Dear Life

if he had committed a betrayal and said rather shortly, “No. Nothing much.”
    She was looking past Ray now, and saying hello to somebody else in the same delighted voice with which she had greeted him some moments ago.
    It was the United Church minister, the new, or fairly new, one, whose wife had demanded the up-to-date house.
    She asked the two men if they knew each other and they said yes, they did. Both spoke in a tone that indicated not well, and that maybe showed some satisfaction that it should be so. Ray noticed that the man was not wearing his dog collar.
    “Hasn’t had to haul me in for any infractions yet,” the minister said, perhaps thinking that he should have been jollier. He shook Ray’s hand.
    “This is so lucky,” Leah said. “I’ve been wanting to ask you some questions and now here you are.”
    “Here I am,” said the minister.
    “I mean about Sunday School,” Leah said. “I’ve been wondering. I’ve got these two little kids growing up and I’ve been wondering how soon and what’s the procedure and everything.”
    “Oh yes,” the minister said.
    Ray could see that he was one of those who didn’t particularly like doing their ministering in public. Didn’t want the subject brought up, as it were, every time they took to the streets. But the minister hid his discomfort as well as he could and there must have been some compensation for him in talking to a girl who looked like Leah.
    “We should discuss it,” he said. “Make an appointment anytime.”
    Ray was saying that he had to be off.
    “Good to run into you,” he said to Leah, and gave a nod to the man of the cloth.
    He went on, in possession of two new pieces of information. She was going to be here for some time, if she was trying to make arrangements for Sunday School. And she had not got out of her system all the religion that her upbringing had put into it.
    He looked forward to running into her again, but that did not happen.
    When he got home, he told Isabel about how the girl had changed, and she said, “It all sounds pretty commonplace, after all.”
    She seemed a little testy, perhaps because she had been waiting for him to get her coffee. Her helper was not due till nine o’clock and she was forbidden, after a scalding accident, to try to manage it herself.
    It was downhill and several scares for them till Christmastime, and then Ray got a leave of absence. They took off for the city, where certain medical specialists were to be found. Isabel was admitted to the hospital immediately and Ray was able to get into one of the rooms provided for the use of relatives from out of town. Suddenly, he had no responsibilities except to visit Isabel for long hours each day and take note of how she was responding to various treatments. At first, he tried to distract her with lively talk of the past, or observations about the hospital and other patients he gotglimpses of. He took walks almost every day, in spite of the weather, and he told her all about those as well. He brought a newspaper with him and read her the news. Finally, she said, “It’s so good of you, darling, but I seem to be past it.”
    “Past what?” he countered, but she said, “Oh please,” and after that he found himself silently reading some book from the hospital library. She said, “Don’t worry if I close my eyes. I know you’re there.”
    She had been moved some time ago from Acute Care into a room that held four women who were more or less in the same condition as she was, though one occasionally roused herself to holler at Ray, “Give us a kiss.”
    Then one day he came in and found another woman in Isabel’s bed. For a moment, he thought she had died and nobody had told him. But the voluble patient in the kitty-corner bed cried out, “Upstairs.” With some notion of jollity or triumph.
    And that was what had happened. Isabel had failed to wake up that morning and had been moved to another floor, where it seemed they stashed the people who had no chance of improving—even less chance than those in the previous room—but were refusing to die.
    “You might as well go home,” they told him. They said that they would get in touch if there was any change.
    That made sense. For one thing, he had used up all his time in the relatives’ housing. And he had more than used up his time away from the police force in Maverley. All signs said that the right thing to do was to go back there.
    Instead, he stayed in the city. He got a job