Summary: In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping [for] her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.
Matthew 2:18

My other stories can be found at http://home.mpinet.net/laster

God is everywhere ... I hear. I know. But in the stillness of this place, I feel His presence, more gently ... more serenely than most places. I come here to quiet my soul, to slip into communion with Him, and to find peace within the all-consuming 'loudness' of our world.

There's something about this small chapel, tucked between the gift shop and the admitting office, that provides solace to so many. Patients, family, employees, firefighters, EMTs, police officers - at all hours of every day and night - find their way to this peaceful refuge. They collect their thoughts; they pray and meditate; they praise the miracles of life; they rail at life's capriciousness and injustice; they rest in His closeness; and they look within themselves for the strength to carry on .... Within a hospital it's impossible to escape the noise.

Isn't that a kick? I mean ... for years I've heard the doctors and nurses telling patients and their families, "The patient really needs her rest. Come back tomorrow during visiting hours; let the patient rest.

Don't worry, Daddy's doing fine. You can see him tomorrow. Let him rest."

But as I go from floor to floor - I'm a floater on the third shift cleaning crew - I hear all the noise ... all the time.

Alarms, code reds and blues; cell phones and beepers in all manner of annoying habit; medical personnel going in and out of the sick and injured's room all_night_long; and the crying ... the wailing sobs that spill into the corridors from family lounges, and, believe it or not, even the lavatories.

I look forward to cleaning this sanctuary. In fact, I schedule this task right before my break so that if I feel the need, I remain for just a few, extra moments and join the others who find solace here. Usually, however, there is no one but me, and I am alone in my thoughts ... alone with my God.

Hospitals are not happy places.

Oh I know ... what about the maternity wards? Joy abounds up there. Happiness, wrapped up in blue, pink and yellow bunting, is swaddled in plexi-glass incubators while family poke their collective noses against smeared glass. Waves and coos - high fives and slaps on the back - overflow the viewing area, splash down the corridors, and paint the mothers' semi-private "Bundle of Love Club" rooms in an exalted kaleidoscope.

But I've seen things ... not such happy people or such happy times - the hushed and frantic moments when a woman is 'gently' and quietly transferred from the maternity ward because her child has died, or she's birthed a miracle, only to decide unselfishly to give the baby to another. One woman's pain and longing and circumstance is offered up to another woman's pain and longing and circumstance. And in that small transaction, pain delivers joy - immediately to the one who is gifted, hopefully later ... to the one who has sacrifically given.

Or there are other times, like a few minutes ago when I watched the petite woman at the nursery viewing window.

She walked gingerly and in obvious pain, each step measured and slow as if she needed to concentrate upon her shuffled progress. Her chin length, auburn hair did nothing to hide the terrible bruises on her face and the desperation in her eyes.

She was dressed in hospital scrubs; the pant legs were rolled up and cuffed above her small, slippered feet, and a thin, cotton robe provided minimal warmth. She looked cold. But I don't think the shivers she felt, as I caught her rubbing her hands up and down her arms and hugging herself closely within her own embrace, came from a faulty heating thermostat up there on the ward.

The way she closed in on herself, seemed to almost fold up, and exuded a dignified, but lonely air, made me ache inside.

In my mind's eye I could imagine how she suffered. I could see the misery clouding her lovely, young eyes and etching her face, marring her beautiful features perhaps more so than the ugly bruises. This woman had seen too much ... felt too much, and her burdens were so heavy.

They rested solely upon her small shoulders, and I knew somehow I knew - this shouldn't have been the case.

I have been on the maternity ward before as women and, sometimes, even men have come to the viewing window. I know they come for a variety of reasons, many of which have no bearing on the particular newborns present in their tiny incubators.

Dads have been called to the emergency room because their first born sons cracked up motorcycles and bled out blood, hopes, and dreams all over the freeway - these invincible children who didn't wearr helmets.

Sleep walking to the viewing window and resting his forehead upon the glass, each father sees the newborn infants, but remembers only his own precious boy and tiny, black inkblot footprints on a card reading, "Baby boy Smith."

Women come to the maternity ward, dressed in power suits, carrying brief cases, sporting beepers clipped to their belts, and a cell phone jammed to their ears. I've seen them close their phones and in a reflective moment lean into the window - no engagement ring or wedding band visible upon their fingers - and sigh. You can almost hear their thoughts ... 'Has this chance passed me by? Have I followed my heart? Has it all been worth it?' Sometimes a tear slips down a cheek; other times ... squared shoulders and a half smile indicate the woman is at peace with circumstance or desire, and this discontent is only a momentary glitch in her life's journey.

So many people stop and look.

But this woman seemed different. Her thoughts were not upon a child lost or dwelling upon forfeited chances at least with regards to being a mother. The protective way she lay her palm upon her abdomen and wistfully smiled when she caught me staring at her, proved to me that this was a mother in the making. Something else pained her ... something so dismal and dark that my heart literally skipped a beat as I watched her - a physical manifestation in agreement with her plight, whatever it might be.

So that's why I'm in the chapel at 3:00 a.m., emptying trash cans, dusting pews and tables, refilling candle holders and making sure the tissue boxes are not empty.

Something in that woman's eyes haunt me. I felt her strength, as surely as if I'd known her all her life and had tangible proof of its existence. But I sensed her fragility, her hopelessness and despair - something that, I believe, is not common for her - a stranger has taken hold despite her best efforts.

She is lost .... And I can pray that she might be found ... or that she might find what she's looking for.

As I line the last trash can with a new bag, I see something on the back pew. The white paper stands in stark contrast to the burgundy pew cushions. I slip down the aisle until I reach the paper, centered on the seat.

Picking up the note, I see that it's a small section of hospital stationary covered in black ink. The writing's concise and neat ... at least at first, but then the cursive seems almost frantic and crimped. The writer has tried to cram too many thoughts on a tiny, fragmented area.

Looking around the room for the paper's owner, I know I shouldn't read these words. But something pulls me to them ... in spite of my noble intent.

I read:

THESE ARE DARK TIMES in my life. Moments when my muse is indigo black instead of diamond bright, and that author lays hold of my soul, coloring every action, every thought, every waking and sleeping dream. The grip tightens, ever so subtly, ever so slowly, until I can't remember a time when my heart hasn't felt swollen within my chest - a constant, dull ache that I hardly register anymore because it's all I remember.

The numbness that slides over me like a downy comforter, at first was nothing more than a coping mechanism. Over time ... over the years, my ability to disassociate when all things were too acute, too painful, and too bizarre to be real has become second nature. I have coped, prevailed, and still functioned.

Only now - with Mulder lost to me - the numbing, unemotional blanket does not provide the warmth I need, and I am unable to protect myself from the desert winds that freeze my soul. The pain I know now, whose intensity has no definition other than the searing, hot, and dusty winds of despair, splits me in jagged two, until I lay parched and empty upon the desert - achingly alone.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then desperation is the progenitor to courage. Nothing in my life - nothing ever accomplished, ever endured, ever initiated - has prepared me for what I must withstand and what must come to pass.

When I was little, hope broke even with disappointment; a Christmas puppy longed for and received balanced out Dad's absence during Thanksgiving dinner. Nothing special or unique there - the stuff of everyone's childhood.

Today, I'd give anything just to break even, let alone be in the black.

But hope bleeds red .... Hope withers and dies in the desert.

"I believe that is mine."

A soft voice penetrates my concentration, and I lay the stationary down upon my leg. Looking up I see the red-haired woman from the maternity ward, and I glimpse sad eyes - not angry, exactly, but resigned as though she's become used to having her personal life exposed to strangers.

"I'm ... I'm sorry. I found this on the pew, and ... no excuse really. I just found myself drawn to it."

She nods her head and holds out her hand. "May I have it?"

"Uh... yes. I'm sorry," I stammer, holding out the paper to her shaking fingers. "I had no right -"

"I should have been more careful with it. I must have left it when I was here earlier," she trails off, her expressive face - eyes swimming in violet tears looking towards the front of the room and a simple, plain wooden cross that sits upon a table. "I just needed to think-"

Suddenly she stops, realizing she's revealed too much to a stranger, even though she's really not said much at all. She tucks the paper into her bathrobe's pocket and turns, her hand reaching for the chapel door's handle.

"Would you like to talk?" I hear the words escape my mouth, even as I wonder what possesses me.

She pauses, momentarily, then squaring her shoulders continues forward, pushing down upon the door handle, not giving me another look.

"I've been praying for you." I continue, my mouth seemingly maintaining a mind of its own for surely it doesn't answer to my brain.

My words freeze her, and her hand rests once more upon the handle; she's neither staying or going, just inert.

"You don't know me," she whispers. "You don't know him.

You don't know what we are up against."

"No, I don't. But I recognize a woman worn weary and in trouble. And I know that 'For wherever two or three come together in My name-'"

"'-There I am with them.'"

"Exactly," I affirm, realizing this is right; this is something I need to do. She turns then, and I see myself through her eyes - a small, petite woman with silver hair and blue eyes, a tiny cross pinned to the collar of my cleaning uniform.

"I can't begin to explain it," she says, her hand dropping from the handle and clenching and unclenching within her pocket. She slips onto the end of the pew.

"And I'm sure I can't begin to understand it. But I know He can, and that's what counts, right?"

"It used to-"

"It still can ... you count; this ... man, Mulder, counts."

"More than you know," she whispers.

Tentatively, I reach my hand across the pew, laying my open palm upon the cushion. She stares at my offering as though she's forgotten how to connect. But slowly she removes her clenched fingers from her pocket and slips her palm into mine. She firmly clasps my fingers within her cold and tremulous ones.

We bend our heads in prayer ... one of us sure of the outcome, the other too scared to hope. I have enough faith for us both.

The End

Matthew 18:20 For wherever two or three come together in my name, there I am with them.

Author's Notes: With that heartwrenching moment in Without, where Scully lies on the floor, sobbing and broken, I thought she might have a crisis of faith. Even the strongest ... succomb. And every time I heard "Scully's theme", I thought of Rachel, weeping for her children, weeping for the innocents.

Thus, the title.

Stories in this series: