked him, but it didn’t seem to be mocking. Darren never thought that the path of his life would have ever led him where it did. He had always thought that his life, the life he had chosen, would have turned out differently. He always thought...

Dr. Jerome Emmons strode into the exam room. He had Darren’s file tucked under his arm. He almost hid the worried expression on his face, but Darren saw it before it was replaced with the doctor’s bedside-manner smile. Darren liked Emmons, but could never quite trust him.

“Hullo, Darren,” Emmons said. “How are we feeling today?”

“Fine, Jerome, fine,” Darren said.

“Have you been taking the pills I prescribed?” Emmons asked.

“Yes, I have, but I have to confess that I may have missed a dose or two recently. They interfere with my ability to give sermons, and I have to be as sharp as possible for Sunday Mass,”
Darren replied, wishing that he could rationalize lying to the man.

“Be that as it may, Darren, I want to urge you to take the dosage I prescribed as faithfully as possible. Now, I have the results of all those tests we ran on you last week.”

“Uh-huh. What’s the prognosis?” Darren asked, though he already could guess the answer.

“Unfortunately, through the tests we have run we have discovered a malignancy growing in your brain. By our estimates, it has been there for some time now, but its growth was very slow. I’m not entirely sure why the growth rate accelerated recently, but it is no longer a problem that can be ignored,” Emmons said. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions, so fire away.”

“What is your recommendation for treatment?” asked Darren, feeling strangely calm. He had imagined that he would lose control of himself when his suspicions were confirmed, but for some reason, he felt more inquisitive than anything else.

“Well, I know that we can try a course or two of radiation treatment, and see if that will slow the growth of the tumor, and there may be another treatment or two we can suggest. Beyond that, I don’t know. Um... ”

“Jerome, tell me the truth about what is in my head. Am I going to die?” Darren asked, already knowing the answer, but needing to hear it.

“Yes. To be honest, the chemo may slow it, but not very much. The tumor began in your frontal lobe, but has spread beyond it into other regions of the brain. There’s really not much that can be done. I’m sorry, Darren, but this one is going to be the last,” Emmons said.

Darren nodded, and then said, “What kinds of symptoms can I expect?”

“Well, the headaches will continue and worsen. You may begin finding your memory lapsing, as well as some reasoning problems. In some rare cases, people experience some hallucinations. All of these symptoms will gradually worsen, and you will probably not be able to function very much longer. I don’t believe you have very much time left. I’m sorry, Darren. Is there someone that I can call for you? Do you have someone who can help you?”

Darren thought for a minute. He considered having Emmons call Father D. Father D could come down to the doctor’s office, pick him up, and then they could go to the coffee shop down the street from St. Michael’s. Darren could tell Father D the truth about the headaches, and what it would mean to St. Michael’s, and about a dozen other things that would be necessary. The more Darren thought about it, the more he just wanted to walk back to his church, and let that be it.

“I have God, Dr. Emmons. He’s all the help anyone needs,” Darren said. Emmons looked pained, but then muttered his leave and left the room. Darren looked at himself in the mirror. He looked at the section of his head where the tumor was located. His head didn’t look any different than usual. The hair was still black with a spritz of grey, and it still had that same coarse texture that had always frustrated him in his earlier years when he still was trying to be attractive to women. He tapped the area gently with two fingers. Darren thought about how many times he had touched that part of his head, absentmindedly. He never imagined that the seed of his end would be planted there.

“Better place than others, I guess,” Darren said aloud. “Better place than others.” He opened the door, and walked out into the hallway, making his way toward the reception desk. The receptionist was a forty-ish woman with pictures of her kids set in frames on her desk. McAllen handed his chart to her, she smiled, printed out a receipt, and then handed it to him with the automatic “Thankshaveaniceday.” Darren took the receipt, smiled back briefly, then went out the door of the office.

Darren left the office of Jerome Emmons for the last time. It was a lovely spring day, with a slight breeze and a nip in the air as the sun began to fade behind the rotating earth. He began the trek back home, slowly and deliberately, savoring the dying of the light.

He walked for a minute or two without a thought in his head. He just slightly glanced at the heavens above him as he ambled toward St. Michael’s, his home for the last six years. He could see its spire from where he was, but it was still several blocks away.

The clouds formed wisps of grey. The sky had settled into a salmon-pink. There were hints of stars to the east. He was in no hurry.