Freak Accident
By enrico
- 512 reads
Freak Accident
Distraught with guilt over the death of his son, a bearded man from
Staten Island raced into St. Patrick's Cathedral with a handgun to, as
they say, make amends. He told the priest, who is an acquaintance of
mine, that this freak accident, that is, the death of his son, was not
only his fault, though of course it was his fault, he said, but the
fault of the doctor and her nurses as well. He shouted into the
cavernous church that a doctor from an area hospital had murdered his
son, that the nurses had crushed his son's head with a helium canister.
It is my fault, he shouted as he waved the gun around. My
priest-acquaintance went to him to, as he said, remove the madman from
the church, to have him arrested for waving a handgun around and
frightening everyone and, he said, for nearly killing me with his
handgun and his shouting. The bearded man quieted himself and told the
priest that his was a banker and that he needed help. But then, in a
moment of sincerity and, as the priest said, with a dignified face, he
aimed the gun at his own chin and quickly destroyed his face and part
of his head with a pull of the trigger. The bearded man lay screaming
on the church floor while my priest-acquaintance, astonished by this
bloody screaming mess, phoned the hospital for an ambulance. Many
people had run out of the church while the man was yelling but they
returned to watch as soon as he shot himself and lay dying and
screaming on the floor. The man suffered at the hospital for two weeks.
Then he died. The priest, who is known and appreciated for his direct
and some have said honest demeanor, told me while we sipped coffee at a
nearby caf? that in this instance he did not feel any sympathy or pity
for the bearded suicide. Instead he saw, as he said, a biological mess
in front of him, an organism that could only destroy itself. The priest
actually said that the man was a predestined suicide and that he knew
from the moment he raced into St. Patrick's that the man would take or
attempt to take his own life, that he would instantly take his own
life. The priest said he was not astonished that the man had shot
himself, but rather that he had succeeded in shooting only himself and
not destroying anyone else in the process. The priest also admitted
that it was more or less the amount of blood that prompted him to call
the hospital. He said, Who in their right mind would call an ambulance
if there was no blood? Imagine a gunshot suicide in which no blood came
out of the body. I'm sure, he said, that it was only the sight of blood
that pushed me to act as if this man were my brother. My
priest-acquaintance then let out a short snort-like laugh. Of course,
he said, there was also the screaming.
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