“It’s very peaceful here at night, isn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
“Anything I can help you with? I’m sorry, where are my manners? I’m Helen.” She held out her hand. “I’m one of the pastors here.”
“TJ.” TJ shook the offered hand. “Mind if I ask which church this is? What church you belong to?”
Helen’s kind smile never left her face. “I belong to a nondenominational church in town. This chapel is here so different pastors from different faiths can meet the people who need them. We cater to everyone who needs spiritual help or a proverbial shoulder to cry on. We’re pretty good at just listening too.” She paused for a moment, but when TJ didn’t say anything she continued, “Are you visiting someone here in the hospital?”
TJ nodded. “My… friend.”
“I see,” Helen replied. “Is he very sick?”
TJ nodded again.
“He must mean a lot to you if you’re still here at this late hour.”
Again her statement was countered by a nod, but if this lack of communication frustrated her, she didn’t show it. “I was asked to come here tonight to support a family who was losing a loved one,” she explained. “If you’d like to talk, I’m going to be here for at least another half hour. If you don’t, then that’s okay with me too.”
Helen waited for a moment and then got up. She walked over to a desk which was standing to the side and started rearranging the leaflets that people had picked up and discarded again.
“Helen? Can I call you Helen?” TJ asked hesitantly. “I haven’t been inside a church since I was fifteen, and they didn’t have women pastors where I come from.”
Helen came closer again. “Helen’s just fine.” She sat down on a bench in front of TJ and turned to face him. “Did you go to church often when you were younger?”
“Three times a week. If you skipped church you were a sinner. Our preacher was all fire and brimstone, and he always scared the hell out of me. Sorry, I shouldn’t have used that word in a church,” TJ apologized.
Helen giggled. “I grew up Southern Baptist. I know what you mean.” Now TJ was smiling too. She’d managed to relax him a bit. “So tell me about your friend?”
“They’re not giving him very good odds.”
“Cancer?” she asked softly.
“No,” TJ answered. “He’s got some blood vessels in his brain that aren’t supposed to be there.” He righted his back and took a deep breath in, clearly to prevent himself from getting too emotional. “They can’t operate because they’re too deep or too embedded in his brain. I don’t know. They’re still doing tests to see whether they can fix it in some other way.”
Helen nodded in understanding. “How long have you been together?”
TJ looked up at her with fright.
“In the eyes of the Lord, all men are created equal, and I believe he didn’t mean to exclude those men who love other men.”
“Well, the church has certainly changed.” TJ looked at Helen with wide eyes.
“Sadly, not all churches agree, but we do here.”
TJ leaned forward, resting his arms on the back of the bench in front of him and letting his head drop. Helen put her hand across TJ’s folded ones.
“We’ve been together since high school. I’ve never even as much as kissed another guy, let alone... Well you don’t need to know that.”
Helen squeezed TJ’s hands. “Like I said, I’m here to listen. I don’t pass judgment. I can, however, say that that sort of commitment in any relationship is rare these days. It must be a wonderful feeling.”
TJ swallowed and nodded. “We were fourteen when we met. Both of us transferred from different junior high schools to the big high school in town. We became instant friends, inseparable. I didn’t know what those feeling were I felt for him, I just knew they weren’t the same feelings I’d had for other friends or even girls. Even at fourteen, I knew you were supposed to feel different about girls, but I never felt it. Joe, though....” TJ paused and quickly glanced at Helen to check just how disgusted she looked, but she simply seemed interested. “The first time Joe kissed me, it all fell into place.”
“So your feelings were answered?”
TJ smiled. “And then some. The problem was I was raised hearing at least once a week how homosexuals were deviants and child molesters and sick, sick people, but I couldn’t help being one of them. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t deny what I was feeling!”
“I hope you realized quickly enough that you weren’t any of those things?” Helen looked concerned. “I mean yes, you were gay, but you knew you were a good person, right?”
TJ shook his head. “Joe tried to tell me. Even Joe’s mom chipped in. I loved going to their house, because she accepted Joe the way he was. She knew he liked guys. His dad too, and they were both okay with it. Joe used to say the only thing his mom was on his case about was that he had to find a boyfriend and stick with him. She would point her finger at him and tell him to not sleep around, and if he did he had to make sure he had safe sex at all time. I couldn’t believe it when he told me that. My mother never talked about sex. The only talk about birds and bees I ever got from my father was that I had to wait until I got married. Luckily we had two hours of sex education in biology class or I would never have known what I was waiting for. Joe’s parents were the absolute opposite of mine, and to this day they feel more like parents to me than my own do.”
Helen squeezed his hand again. “Just goes to show that a little tolerance and open-mindedness goes a long way. Are you still in contact with your parents?”
“No. Joe and I went to college together, as far away from our home town as we could manage. We roomed together and after we graduated I couldn’t see myself going back into the closet. All our friends knew about us, and we wanted to continue living together, so we stayed here and found jobs and an apartment, and then when Joe’s parents retired they moved out here as well. I have all the family I need here.”
“And then Joe got sick?”
“He started fainting. I’d come home and find him puttering around the house with a huge black eye. Our friends thought I was beating him up. The doctor couldn’t find anything, but it got worse and worse. He got splitting migraines, and they thought he had a brain tumor, but then the scanner showed this horrific mess of blood vessels. I can still see the doctor’s face when he showed us the pictures. I think it was the first time he’d seen a thing like that too.” TJ chuckled, but not because it was funny, more to hide his unease. “They’re going to put a catheter up there and inject something to make the blood clot, but they think he might lose some brain function. They explained it to us, but I didn’t understand it all.”
“Yeah, it sort of goes in one ear and out the other when you’ve just been told bad news, doesn’t it?”
TJ retracted his hands and wiped them over his face. It was no surprise that he was crying. “Helen, I’m just terrified that I’ll lose him. We’ve been together for almost twenty years, and I don’t know what to do without him.”
“Have you thought of marrying him? I know that doesn’t change the reality you have to live with, but it could mean you end up with some great memories whether he survives this or not.”
“He asked me to marry him when that judge first ruled that people of the same sex should be allowed to enter into a marriage too. I said yes, but we never did anything about it. Then I asked him when he first got sick, but there were too many uncertainties, and he wanted to wait until we knew what his chances were.”
“But you think he’d want this too? I can marry you, if you like. Either upstairs in his room or down here in the chapel.”
TJ hesitated. “I’d have to ask him.”
“Of course.”
“But doesn’t it take something like a month to get a marriage license? And we need to apply for it together?”
Helen wasn’t put off. “There’s an expedited procedure for people who are very sick and in the hospital. Joe’s doctor needs to sign a paper, but it can be done, and in record time, I might add.”
TJ jumped up and grabbed Helen’s hand. “Come with me, right now, and I’ll ask him again.”
