Rev. Will Elliot is an ordained Baptist minister with an M.Div from the Divinity School at Wake Forest University (2006), but he runs with Buddhists and Quakers and any such who are curious about life. Will has had a poem published in Thieve's Jargon. He loves his wife, his dog, reading, and writing. He works now as a hospital chaplain in central Kentucky (home of bluegrass and bourbon).

Santa Fe (October 20, 2009. Issue 10.)

The elevator goes all the way to the sixth floor. The sixth floor is where all the inmates are kept. “Guarded patients” we’re supposed to call them. Each one a child of God.

Ping. The door slides open. I step out, walk over to the black phone mounted on the wall. A tiny sign gives me my instructions: Dial ex. 3945 for entrance.

I dial 3945. A camera watches me all the while. It’s perched at the left ceiling corner by the door. Red, recording light on. Making sure I’m not going to stage a jail break.

On the other line a voice answers.

“Officer Jarvis.”

“This is the chaplain, here to see some patients.”

“All right, just a sec.”

A metallic, clicking sound emits from the reinforced steel door. That’s my cue. I pull on the latch. Click-click. The door gives with a squeak. I walk into purgatory. This is the zone between the hospital unit and the outside world. Outside, where I came from, I could take the elevator back down to the cafeteria to have a donut. Or perhaps I could go outside and admire the train cars with “Santa Fe” printed on them in white blocky type. Maybe I could visit other patients, angry rich women who remind me that their husbands are on the goddamn board of the hospital, and if we don’t pump her full of some heavy duty opiates soon we’re going to be sued into the next biblical dispensation.

But I’m in the purgatory zone, standing between two locked doors, and I’m going forward, not backward. The lighting is dim like a drunk tank, and there’s a small window on the wall. I expect to see a ticket-master hocking passes to a blockbuster, but I see a wide peach pie-if-you-please sort of face instead. It’s Officer Jarvis, a crusty old Sergeant who’s been guarding inmates since I was dumping in my diapers.

“Hey.” I wave.

“Hello. Go on through, chaplain.” She smiles and unlocks the final door. “They need you up here today.”

“Wonderful.”

Slam goes the door behind me. Locked onto the floor with twenty-nine convicts. Despite what some may think, it’s mostly pretty safe. Officers watch everything closely on the sixth floor, and everyone can’t help but notice the reinforced steel IQ busters latched to their belts.

I troll for corrections officers. Sometimes they come out of the woodworks to help me. Mostly, they ignore me. And of course, I have my favorite guards. There’s Nadine. She’s what Sister Martha Jane calls a “pistol packing mama.” No nonsense, and very helpful.

I say hello to Nadine. A slight nod in return. She’s busy watching over a physical therapist in baby blue scrubs. Beside him is a shackled patient limping down the corridor.

I move on to the first available guard I can find. It’s Ethan, sitting in a swivel chair. He’s leaning back like he’s about to catch a football game. My guts get a little twisty when I see this guy because he looks wormy. Like a criminal. Lean build, small mouth full of crooked teeth—Ethan could be the archetype for dirty prison guards working for the mob. If I were a film director, I would cast him accordingly. Dirty Guard #1, taking bribes from the mob. But as a chaplain, I just need him to unlock the doors for me.

“Can you help me out today?”

Dirty Guard throws a sullen look at the Sergeant. The Sergeant, unimpressed, frowns at Dirty Guard. The message is clear. Do your fucking job. Dirty Guard rolls his eyes, heaves a sigh, and says “fine.”

“Thanks.”

“So where do ya need to go?”

“501, 504, 505—“

“Wait, 505 is Ad-Seg.” He looks at the clipboard in his hands. “Might not be able to go there today.”

Ad-Seg, or Administrative Segregation, is where “guarded patients” go when they’ve been bad at the prison. They are segregated from the general population. This continues, even if the prisoner needs to be taken to the hospital. When I visit an Ad-Seg patient, I’m told I need at least two guards to accompany me.

“Well,” I say. “We’ll see if we can get someone when we get there.”

Room 501 has two beds, each with prisoners shackled at the ankles. I introduce myself to both of them. Dirty Guard stands behind me, arms crossed and not likely to help if one of these cats decides to stick a shiv in my neck. This is not something I share with my mother when she asks me how the chaplaincy gig is going.

Truth is, there’s almost zero chance of that happening. Most of these patients are powerful sick. More likely to yark on a chaplain than kill ‘em. Besides, they’re usually more gracious than the “normal” patients downstairs.

Patient one asks me to pray for his mother. Patient two wants me to see if I can get him a Louis L’Amour paperback. I tell him I’ll see what I can do. I say a prayer for the other one’s mother, and then excuse myself to hunt down a western. Both prisoners are relatively happy.

The book case is tucked in a corner of the unit, loaded with donated books. There are blue flapped bibles from the Gideons, some Daily Bread devotionals from somewhere else, and even a Greek Lexicon from some guard at Wasco State prison. But the real treasures are the westerns. Dog eared and yellowing, these dime book descendents have been through more shit than Rooster Cogburn. Between ol’ Louis and the Daily Bread, in terms of popularity, it might be a toss up. Folks on the fifth floor either like their literature to be filled with cowboys drawing down at high noon or encouraging messages about Jesus.

I bring back a western. There were only two left on the shelf. All the rest were in use. I don’t know a good western from a bad one, so I just picked the one that wasn’t soggy. The patient is grateful.

In another room, the ad-seg room, I need two guards. We’re able to grab Nadine, who doesn’t have her pistol up here. Guards don’t bring their guns into the rooms. The patient is a man I have not met yet. With my two guards, I figure I’ll say hello.

The prisoner lies in the bed. There’s pretty much no choice in the matter, as he is shackled at one wrist and on both of his ankles. He is a tiny man, no more than a buck forty on the scale. But two guards are close to me, and just under the surface, they seem a bit skittish. Like horses aware of a thunderhead as yet unseen. Dirty Guard has his hand on his IQ Buster, ready to bust the evershitting sense out of my patient’s head if he makes a false move.

I introduce myself. As I draw closer, I see that this man has the most beautiful, pale blue eyes I have ever seen. His face is boyish, like Edward Norton’s in Primal Fear. It is a face that is completely without guile. Meek smile, fair complexioned. But his eyes belong to a wolf.

“Oh chaplain, thanks for coming by!” Wolf-Eye extends his hand to me just like we’re old Amish farming neighbors. I take his hand and smile.

“I’m glad to be here.”

Nothing unrighteous happens.

“Will you please pray for my daughter? She’s about the start school now, and she doesn’t understand why I won’t be there to see her off.”

I wondered why, in fact, he was not able to see her off. What heinous crime had he been convicted of? Don’t know, don’t care. I sure as hell don’t ask.

Instead, I pray for his daughter, for all the daughters and sons who wish their dads were around. By the time I’m done praying, he is crying.

“Thank you.” His voice is dangerously soft. There’s not much else we say to one another. After another minute or so, I say goodbye and leave.

I put my mark in his chart and consult my list. Ten more patients to see on this floor. Dirty Guard looks like a dog needing to piddle. I let him know that if he has something else to do, he can find me a replacement.

Without looking at me, he assures me it’s fine, he’s free. I follow his eyes. Dirty Guard is focused on Lt. Jackson, who is raising his eyebrow at him. Like the Sergeant, the LT wants his prisoners to see the chaplain. I’m grateful for friends in high places. Trolling for guards takes time from visiting my patients.

Next room, two more patients. A large white man, handlebar facial scruff, chained to his bed. A swastika is tattooed on his shoulder. His eyes look away from me. Poster-boy for a motorcycle gang, perhaps?

“Chap-uh-leen,” drawls the other man. “Chap-uh-leen!” The voice is as sweet a bellow as any I’ve heard. Like a kid waiting his turn at Santa’s lap, this patient is glad to see me. He looks a little like James Taylor. He smiles. Last week I gave him a Daily Bread and said a prayer for his family. He loves me.

I glance at Mr. Hell’s Angel. He glares at the wall, as if to say “Don’t say a word to me you pasty church punk!” We have an old issue between us. I decide to talk to the friendly patient first.

“Pray for me,” he says, grinning.

“You’re not wasting any time today.” The visit takes less than a minute. When I finish my prayer, I walk over to the other bed. Hell’s Angel is still glaring at the wall.

“Mr. Sykes…”

“You know what I want.”

“I keep banging the drum on this, but I can’t do anything else about it.”

“Then you can’t do nuthin for me.”

I want him to give me a chance. To let me inside for just one moment so we can connect and make the hell of this hundred day hospital stay a little less hellish. But I don’t know what to do except acknowledge that he’s pissed.

“And you’re feeling angry about that.”

Hell’s Angel looks at me for the first time, eyes wide with a warning. “You’re not going to do that psycho-probing shit with me man.”

“Easy, Sykes,” says the guard behind me.

“What’s going on here ain’t right,” says Hell’s Angel. “There are guys in Ad-Seg right now who are getting to watch TV. Every other hospital has TVs. Ain’t none of us here at the hospital for what we’ve done wrong, but we’re being punished for it. Do you know what it’s like to spend months up here, chained to a bed with nothing to do?”

I surely don’t.

I did not offer him a Daily Bread. Not even a western. While a part of me felt irked that he’s so fixated on televisions, so much so that there’s no room for anything else, I also agree with him. There should be TVs up here. But Dirty Guard figures that it’d only make prisoners want to come to the hospital. I have my doubts about that. TVs in a hospital do not a wonderland resort make.

Impotent to do anything more, I tell the patient that I’ll keep talking to the folks in charge. Sykes turns over in his bed and resumes staring at the wall. What kind of fury builds up for a man who has been shackled to a bed, unable to walk, with nothing more than a Gideon bible or a soggy western to pass a hundred days? Someday, he’ll get well and be released from prison. Will he still be angry?

I shut these thoughts down, and down the hall I go. I lose Dirty Guard to a physician. No big loss. Almost immediately, I pick up Jim. Maybe my luck is going to turn around.

Jim is a square jawed Paul Bunyan from Tennessee who will never root for the Titans on a Sunday. “They’re always going to be Houston Oilers to me.” Jim’s a good fella. The sort who will help a person with a flat tire, or tell you where to find the best fishing spots.

“Chaplain, you might see Rush in 519. He’s been asking to talk to someone all day.”

“Any reason why he wants to talk?”

Jim grins. “He’ll tell ya.”

Mr. Rush is in a room all by his lonesome. Not because he’s a bad boy, but because he has bad bugs. He has an infection that is resistant to antibiotics. So Jim and I put on our banana yellow gowns, blue latex gloves, and flimsy face masks.

He pulls out his ring of keys, jangles them around to find the right one, and sticks it into the doorknob. The door opens; I enter.

An emaciated man lay still in his bed. He is NPO, meaning he can’t have any food or drink. Must be a surgery coming up soon. Closer in, I see his mouth is crusty and dry. A faint fecal stench floats into my nose. I do not gag. His eyes are on me, wild with expectation.

I introduce myself. His hand finds mine, grasping. He says, “I want to be baptized!”

We talk about this. What baptism is about, and what it means to him. I figure it means whatever it needs to for whomever, and I’ll baptize anybody who wants to get wet. After all, I ain’t the orthodoxy police. But I still like to know where people are coming from when they request ancient religious rituals.

I can’t help but notice that his eyes are strange. They are seriously bulging peepers. I can see the whites of his eyes. Not just the normal whites, below and to the side of our irises. I see white all around Rush’s irises, and it conjures up images of how Moses might have looked just having seen the backside of God on Sinai. Stuff like that blows back your hair. I wonder, what has Rush seen in his life?

There is hatred he has seen. Beatings in prison because he sat at the wrong table, read the wrong sacred book. A childhood of crack addicted parents, blood stains on the pavement, a stark absence of safety. He has tried all the major religions. Islam. Buddhism. He grew up a Methodist. Now he wants to return. Doesn’t matter if it’s Methodism or Catholicism. Just so long as it’s Jesus and he can be baptized and, with holy flowing waters, be made special, clean, and bright again. Free from rage, filled with love. Saturated with possibility, able to overcome the present hell. To hold hands with God again.

Holding hands with God, as I stand there in a prisoner’s room. He is looking to me like he’s mad out of his mind, but with yearnings of the soul kindred to mine. I am reminded of a spiritual truth: At our core, there is more that connects us, less that separates us.

“Will you baptize me?”

“Yes,” I say. “Absolutely.”

I excuse myself from the room. Walk past the nursing station. Find the ice and water machine and pour Rush a cup. I don’t need much. Just enough to dab a little water on his forehead. Meanwhile, a nurse watches me.

“He can’t have any water.”

“It’s not for him to drink.” She looks puzzled. “I’m going to baptize him.”

“Oh.”

A few of the nurses at the station smirk. Maybe baptizing a crazy man makes little sense to anybody. Hell if I know.

Again we are in the room. Jim watches, curious as to how this is going to work. I’m not sure how I’m going to do the rite myself. I lift the cup of water in front of me, and the words begin pouring out of my mouth. A smattering of Episcopalian liturgy mixed with Baptist improvisation, and voila! And then, at the proper moment.

“I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” I dip my finger into the cup, and with a wet finger trace a cross across his forehead. Rush’s eyes are closed, and for a moment he doesn’t look insane. He’s only a child. I offer a blessing.

“Loving God, with baptism you raise us up with your Son Jesus Christ to new life. Bless this special child of yours, nourish the hope that now lives within him, and banish all fear and despair. Be the faithful God that you are, and continue to abide with him now and forever. This blessing we ask in the name of your Son our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.”

For a moment, there is nothing but silence. Rush opens his eyes, a dull insanity remains. Does he need something else? He eyes the paper cup in my hand, concern on his face.

“Was that holy water?”

Oh shit. He needed this to be holy water, and all I got is this profane, Christ-hating tap water. Am I going to have to bless this water right in front of them, and perform the ritual all over again? The whole thing would stink like an overripe banana. Then again, as the priest-mystic Thomas Merton said, “All that is, is holy.” So maybe this water is holy. All things are holy. Even this emaciated mad man. Even me. The kingdom of God is within us. I have found my answer, the ricocheting bullet finally hitting home!

“Why yes, of course, it’s holy water.” My noble lie.

His eyes fill with tears. He thanks me, grasping my hand. There in his face is an openness, frightful and beautiful to see. I stay with his gratitude for a moment, and then the heat of it makes me pull away. There is something unbearable in his vulnerability. By the time I reach the door, I know what it is. Despite everything else, Rush really is holy.

Rush is my last patient on the fifth floor. I begin the tedious task of gathering the charts I haven’t signed, so that I can leave my paper trail and move on to the next unit. My next patient will not know the circuit I have traveled, the crazy, broken sons of God that I have seen. That’s all right.

Officer Jarvis waves me through purgatory. As I leave, my shackled patients drag along with me. They will follow me home. I look at the clock. It’s time, I think, to go out to the parking lot and watch the trains go to Santa Fe.