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nodded as Father Dowling told him the saga of Nathaniel Green.
    “I came upon the distinction Pius XII made between ordinary and extraordinary medical means,” Father Dowling said.
    Father Nolan shook his head slowly. “That statement has been the cause of lots of arrant nonsense. Unintentionally, of course. Our friend Basil Spritzer considers water extraordinary means when a patient is in a coma.”
    “What would count as extraordinary means?”
    “That is the problem,” Willy Nilly said. “What were extraordinary means a generation ago have become ordinary. You mustn’t think that I have become a relativist.” He glared at Father Dowling.
    Father Dowling laughed. “That would be extraordinary.”
    “Your thinking it or my becoming it?”
    “In the case that concerns me, the means were a life support system.”
    “That’s too vague, Father. Say it means just oxygen. Would you consider that extraordinary?”
    “You’re the moral theologian, Father.”
    The old priest sighed. “Medical ethics has become the last refuge of the scoundrel. ‘Extraordinary’ could characterize most of the stuff written in the field. Extraordinary nonsense.”
    Father Dowling presented the details of his problem to the moralist.
    Willy Nilly sighed. “I don’t think I could responsibly encourage you to believe that what that man did does not amount to depriving his wife of ordinary medical care. The circumstances are extraordinary, no doubt. I can sympathize with the wife’s fear and the husband’s anguish. But what he did, as you describe it, was kill her.”
    Father Dowling realized that this was the answer he had expected. He could not regret not having consulted Basil Spritzer.
    “Tell him to pray for his wife,” Willy Nilly suggested. “As she is undoubtedly praying for him. That is not sentimentality. I can give you a reference in St. Thomas.”
    “I’ll take your word for it.” He thought he knew the passage in the
Summa theologiae
his old professor had in mind.
    Willy Nilly nodded. “It was the realization that whatever I said in the classroom would become gospel for the men I taught that made teaching such a weighty responsibility.”
    “I think you bore it well.”
    “That is my hope,” Father Nolan said.
    So Father Dowling drove back to Fox River unable to enjoy the beautiful countryside on the return trip. Still, despite what Willy Nilly had told him, or not told him, he looked forward to talking with Nathaniel Green.
    Back in the rectory he called Edna Hospers.
    “Has Nathaniel Green become one of your wards, Edna?”
    “I want to talk to you about him, Father.”

Natalie Armstrong, a handsome widow in her early sixties, came reluctantly to St. Hilary’s senior center, not considering herself a senior, but lonely and bored. Helen Burke’s enthusiasm made her hesitant. The description in the parish bulletin held her attention, but she was certain she was not old enough for that. To her surprise, she found that the age range of the regulars included half a dozen her own age and then rose choppily up the scale until it reached such denizens as Leon Bartlett, pushing ninety, hunched over his walker as if it were a motorcyle threatening to get out of control, and Marlys Logelin, who would never see ninety again and was confined to her motorized wheelchair, in which she zipped around the former gym as if she were engaged in one of the basketballgames that had been played there when she was a girl. Watching her, Natalie felt in the full flush of youth.
    The very first day, Eugene Schmidt introduced himself. He was at least her age, with a head full of hair that might have been cotton wool and a dapper little mustache to match. His eyes twinkled at her over his half-glasses.
    “You look lost,” he said, as if he meant to do something about it. He did. He squired her around, introducing her—how on earth had he known her name?
    “I asked.” He actually squeezed her hand.
    They kibitzed at bridge; they