“Well, would you sleep with…no, let’s not use euphemisms here, would you fuck me if you weren’t a priest?”

“No. I’d still be your doctor.”

“Would you fuck me if you weren’t my doctor?”

“No, I’d still be a priest.”

“Fuck you.”

“Go ahead and ask.”

“Ask what?” I say, playing dumb.

“Would I fuck you if I weren’t a priest or your doctor?”

Does he really think I’m going to give him the opportunity to reject me?

“Why does a fucking priest become a fucking doctor?”

“He doesn’t. At least, I didn’t. I was a doctor who became a priest.”

I’ve learned that meaningful silence can elicit more information than the most probing questions. He recites his curriculum vitae. College (Loyola, summa) and medical school (Georgetown, with highest honors). Residency training program (Penn, selection as chief resident, of course, let no one mistakenly believe these Jesuits take a vow of modesty). Board certification. Novitiate. Dual master’s in theology and health care ethics (Georgetown again). Ordination. Practice. Ministry. All black and white, clinical, just the facts.

“Very impressive. But you haven’t answered my question. Why?”

“Because I believe I have two callings.”

“How did you know that?”

“I didn’t, at first.”

“When did you learn it? I mean, how did it happen? Was it like Saul on the road to Damascus, were you knocked off your horse?”

“Very funny.”

“I didn’t mean it to be. Really.”

“No. It was a decision I made after much thought and prayer and spiritual counseling, not unlike what we do here together.”

“If you had to give one up, which would it be?”

He shakes his head, signaling he’s done answering questions, and smiles.

“Would you struggle with it?”

“Everyone struggles.”

“Even you.”

It’s an affirmation, not a question.

“Even me.”

What is it you struggle with? I know I can’t ask you that question. Well, I can ask, but you’ll never answer. You’ll turn the tables, ask why it’s so important to me. And I would tell you I need to know if you and I struggle with the same thing, if you use that Roman collar the way I used Alice. Why would that matter? you’d ask, crossing your legs as you settle back in your chair. Because I need to know if, unlike me, you’ve kept your vows. I hope you have. In fact, I need you to. I need someone to be winning their battles.

“Do you ever preach?” I ask.

“Most weeks,” he says, telling me he’s an assistant weekend pastor of a small parish just over the state line.

“Can I come hear your sermon?”

“You don’t need an invitation to come to Mass.”

“I’d like that.”

“Fine.”

“Then maybe we could have breakfast. Go to the Country Buffet and pig out. My treat.”

He smiles, neither encouraging nor discouraging me.

It’s a pathetic scene, this needy little boy, begging his father for friendship, affirmation.

“Can I come back next week?” I ask.

“Of course.”

“Would you like that?”

“Yes, I would like that.”

“God, what I must sound like.”

“You’re hurting.”

So are you. So are we all. But at least one hour a week I don’t need to do it alone.

Bone Marrow Transplant

I’ ve got a hole in my hip.

Sounds like a lyric from an old standard by Cole Porter or Rodgers and Hart.

I’ve got a hole in my heart.

I’ve got a hole where my heart used to be.

It’s the kind of song you’d hear in a piano bar, a wrinkled old pixie with Vaseline teeth crooning away. I’ll write down the lyrics and send them to my furry blond friend in Honolulu.

Anyway, playing here tonight…

I’ve got a hole in my hip.

My sister returns bearing gifts, a towel and ice. The last pack melted on my leg and all over the sofa and my boxers are dripping wet. She offers to go upstairs and fetch a dry pair, but I decline, saying they’d just be soaked in a few minutes. Then I relent, knowing I’m selfishly depriving her of the opportunity to play Big Nurse in the Nocera family medical melodrama.

I reach for the remote and change channels. It’s late afternoon, the Day After. I’m exhausted. The oncologist says I should be feeling better tomorrow. I hope not. This provides the only acceptable excuse for dropping out. Soon enough, the routine will start all over again…

…Up before seven, a quick j.o., swallow coffee from a paper container (blue, with a frieze of Greek soldiers, like the Parthenon) and chew on a powdered doughnut, sing along, loudly, to the car radio, find a parking space, take the “shortcut” through the ER (“Hey, Steve.” “Hey.” “Sorry, gotta run.”), squeeze into the elevator (chattering nurses in soft, blowsy smocks; young orderlies, all hard muscles beneath those loose green scrubs; octogenarians, beyond gender, being wheeled to MRI), stop at the nurse’s station, ask if she’s awake, ask what kind of night she had, ask when the oncologist is making rounds, remember forgetting something, take the elevator back down, hang around the locked door to the Gift Patch, wait another five minutes until it opens at nine, buy a couple dollars’ worth of peppermint patties, stall a little longer leafing through the tabloids (Oprah’s Diet Secrets!: she has a personal trainer and private chef on call twenty-four hours a day. William and Harry’s Secret Anguish: fading memories of their mother), stop for a pee then back up the elevator, give my mother a good morning kiss and ask how she’s feeling, unwrap one of the peppermint patties, watch her place it on her tongue, squirm at the dry sucking sounds she makes, hope that it relieves the rancid metallic taste of the chemicals battling the tumors in her body, fall into the chair beside her bed, the day all but done by nine twenty in the morning, nothing to do but stare at the four walls, the television, my mother struggling to stay alive…

I never thought I’d miss having to make a six A.M. flight to Dayton or the eleven P.M. red-eye from Denver. But the situation has become desperate, necessitating THE LAST BEST HOPE, and I’m on leave begrudgingly approved by my Born Again National Sales Manager under mandate of federal law. I’ve appeased him by promising to be back in time to work the show at the Chicago Merchandise Mart.

Ouch. Stupid of me to roll over on the goddamn hole in my hip.

My sister is hovering in the corner of the room.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Do you need anything?”

“No. Yes. Can you bring me a beer?”

She screws her face into a question mark.

“Are you allowed?”

“Of course I’m allowed. The treatment regimen is two Tylenol, as needed,” I say, exasperated.

I could have told the oncologist the preliminary blood work wasn’t necessary. There was only one possible donor, the results were inevitable, the conclusion foregone.

My mother and I are A Perfect Match.

My bone marrow is being transplanted in a sterile room in the hospital in Charlotte. I’ve got a hole in my hip where they drilled for oil. Now my mother and I are closer than ever, not simply a Match anymore, but One and the Same, the very cells of our blood generated from a single source.

“You ought to head back to the hospital,” I say as Regina hands me a can of beer. “I’ll be fine.”

“Do you need anything else before I go?” she asks.

“No.”

“Do you want me to bring anything back for you?”

“No.”

Once she’s gone I hobble around the kitchen looking for something to eat. I settle on another beer. It’s oppressively hot, even for Gastonia in early summer. I flop on the couch. It’s almost four o’clock, Oprah time. She’s my new best friend. My mother and I both love her. I don’t even begrudge her the ability to summon exercise gurus and gourmet chefs with the snap of her fingers. Those big cow eyes and her nonjudgmental attitude are irresistible. But I’m beyond tired or fatigued. I feel crushed, sinking, with pains in my joints and the sinews of my muscles. A team of sled dogs couldn’t drag me to my bed upstairs. So long, Oprah, I mutter, plunging into a coma, dead to the world…