East of Eden: St Julian's Hospital

I. ENCOUNTER

They tell him on the away day

that eighty per cent are non-religious.

Tick boxes. Yes or no.

Faith reduced to data.

As if the soul only aches

when belief is declared.

As if grief checks credentials

before it speaks.

He is a priest—though here

he walks the corridors as chaplain, pastoral care.

Same calling, softer tongue.

The badge says St Julian’s Hospital—

a cross in the logo, a chapel in the basement, psalms etched in stone,

evidence of an age when mission and medicine shared a language.

Founded by a sister. Funded by faith.

Now the café serves flat whites in a secular age.

A nervousness lingers. Lines not to cross.

He heard—though no one will confirm—

of a nurse who lost her job for offering prayer at the wrong moment.

So the chaplain watches his language,

keeps presence gentle, lets grace arrive without a name.

They say don’t wear the collar—

too much God, too closed, a barrier.

But the collar opens doors, raises smiles.

“I’m not ready yet, Vicar,” someone jokes,

oxygen hissing beside them, bells ringing for attention,

life held together by plastic tubes and borrowed time.

This is Eden—east of it.

II. PRESENCE

Ward Seven. Stroke and end-of-life.

Nine bays. Four side rooms.

The staff nurse nods as he signs in—

not formal, but familiar.

She tells him Room Twelve is fading.

Family in chairs, still trying to hope.

The priest steps in softly, lets silence go first.

A woman with her hand on her mother’s shoulder

looks up, mouths thank you without speaking.

The dying woman stirs. Her eyes open—

clouded, but searching.

He kneels, offers her a name that is not her own—

Beloved.

He does not ask what they believe.

He reads the room, not the form.

A grandson stands by the window,

playing a voice message from the sister overseas who couldn’t get a flight.

The mother mouths words no one can hear.

He anoints her—

a thumb dipped in oil, a cross traced gently

on a forehead glistening with goodbye.

Later, by the desk, the nurse says,

“You’re good with them. With all of this.”

He shrugs.

“Sometimes I think the only gift I bring

is staying longer than the silence.”

She nods. Then another bleep.

Another task. Another name on the whiteboard under comfort care.

Beds in rows. Curtains pretending to be walls.

Monitors blinking like anxious eyes.

The priest walks bay to bay, a chaplain by name, a priest by vow.

His hands remember altars.

His eyes have learned the liturgy of monitors.

Here, language frays.

People say, “I’m a scientist,” “I’m a philosopher,”

“I’ve read Dawkins, Nietzsche, Russell,”

as if books might soften the fall.

But when the door to Wherever starts to open,

different questions rise.

Was my life enough?

Am I going somewhere?

Will you stay and pray me through the Gate?

No one asks then if prayer fits a worldview.

They just ask for someone to be there.

III. GRIEF

He stands over what never quite arrived—

a body no bigger than a prayer.

He asks himself what it means to bless

what could not stay.

Fearfully and wonderfully made, he says,

though his voice trembles.

He commends what the world barely noticed

into hands scarred by love.

‘Go gently, beloved.

Let love call you home on the ebb tide.’

The parents do not know why they asked for him.

Neither do the forms.

But the room knows.

By the third time this week someone warns him

the work will depress him.

The priest weeps—not from despair.

He weeps because love keeps breaking its container.

Because mercy has weight.

Because his own wounds keep opening

whenever he dares to stand close enough.

There is the woman who breathes like a tide

coming in and going out.

He anoints. Oil catches the light

on skin thin as paper.

She opens her eyes, smiles, says thank you,

then slips back beyond speech.

Her children stare at him, astonished.

He stares at the oil.

IV. LOVE

There is Gloria. Stage four.

Weeks, not months.

Communion first. Marriage vows next—

because anniversaries do not wait for cures.

Her bedroom fills with children, grandchildren, unfinished sentences.

Later she asks when it is time.

The chaplain does not know.

The priest in him wants to speak of hope,

but knows at times to stay quiet.

She does.

Two days later she nods through plastic breath.

Afterwards he asks, clumsy, human,

if there is anything else.

She pulls down the mask.

“Give me a hug.”

He remembers Jesus at the tomb—

weeping, angry with death, still loving.

A priest who healed by letting himself be undone.

She waits. Mother’s Day. Her husband’s birthday.

Timing, as ever, is not random.

V. REMEMBRANCE

Cafeteria, 2 a.m.

Plastic chairs. One humming fridge.

A drip from the hot water tap

no one’s fixed in months.

He wraps cold fingers round a paper cup,

half-coffee, half-regret.

He thinks of Gethsemane—

not the agony, but the waiting.

The not-knowing.

He thinks of Jesus asleep on a cushion

while the others panicked.

Did he clear tables when the fishermen were too tired to pray?

God with dishwater hands.

Called to serve. Called to bear witness. Called to love.

Here, now, fluorescent light hums like a psalm

he can’t remember.

His collar is off, but the calling remains.

A cleaner nods. He nods back.

Holy ground sometimes sounds like a mop on vinyl.

He scribbles a prayer on a napkin.

Not eloquent. Just—

stay with them. Stay with me.

VI. WITNESS

Walking a corridor fresh from a meeting,

he remembers—the early days. Covid.

Donning and doffing.

Hands shaking beneath plastic.

That first night, after training,

he wrote his own funeral.

Greater love…

He called to mind the words—

to lay down one’s life for a friend.

It felt like calling.

But it also felt like fear.

Andrew—sent from Nottingham. ICU full.

A boxer, strong, still beautiful.

Lungs collapsed, words trapped by tubes.

He scribbled: “Please pray for me.”

So the priest did—music through polythene,

grace through gloves, presence where presence was forbidden.

Day six. Curtains open. Light unfiltered.

He rounds the corner—

‘Good morning, Andrew.’

not sure what to expect.

Andrew smiles, sits up.

Traci gone.

‘Good Morning, Rev.’

The priest weeps—not from fear,

but from joy that healing sometimes comes.

He also remembers those who didn’t.

Beds emptied before sunrise,

names whispered only in the chapel.

He carries them still—

grief and grace, both held in the same hands.

VII. VIGIL

There are funerals where no one comes,

and still he keeps the vigil.

Babies given to glory with no names spoken,

and still he offers a whispered prayer.

He makes small talk with crematorium staff

about the weather, about rising suicides,

about nothing and everything.

He remembers the one who said,

‘Behold, I make all things new.’

There is not a hurt he will not heal.

He is the healer of all hurts.

After a long day this priest walks to his car.

He thinks of the diocese, the plans, the metrics.

Parish priests are front line.

They say it with pride.

But chaplains—threshold-dwellers,

not quite parish, not quite diocese, not quite remembered.

He does not mind. Mostly.

He thinks of Isaiah:

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

He drives home listening to worship,

letting the songs soothe his soul,

draw him back to the Christ who holds the wounds,

who soothes the soul.

At a red light he stops—

engine idling, dashboard glowing,

windshield wet with rain or tears.

This priest sings, voice breaking,

not because he is strong, but because he is held.

The light changes. He wipes his face.

And drives on, toward another day,

on the wards at St Julian’s Hospital,

east of Eden.

Rev'd Jon Swales, 2026