Her rubber soles carried her on the linoleum as if she wore sharp edged skates and figured-eight on ice. Years of practice brought her down those halls with a tray full of goodness for others. Between the doors of her visits, she flipped through the Bible verses she kept filed and stored in her mind. The only version she allowed to take up her gray cells were those from King James. Who wanted dry, accurate translations from Hebrew, Latin or Koine Greek. Poetry is what set body and souls free. Just like the one she had left behind. She had held the hand of that young man, she already had forgotten his name, who had sinned with another in the worst of ways. His body was one lesion, a pain from head to toe. In desperation he had looked up at her, he had once been a Believer, “Will I go to Heaven or Hell—-or maybe someplace in between?” She was not God, it was not for her to say, so all she said was, “Not your choice to make.” She had left him as his hands shook and he gasped for air. She didn’t know he would leave the world at the moment she had turned her back. She thought she might lose hold and stumble. The hazards of her work. She calmed herself with a verse: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” She took a breath, pushed hard to find the book and number. And there it was: Revelation 21 verse four. An anchor in the storms raging on those floors. Her rubber soles sealed themselves to the linoleum once more, she glided to the next room. She was on duty, it was not her choice to make. There was the girl, not a woman yet, in the bed. She could see the shame on her face. If she could she would have her wear a Hawthornian ‘A’—-but it wasn’t her choice to make. The girl’s eyes fluttered open, one false eyelash still cemented in place. Their conversation started where it had ended the day before, “What was I to do, he said he’d leave me…” Her eyes rose from the chart, she tipped her glasses to the edge of her nose, she raised her hand wrapped tightly in a rosary. Said nothing, let her eyes do the talking like Mary from a radiant cloud. “I don’t think you know how it feels—-“ “No, I don’t—-I’ve never murdered my own child.” She had no time for young harlots who paid the price for free tax-paid abortions. Her soles squeaked as she turned on her heels. She loved that sound of sterile purity from the mopped and polished floors. A hoarse voice interrupted her revery, “You’re an old, ugly, dried up hag with very bad karma.” She closed the door to that jumble of sin. She didn’t believe in karma, only God’s compassionate will. She sought for a verse, one to still her nerves that began to twitch. Ah, there it was: “There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword: but the tongue of the wise is health.” Her dry lips let out in a whisper: Psalms 147 and three. She was anchored again in the tossing storm. “Did you say something sister?” She looked up, it was that young doctor, curly black hair with a beard that hung an an inch from his chin. Without his scrubs, but in a long robe, he would be vision of her savior. She blushed, “No—just a note to myself about room 233.” He smiled, blue eyes like heaven, “Glad to see such devotion to your calling.” She giggled and pivoted away. Calling—-yes calling, that’s what it was—not her choice, not just some job. She made the sign of the cross, kissed her rosary and continued on to her last patient for the day. A believer, she was glad, it made her task so much easier. The cancer had almost eaten every cell, there was nothing left to do but pray. She straightened her habit, pushed back up that strand of gray stray hair. Thought of which verse would bring comfort to the poor soul that day. She pulled a smile ready for what lay there in that bed. With a swing of strength, quite a lot for her age, she pulled the door open to find an empty soiled bed. She pulled up the chart. Time of death: 16:47. Her dear, devoted Sister Clementia was gone. She stumbled backwards out of the room. No verse came to mind, she was tossed on the storm. She felt her iron knees rust and give way. Saved, she was caught in the arms of one of the young nurses. “Did you just find out?” She said to the nun. “When, how…” her words were a stumble. “They just told us all per text, the hospital has been sold by the church to a private corporation. We’re redundant.” That young nurse, not from any religious order at all, hadn’t realized that was not the news Sister Mary Martha had expected to hear. Sister Mary Martha had thought she had at least a few more good years. She sought solace somewhere, that repeated chant seemed different now. Not your choice to make, not your choice to make. The choice had never been hers. Her hands wrung that lapis lazuli rosary so hard, it scattered in pieces just like her mind. They had to take her away as she mumbled over and over Proverbs 17, verse twenty-two: “A merry heart doeth good like medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.” The next morning she found herself in a cell. Not her own with a crucifix and scourge, but padded and easy on the skin.