Prayers in the time of Covid

I was the second last, to leave the ward tonight, turning it over to the night shift. I was doing tables, charts, lists, tick-boxes.

As a modern doctor, I have come to associate the chaplain’s presence on the ward with passing, with grief. In modern Ireland, those who call for the priest do so only at the very end. But those who do so have always welcomed the comfort he can bring where I cannot, when I have failed, when time is up.

But the Roman collar now peeks out from under v-neck of dark scrubs. He now puts on his purple stole over scrubs before he carefully dons the PPE. The nurses taught him well, but even so, he’s had too much practice this year, more lately. He carefully places his prayer book on the cluttered ward desk. It can’t enter the contaminated area. But he knows these prayers, these Rites, by rote. The book is so worn. Neatly tucked into it is list of my patients who have asked to see him, for annointing of the sick, for confession. It seems wrong next to my untidy piles of charts and crisp unread reports. My piles of numbers and risk.

He’s on the ward for Last Rites. He opens the door from our clean area to the restricted area and the nurse advises him the family have come in, the hospital creatively overcoming the logistical difficulty given that the family are all, themselves, covid positive. He doesn’t blink. Like us, he goes where he must.

He emerges a short time later, PPE carefully doffed. He sits at the ward work desk, distanced from me and bows his head, lips move in prayer. One of the other patients on his list is now confused, delirious. The nurses advise him that it’s not worth risk to go in; she won’t know he is there. His presence, his words can’t bring her comfort. So, he says his prayers for her from the ward clean area. Like us, his practice has changed.

Our new normal.

They used to say there are no atheists in foxholes.