Abbey Burning Love. Donan Ph.D. Berg
cigarette?”
“Sorry. Don’t smoke.” Fingers inside wrist counted normal plus thirty.
Oscar coughed. Harsh hacking, scraping coughs filled the air. He bent forward; hugged his chest. Melissa noticed Oscar’s strained facial muscles.
Expanded exploding goose bumps poked sweats fleece lining. Heartbeats and breathing quickened as lungs and core organs commandeered blood from head and extremities creating dizzy sensations and unsteady legs should she attempt to stand. Where did staff or patients hide the nurse call button? Even in a sunroom there had to be one. Distant persons out of focus and the woman in blue didn’t move.
The bath-robed man, at the sunroom door, shouted through cupped hands for a nurse followed by an echoed shout of “help.” Nurse in green scrubs ran into the room, stopped on extended right leg. Patient outstretched arms and fingers, except Melissa, pointed at Oscar.
Melissa lowered head to knees to expel the dizziness, be able to stand erect, and to walk to relieve the building tension. Tightened muscles like stretched bungee cords imprisoned her within the chair. The nurse, with hands in Oscar’s armpits, in slow motion pulled and pushed him upright. “Breathe deep,” she said. “Once more.” The nurse’s right hand dropped from beneath a shoulder to his wrist, and then pressed the throat’s right side. Melissa prayed a strong pulse existed. Oscar repeated hacking coughs. The nurse wiped chin with a Kleenex from a uniform front pocket. “Were you smoking earlier today, Oscar?” He shook head no. “You lying?” He repeated the headshake.
The nurse eased Oscar into his chair. “You’ll be okay. Stay sitting and I’ll be back in a few minutes.” The scrub uniform departed. Melissa’s ten-second count confirmed personal near normal pulse and the dizziness evaporated.
“Need you help,” Melissa pleaded. She tried to balance the need to respect Oscar’s health with her unquenched curiosity. The events added urgency. “Clarence Jenkins carried a woman.” Oscar nodded. “Know name?”
“Shirley. Clarence carried Shirley.”
Melissa exhaled to maintain body equilibrium. Shirley a mystery woman. All she knew, Oscar named a woman not her. With the realization Oscar hadn’t identified a black dress, body tension collapsed like a released inflated balloon. “See anyone else?” She expected he hadn’t, but ask she must.
“Yep.”
The Oscar roller coaster ride continued. Should she doubt acceptance of his current and prior statements? “Being carried?”
“Not that. Only saw Clarence.”
“That’s okay.” Melissa’s forearm laid on the walker aluminum. “Will you be all right if I leave?” Not that she’d been much help a few minutes ago.
“Coughing comes and goes. Nothing compared to the leg pain at night. Stepped on burning wood; caught pants on fire. Had to beat out the flames with bare hands. Did see Emil Gunderson’s daughter, Alice, on the floor. Wave of people kept me away. Had to follow fireman to an ambulance. That help?”
She knew it didn’t. “A little.” Oscar smiled. “You should know Alice broke arm, but is doing well.”
“Yep, thought so. Saw her in the hall the other day with a therapist. Think heard boyfriend’s in a top floor room. I’m not sure. Hard to keep track with so many coming and going.”
Melissa noticed the woman in the blue blouse kept staring at her. “If you remember any other man carrying a woman, please get a hold of me. Or, if you hear someone else remember. Will you do that?”
“Anything for a pretty lady.”
Melissa rose and walked around the center table to say hello to the staring woman. The second woman who scowled spoke first. “You’re a Malone, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Melissa Malone.”
The woman’s gray hair stretched tight across scalp into a bun. When she spoke, face wrinkles deepened into furrows. Melissa thought the room hot with the sun’s rays although the woman wore a knitted sweater, buttoned top to bottom. “You Malone’s should feel guilty so many people died or were hurt bad. That Abbey shoulda been torn down years ago. It’s a travesty for what happened there.”
“Don’t know what you mean,” Melissa replied. “The Abbey has been a community asset. Children and families have benefited by Abbey programs.”
“Wouldn’t expect a Malone to admit to the evil left by people living there.”
Melissa didn’t feel the coldness of evil in flushed skin. “I’ve been in The Abbey often. Evil doesn’t exist, not even in gang graffiti for students respect the opportunity for wholesome fun.”
“What about the past? You can’t ignore the past.”
”I’ve heard stories, but offered no proof.”
“Proof! You want proof?” The woman’s hysterical shouts caused all to gaze at her. The seated woman’s cane, waved back and forth across touching knees, nearly struck Melissa. “I’m your proof.”
Melissa gasped. “What? What proof?”
The clutched cane and the woman’s upper torso sank into the sunroom’s webbed chair. She took a hankie from a left arm sleeve and wiped the spittle from parted lips. “My mother was raped by one of the monks. Her cousin too.”
Melissa stretched an arm to grab a chair, dragged it across the floor, and sat facing the two women, an embroidered name of Rose visible on the blue blouse collar. “Bet your name’s Rose.” The lady in blue smiled. Melissa gazed at the second woman. “What’s your name?”
“Constance Mildred.” The woman stared at Melissa’s green sneakers.
“Can you help me understand?” Melissa gazed to the lady in blue, but didn’t wish to ignore Constance for she realized the hospital often treated county mental health facility residents. These patients, considered not to pose a danger to society, lived with severely damaged reasoning powers. Melissa didn’t know if Constance qualified, or for that matter the lady in blue.
“My mother and her cousin came here as novitiates from Poland,” Constance began. “Monsignor McAleer assigned them a room with a bunk bed in The Abbey basement. He said once they completed their vows they’d move to the regular nun quarters. He’d take them one at a time when the bells struck two to a room behind chapel altar, choke them naked before he violated them.”
Melissa’s hand raised lower jaw. She’d heard something strikingly similar. A monsignor by that name reassigned. “Those are serious charges.”
“Not charges! Truth!” The woman shifted from side to side in the chair. One foot stomped the floor. “My mother got impregnated by this priest. She ran away in shame. And, her cousin went insane.” She stomped a foot once more. “Won’t tell you where it is, but I paid for a DNA test three years ago. It confirmed Monsignor McAleer as my father.”
Melissa grabbed both chair arms. Constance, if her real name, provided a verifiable story. Without a doubt and for the sake of The Abbey, Melissa tried to think of a way to put the cork back into the bottle. Enough people in the sunroom could’ve heard to enflame the community in one gossip cycle and doom The Abbey’s rebuilding. “I believe you. When we’re both out of here, let me invite you to Wally’s Club. Never knew of your heartache.”
“That’s okay. A pretty girl like you probably has a nice home, handsome husband, and a houseful of kids.”
“No. I’m single.”
“Pity.” The woman in blue nodded to Constance’s remark.
Melissa excused herself. Her initial thoughts to visit additional fire survivors tabled. In her room, without changing into a hospital gown, she lay supine atop sheets with both eyes closed. She’d relied before on visualization, a goal achieving method. She pictured herself standing in the kitchen, an apron tied around waist and