Papal decree

72

There’s a first for everything, and certainly Sarah never expected to find herself stretched out in a hospital bed with a tube pushing oxygen through her nose and a catheter stuck into the back of her hand, receiving fluids with unpronounceable names. At least she’d been able to sleep last night, probably with the help of some drug that soothed her eyes, convincing them to close, and quieted her mind, obliging her to rest. When she woke in the morning her vision was clouded, but she made out a figure seated in a chair against the wall. He seemed to be dozing as much as his uncomfortable position allowed.

‘Were you here all night, Rafael?’ she asked with a voice that came out a squeak.

‘Who’s Rafael?’ the figure asked, straightening up in the chair and then getting up to come to the bed.

It was Francesco. She could make out his features now that he was closer. She touched his face.

‘How are you?’ she asked.

‘Don’t worry about me. Are you okay? What happened?’ He was worried.

‘I still don’t know. They gave me a battery of tests last night, and then I passed out.’

Francesco took her hand and breathed deeply, a sigh that resembled a lament. ‘Sarah, I don’t know if I can deal with this.’

His eyes were moist, a tear was about to fall from them, but he wiped it away.

‘I never thought your life was like this. I never imagined this existed,’ he tried to explain. ‘I don’t have the strength. I don’t have the strength.’

‘We’re going to have a baby, Francesco,’ she announced without thinking about it. ‘He’s going to need a father.’

Francesco looked at her, amazed. ‘The nurse told me you weren’t pregnant, Sarah.’

No? But the test came out positive. The attendant had congratulated her, and she couldn’t avoid looking at the red strip on the pregnancy test that showed positive.

‘No?’ she said, doubtful. ‘But…’

Francesco pressed her hand again. ‘Give me time, Sarah. Please, give me time.’

Now it was her eyes that filled with tears. Francesco was a good man, but she hoped with all her might that the nurse was right. She was selfish and he didn’t deserve a woman who couldn’t love him completely.

Francesco kissed her on the forehead. ‘I’ll call you later, okay?’

She agreed, wiping the tears, and watched him leave helplessly, without a Wait! Don’t go! Don’t leave me! Nothing. She simply let him leave. She remembered crying like a baby, the nurse asking her what was wrong, and answering nothing. She wasn’t crying over seeing him leave but over her own disappointment in herself, and she couldn’t say that to the nurse.

She slept and woke up, slept again and awoke, not knowing how many hours had passed and not caring. Finally she awakened to a feeling of well-being. Someone was holding her hand and caressing her hair. Was it her mother or father? She opened her eyes, and it was him.

‘Rafael?’ she stammered. ‘What are you doing here?’ She pulled herself together and tried to draw her hand away, but he wouldn’t let her.

‘You’re not pregnant, Sarah,’ he told her. ‘You have a choriocarcinoma.’

She felt as if he’d punched her in the stomach.

‘A what?’

‘A trophoblastic cancer in the ovaries. That’s why the pregnancy test was positive, and why you had nausea and coughed up blood. Perhaps you also felt short of breath. Those are some of the symptoms. But there’s a high rate of success for treatment. I’ve already talked with the doctor. He’ll explain everything to you shortly.’ It was best to say it all at once.

He didn’t mention that the doctor had told him she was in the third stage of metastasis. Having cancer was bad enough news.

She didn’t know what to think. She hadn’t expected this particular misfortune. She had cancer. Everything had changed in seconds. One moment she was pregnant, and the next she was at the gates of death. Nice irony, God! Maybe it was a punishment for rejecting a child, but a God Who punished wasn’t God. At least the God she’d grown up with loved all beings unconditionally. Good, bad, criminal, saintly. A Father and a Mother always loved their children above everything else.

‘You’re going to overcome this, Sarah,’ Rafael assured her.

She smiled sadly. ‘This time you can’t protect me.’

The priest looked at her seriously and pressed her hand again. He gave her a timid smile, pleasant, or at least she thought so.

‘I know there’s a part of me somewhere inside you. Only you know where it is and what it could be. Use it to protect yourself. I’ve never let you down, have I?’

Tears ran down Sarah’s face. She shook her head. No, he’d never let her down.

‘That Rafael you have within you will never let you down,’ he repeated.

She closed her eyes. She felt pain. ‘I don’t know if I can make it alone,’ she confessed through her tears.

He made her look at him. ‘I’m not going anywhere, Sarah,’ he assured her. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’