The Viewing Room

THE LAW OF LOOKING OUT FOR ONE ANOTHER

[the law of looking out for one another] Henrietta was fifteen minutes late for her first all-night shift alone as the hospital chaplain. In another fifteen minutes, the Spiritual Care Department chair would be notified and she could lose her privilege to be on the on-call list. She had been training for this job for three months, shadowing the staff, learning to handle all sorts of emergencies , as an intern without pay, and now it was an ordinary traffic jam that was going to take it all away. Ordinary, at least, for the west side of Los Angeles. A caravan of ambulances had screeched ahead of her on Wilshire Boulevard and now blocked the way into the ucla Medical Center’s main parking lot. Henrietta bowed her head in allegiance to the sound of the sirens—a childhood reflex—praying for the hurt people inside, their families, the paramedics, and finally the hospital staff, including herself, a spiritual family privileged to heal their wounds. This had started as a family ritual. At the sound of an ambulance siren’s wail, her mother would slow the car down, pull off to the side of the road, and stop the engine cold. Then she would hold out her hands to hold her children, crushed soft tissues flapping through her fingers like prayer flags. She would remind God, ever so politely, “Please pay extra attention to those suffering strangers, and all their caregivers right now, this very minute, and thank you very kindly in advance.” She had never wavered. “It is the law,” she would solemnly tell Henrietta and her two sisters, when their heads had popped up too [4] the law of looking out for one another quickly and she had caught them looking before the sound had died down. “And I could, the responsible driver, with precious burdens in this car, get a ticket for not following it—many points and a large fine,” she would add, squeezing their hands hard as one last emphasis. Henrietta had believed her, of course. It was not until she took her written driver’s license exam that she had found out that the motor vehicle laws were not so generous-hearted, that the maximum effort required of a driver was to attempt to slow down and get out of the way of the speeding ambulance to prevent accidents. “Well, it should be the law for my children,” her mother had replied when Henrietta had confronted her. “It is the law of looking out for one another.” This had been Henrietta’s introduction to group intercessory prayer in that mobile confessional, the family station wagon, as it evolved into a makeshift roadside chapel. They had never dared break their mother’s commandment to hold hands with one another , whether they wanted to or not, hated each other or not, three girls and the adored baby brother, always fighting for that most treasured battle turf, the front passenger seat by the window. They had sat obediently, sighing loudly and dramatically their only protestation , but always offering up their hands, forming a soft, warm circle of humanity inside the hard metal rectangle. Through many years, they had gone on family vacations this way, round and round, in a seemingly endless series of prayer circles, until they had turned beyond the comforting straight line of childhood, curving around the dangerous, surly U-turn of adolescence, back again to the familiar friendship with one another as adults, one sister older than Henrietta , one sister younger, but all adults. Had they prayed enough times to make any difference? Did her mother know now—or did God with His panoramic vision know back then—that despite all their generous prayers for others, their own magic circle would be broken? Her mother had outlived her the law of looking out for one another [5] only son yet was not there to hold him when he had been dying, not even within the siren’s range of a prayer. It had been his accidental killer who had held him, a distraught stranger, whispering words of reassurance, of apology, holding him close in his arms, flesh against flesh, heart against heart. “Not alone,” her mother would repeat later, like a calming mantra. “At least my son did not die alone.” Henrietta bowed her head one last time at the steering wheel altar before she left the car. She no longer...