Retaliate With Chocolates Read online

  Retaliate with Chocolates

  a novel by

  Karen S. Woods

  Sleeping Beagle Books

  Jacksonville IL

  Smashwords Edition

  Retaliate with Chocolates is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright 2016 by Karen S. Woods

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book may neither be reproduced or distributed any means now known or discovered in the future (beyond that copying that is permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the US Copyright Law and except that quoting of passages done for purposes of reviews of the work by reviewers for the public press), without permission of the publishers.For permission, email [email protected]

  Cover photo by Rosevita, used under license.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  “You don’t see how, with every prayer you utter, many demons fall and turn back. You only see how much you are wounded. Know that they also are being beaten, and flee. Each time we show patience they flee in leaps, and with each prayer, they are seriously wounded. So, in the time of war, don’t expect while you are firing bullets and cannonballs that they will retaliate with chocolates.” Elder Joseph the Hesychast

  Thanks and Notices

  Thanks to the American Heart Association for the excellent training materials and articles on their website about stroke treatment.

  Thanks to the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health for the excellent information on their website about the staging of cancers.

  Biblical citations, quotes from the various services of the Orthodox Church, and quotations from the Saints are rendered according to the memory of the author.

  Chapter One

  Upon leaving the chapel that Thursday noon, after the almost four-hour long service that had made her both a nun and the abbess of this new monastery, on the grounds that had once been only her residential medical clinic, Mother Nina saw the cause of her last few days’ uneasiness, of her feeling she was being stalked.

  Greg Wilson stood next to a stone bench about fifty feet from the chapel. His coloring was even more jaundiced than it had been the last time she had seen him, just weeks ago at their 40th high school class reunion. He wore a nasal cannula hooked into a small oxygen concentrator worn in a bag slung over his left shoulder. He was clearly, perhaps terminally, ill.

  She stopped walking, and the group with her, about ten feet from Greg.

  “Gregory,” Irina—now Sister Olga, Nina’s elderly mother, who along with the Sister Elizabeth, the widow of one of Nina’s godsons, Jack Greer, had been tonsured as nuns today along with her— greeted Greg. It was obvious Sister Olga was trying to be kind, but her voice was cold and defensive. Mother Nina couldn’t blame her.

  “Doctor Melnikov, er… Sister….” Greg answered, clearly uneasy.

  His face looked as though he had been crying. And the way he stood told her that he was a broken man, far more in need of consolation and healing than of condemnation.

  “Pig…er…Margarita… may I speak to you alone?” he asked.

  “Mother Nina, do you know this man?” Father Samuel, the chaplain, asked.

  “He and I were in high school together, Father. He was one of the three young men I spoke to you about before I went to the class reunion,” she replied. “One of the trio whom I still struggled, at that time.”

  “I see,” Father Samuel said, too mildly. She knew that tone. He was trying to keep himself under control because he was angry and worried about her.

  “Greg, anything you can say to me, you can say in the presence of my bishop, my confessor, my sons and their wives, and the Sisterhood of this place and their families. For heaven’s sake, sit down on the bench behind you. You look like you are about to fall down,” Mother Nina said, her voice gentle.

  While she thought he was a changed man, she also did not wish to be alone with him, in case she was wrong and this was a well-executed ploy.

  “I have forgiven you,” Mother Nina felt compelled to say. She wished she hadn’t just lied through her teeth.

  He swallowed hard and tears came fresh, as he took a seat on the stone bench there, facing her. “That is more than I deserve. I have been watching you for days, sitting there under the trees, hidden, watching, waiting for a suitable moment,” Greg confessed. He swallowed hard once more, obviously screwing up his courage to say whatever would come next. “I came here fully intending to kill you. I planned to shoot you in the head while you were alone in Church…”

  Her grown sons, Boris, Alexei, and Kiril, all three moved towards Greg. This situation was not going to be pretty, if she couldn’t diffuse it.

  “No, my sons,” Mother Nina commanded gently, but firmly. “Can you not see that this threat has turned to contrition?”

  As she spoke to her sons, Greg continued, “Then I planned to burn the church down around your dead body, just as the guys and I burned down Saint Konstantin’s so many years ago. I had the gas to start the fire stored just under the trees, all ready to use. I was going to do it. I was just waiting to catch you alone.”

  You never were exactly the brightest, planning to burn down a church when you are wearing oxygen. That would have been such a safe and brilliant move, she thought, but did not say.

  Vladika, her bishop, asked, his voice gentle, “I take it that murder and arson are no longer your intent, my son?”

  “No. They are not,” Greg said, tears still falling freely.

  Mother Nina asked him, “What do you intend?”

  He shook his head and sighed. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Then talk. I’m listening,” Mother said, keeping her voice gentle, even though she wanted to scream.

  “I went for my insurance physical the Tuesday after the class reunion. They found something, and it’s… bad. I have liver cancer. It’s spread everywhere in my gut and lungs and bones. I’m dying. I told myself that as long as I was dying, anyway, and clearly damned and going to burn in Hell as my mother and her pastor told me I was, many years ago, I wasn’t going to let the people I’ve hated outlive me. If I was going to hell anyway, what difference would a few murders make?”

  The old pain in his voice when he spoke of his mother just about broke her heart. But before she could say anything, Sister Elizabeth, the third member of their new sisterhood, asked, “What tests did they run?”

  “Liver enzymes, followed by scans, liver biopsy, more scans. I have an oncologist who tells me there is no treatment except to try to manage the pain. He wants me to go into a residential hospice program to die,” Greg answered, his voice tight. “But, I had decided I wouldn’t do that. I planned not to let anyone I hated outlive me. After that, I was planning to kill myself rather than endure the worsening pain.”

  “What changed your mind about murder and suicide?” Vladika asked.

  The words just flowed out of Greg, and all Mother Nina could do was to stand there and listen in strange fascination, “I stood in that church this morning, at the back, listening to your prayers, watching, taking in the beauty of your way of praying. T
hat prayer near the beginning, ‘I am a sheep of your rational flock and I flee to you for refuge, O Good Savior. Search me out who has been lost and save me’, that prayer hit me hard the first time I heard it. When you sang it again, I prayed it myself. I don’t know how to describe what followed, except to say that God spoke to me, telling me that I was lost, but was now found and that I was loved. There is a large picture on the wall in there of Jesus carrying a sheep on his shoulders. I looked at that. Then it was me, not the sheep, on his shoulders, carried there, cradled so lovingly, so tenderly. I don’t think I’ve ever really been loved, not like I now know that God loves me. It is overwhelming. All the hate and anger that had filled me for as long as I can remember is gone. I don’t know what to do with any of this. But I knew I had to talk to you, that I had to tell you this. Help me, please? What do I do with any of this?”

  Well, Lord? What do I do with him? Mother prayed. And then she knew what she must do, even though every fiber of her being protested against it.

  “What you do with this overwhelming love that you have experienced, Greg,” Mother Nina said, her voice kind, “is you will go into the chapel with a priest, make a life confession, tell all, tell every evil thing you have ever done to anyone, including to yourself, everything you can remember, get it all off your soul, and then you will be baptized, and chrismated, anointed with oil for the sealing of the Holy Spirit in your life. Tomorrow morning, we will celebrate the Divine Liturgy, and you will commune. Immediately after your baptism and chrismation, today, you will go to one of our guest houses and we will take care of you during your final days. Sister Elizabeth ran a hospice for many years. You are in good hands. You will give me your oncologists’ contact information, right now, and I will have your medical records sent to us, so that we can care for you, properly.”

  “Yes,” Vladika said, nodding in approval. “That sounds like a very good solution.”

  “You would do this for me?” Greg asked in stunned disbelief. “You would take care of me while I’m dying?”

  “Providing I can verify with your oncologist that what you have told me is true, then yes, we will care for you,” Mother Nina said. “Sister Elizabeth, will you, please, fetch my work phone from the residence? It is on the charger on the kitchen island.”

  Sister Elizabeth went at a double time walk/run to the nun’s house.

  After a moment or two, Greg stood and moved his arm as if to retrieve something from behind himself.

  “Easy there,” Alexei warned, his voice fierce. “Don’t make any sudden moves.”

  “I’m just getting the oncologist’s card from my wallet,” Greg said. He brought his wallet from his back pocket and opened it. He found the card and held it out. Sister Elizabeth returned with the smart phone. She took the doctor’s business card from Greg. Then she handed Mother Nina both the smart phone and the card.

  “I know the oncologist,” Sister Elizabeth said.

  Greg sat back down on the bench.

  Mother Nina dialed the office number from the card. “Hello. This is Doctor Nina Zornova. I am the chief medical officer of Saint Maria’s Clinic. We have a new patient applying for intake for end-of-life care, Greg Wilson, whom I have been told is your patient… Will you ask Doctor Clay to give me a return call, shortly, please? My work cell phone number is,” she gave the staff member the number. “It is rather urgent, yes. I’ll be faxing you a medical records release form in short order. But I do need to talk to Doctor Clay, briefly about this patient, as soon as possible. Thank you.” She disconnected the phone call.

  Mother said, “Right now, we are expected in the dining hall for lunch. People are waiting for us, and I can’t keep them waiting much longer. I need to talk to Doctor Clay to confirm the diagnosis and prognosis. You, Greg, will go to the dining room and get something to eat. After lunch, we will see to your life confession and baptism. But before we do any of this, you must remove all the weapons, all the ammunition, you have on your person, leave them on the bench.”

  They all watched as Greg unstrapped a nasty looking large hunting knife in its sheath from about his right ankle, removed a small semiautomatic pistol in a holster from his waistband, then removed three other large folding knifes, two loaded magazines for the pistol, a pair of brass knuckles, a telescoping tactical baton, a canister of pepper spray, a tactical pen, and a wire garrote from his pockets.

  “Greg, please, step back from the weapons,” Mother Nina demanded, keeping her voice level and in control. The thought that he had come against her with that kind of weaponry chilled her anew. Her sons went to pick up weapons. Alexei took off his jacket and wrapped the weapons in that suit jacket. Kiril patted Greg down, looking for other weapons but he found none. Boris stood there looking intimidating, which as he was his father’s son, was not that difficult.

  Her phone rang. “Saint Maria’s Clinic. Doctor Zornova, speaking… Yes, Doctor Clay, thanks for returning my call so promptly. I have one of your patients here, Greg Wilson, applying for intake for end-of-life care. I need to confirm his diagnosis and prognosis... I see. Yes, that agrees with what he has told me… Will you overnight or fax his medical records to me?... Certainly, I will fax you my contact information and a medical records release signed by him within the hour. Thank you, Doctor Clay. Goodbye.”

  Mother Nina said, “Lyosha, come with me, bringing the weapons. We will lock up those things. Greg will not have further need of them. The rest of you, please, go to the dining room. We will be with you shortly.”

  “We will come with you. It is only fitting that the Sisterhood make an appearance all at one time,” Sister Olga said, in a tone that said there was no sense arguing the point.

  Mother Nina felt herself smile. She never could argue with her mother.

  “I will walk with you, as well,” Vladika said. “Everyone else can go to lunch.”

  “Come on, then, if you’re coming. Time is wasting,” Mother Nina said.

  Walking away, Mother Nina was aware of the group walking to the dining room. When she was sure they were out of earshot, she said, “His oncologist says that, in his estimation, Greg has between a week and a month, with his money running at ten to fourteen days remaining, given the aggressiveness of his particular disease.”

  Sister Elizabeth nodded, “It’s quite possible. What is clear from the difference in his coloring between when we saw him at the reunion a few weeks ago and when we saw him today, and the fact that he is already using oxygen, is that his disease is highly progressed. I will be able to tell more once I see his medical records and examine him.”

  Alexei spoke, clearly upset, “Why are you being so nice to him, Mama? He came here to kill you! Or have you forgotten that?”

  “No, I haven’t forgotten, Lyosha. Not in the least.”

  “Then why are you helping him?” Alexei demanded. “You are going way above the call of duty here. Why?”

  “In case it escaped your notice, Lyosha, we have seen a genuine miracle today. God has acted to soften the heart of a hardened reprobate of a sinner.”

  Chapter Two

  “Greg, you look after Maribelle for a few minutes while Mama runs into town,” Glynis Wilson called up the stairs. “Answer me, young man?!”

  Four-year old Greg, wearing his pajamas, socks covering his hands and tied onto his wrists, and with most of his exposed skin covered in pink lotion to counter the itch of the chickenpox, came to the landing, and looked down at his mother, “Mama?”

  “Just leave her in her crib. But you are in charge, my big boy! I’m locking the door. Don’t let anyone in and don’t go out. I won’t be gone twenty minutes.”

  Greg woke up with a start and a cry and looked around the strange room. It took him a moment to realize that he was in this small house on the grounds of the monastery/clinic where his old enemy, Piggy er... Margarita, now Mother Nina, ruled as Abbess.

  So, the Pig was a nun. He shook his head. She always said that her goal was to be a doctor who was a nun who cared for the
poor. Looks like she finally achieved most of that. But, given the wealth represented by this campus, he doubted most of her patients were particularly poor.

  William, the nurse who had been with him overnight, turned on the overhead light and came into the bedroom. “Are you okay, Greg?”

  “Just an old nightmare,” he dismissed. “I am not going to get back to sleep. How about we play some rummy?”

  “It’s half past six. You will need to shower and dress in your baptismal robe and get over to the chapel. They’ll be starting the Divine Liturgy in less than an hour. I’m sure the nuns are already praying. Do you need help shaving or bathing?”

  “I’m not quite that far gone, yet,” Greg said, hearing the bitterness in his own voice. “How about a cup of coffee?”

  “You are Orthodox now, Greg. We fast before receiving Jesus in the Liturgy. There is a relaxation of that for you, because of your medical condition as you need to take your pain meds with food. I’ll make you a slice of toast you can have with your morning meds and that coffee,” William said. “Do you want that before or after you brush your teeth?”

  “Before,” he said.

  “Be back in a couple,” William said.

  Greg looked up at the ceiling, wondering what he had gotten himself into. Then he stood and went into the bathroom.

  When he returned to his bed, a slice of toast and a cup of coffee sat on the bedside table. William came in carrying an assortment of pills and a glass of iced water.

  “Coffee is just flavored water,” William explained. “There’s really no reason for you not to have it, since you wanted it. The caffeine isn’t going to do anything but keep your kidneys moving and make the pills be more effective.”

  “These aren’t what I normally take,” Greg said, looking at his pills.

  “No, Sister changed your regimen. She thinks you will be more comfortable with these,” William said.

  “I am grateful to the nuns, and to you, for taking care of me.”