Wet Work

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He had done only two deathbeds up to now, and both of them coma cases. Father Toomey reserved to himself the conscious; he got the brain-dead, the vegetal and the Do Not Resuscitate. "Dues," said Father Toomey one night, tossing back his third vodka martini. "It was the same when I was just out of seminary. They think because you're new you'll make a mistake and send them to Hell on a technicality."

There wasn't much challenge in ministering to people who just lay there with tubes going in and out. What drama he'd experienced had been decidedly unpleasant. He'd just finished with the anointing when the hairdresser showed up. The family had provided for a weekly shampoo, set and rinse. The hairdresser pointed to the smear of holy oil on the old lady's forehead and said, "Okay if that gets wet?" Six years of seminary to dicker over forehead rights with a hairstylist to the dying?

But now this. Now this had promise.

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