Strangers

dream's not symbolic. It's crazy, I suppose. But I'm sure those black gloves are real, as real as that Morris chair, as real as those books on the shelf."
        On the mantel, the clock struck the hour.
        The soughing of the wind in the caves became a howl.
        "Creepy," Stefan said, referring not to the wind or the hollow striking of the clock. He crossed the room and clapped the curate on the shoulder. "But I assure you, you're wrong. The dream is symbolic, and it is related to your crisis of faith. The black hands of doubt'. it's your subconscious warning you that you're in for a real battle. But it's a battle in which you're not alone. You've got me beside you."
        "Thank you, Father."
        "And God. He's beside you as well."
        Father Cronin nodded, but there was no conviction in his face or in the defeated hunching of his shoulders.
        "Now go pack your suitcases," Father Wycazik said.
        "I'm leaving you short-handed when I go."
        "I've got Father Gerrano and the sisters at the school. Now, off with you." When his curate had gone, Stefan returned to his desk.
        Black gloves. It was only a dream, not particularly frightening in its essence, yet Father Cronin's voice had been so haunted when he spoke of it that Stefan was still affected by the image of shiny black rubber-clad fingers reaching out of a blur and prodding, poking…
        Black gloves.
        Father Wycazik had a hunch that this was going to be one of the most difficult salvage jobs upon which he had ever embarked.
        Outside, snow fell.
        It was Thursday, December 5.
        

    4.
        

    Boston, Massachusetts
        
        On Friday, four days after the catastrophic fugue that followed the aortal graft on Viola Fletcher, Ginger Weiss was still a patient at Memorial Hospital, where she had been admitted after George Hannaby led her out of the snowy alleyway in which she had regained consciousness.
        For three days, they had put her through exhaustive tests. An EEG study, cranial X rays, sonograms, pneumoventriculography, a lumbar puncture, an angiogram, and more, repeating the several procedures (though fortunately not the lumbar puncture) for cross-checked results. With the sophisticated tools and processes of modern medicine, they searched her brain tissue for neoplasms, cystic masses, abscesses, clots, aneurysms, and benign gummatous lumps. For a while they concentrated on the possibility of malignancies of the perineural nerves. They checked for chronic intracranial pressure. They analyzed the fluid from the spinal tap in search of abnormal protein, cerebral bleeding, a low sugar count that would indicate bacterial infection, or signs of a fungus infection. Because they were physicians who always gave their best to a patient, but especially because Ginger was one of their own colleagues, her doctors were diligent, determined, thoughtful, thorough, and firmly committed to pinpointing the cause of her problem.
        At two o'clock Friday afternoon, George Hannaby came to her room with the results of the final battery of tests and with the reports of consultants who had given one last round of opinions. The fact that he had come himself, rather than let the oncologist or the brain specialist (who were in charge of her case) bring the news, most likely meant that it was bad, and for once Ginger was sorry to see him.
        She was sitting in bed, dressed in blue pajamas that Rita Hannaby, George's wife, had been kind enough to fetch (along with a suitcase. full of other necessities) from the Beacon Hill apartment. She was reading a paperback mystery, pretending to be confident that her seizures were the result of some easily corrected malady, but she was scared.
        But what George had to tell her was so bad that she could no longer hold fast to her composure. In a way, it was worse than anything for which she had prepared herself.
        They had found nothing.
        No disease. No injury. No congenital defect. Nothing.
        As George solemnly outlined the final results and made it clear that her wild flights, performed in a fugue, were without a discernible pathological cause, she finally lost control of her emotions for the first time since she had broken into tears in the alleyway. She wept, not noisily, not copiously, but quietly and with enormous anguish.
        A physical ailment might have been correctable. And once cured, it