The room was humid and uncomfortably warm. An old hospital building. Institutional with generations of Catholic silence built into it.
He told me the caller didn't have a close relationship with the Catholic Church, but it's something the dying man would want.
He's dead already, really. The machine is providing only the mechanics of life.
It had taken some doing for this man with the wooden beads on his wrist to find a priest willing to go to the bedside and perform the Last Rites so the family might let him go. It was not even remotely a part of his job.
"I'm a Buddhist," he said. "I will pray for them."
He looked me in the eye and said that all the people have become angry. He unfurled and raised his middle finger.
"They'll show this to you," he said. "And all you can do is look at the ground or they will attack you. Maybe they'll shoot you."
"Not me," I said.
"Not me too," he smiled sadly.
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