plagues cause fear, suffering and anguish/ part 3

plagues cause fear, suffering and anguish/ part 3

the Doctor

fiction
edward w pritchard

The Doctor watches in horror as plague invades the bodies of his family and his neighbors. He knows all too well the pain and suffering that will occur over the next few days in the plague's recent victims. The Doctor is a plague survivor himself. Plague has left him a changed man, but he survived and now is one of the only lay persons who will attend to the local sick, of which there are many.

The Doctor's reasoning and will has been effected for years by his bout with the plague as a young man. He knows to avoid rats and sick people but he believes his calling is to  alleviate the suffering where he can. Still the Doctor logically cannot find a cause for the catastrophe effecting Europe and the world.

The Doctor secretly is not a religious man. Still he administers the last rights. In desperation, because of the deaths of so many priests, the Church has allowed lay persons such as himself to administer last rights. Even women are now permitted to administer the sacred last rights under certain circumstances. Usually the victims do not respond to his administrations, but the Doctor takes small comfort in the effect his performance of the Church's final ritual brings to the families of the plague victims. The Doctor feels more useful in the spirtual comforts he provides than he does in administering the medicines he offers.

The Doctor also secretly wonders if it would be humane to just end the lives early of those who have been cursed with the Black Plague. Those laying in bed unable to stand or attend to their own needs. No, he reasons, he  himself has went through the pain and suffering of the Plague and survived. We must bear forth despite the odds.

Onward, he carries forth in his duties.