Five a.m. and he'd driven like the devil to get here. He pounded as hard as he could on the rectory door, with frequent looks back toward the sedate, tree-lined city street where he had haphazardly (and willfully against posted signage) parked the Bug with Emma still in a fever within it.
Finally, after several more knocks and two turnings of the bell, the door was cracked open in answer. A young man, obviously only just now attaching his priestly collar stared, warily, out at him.
"I need to talk to Father Frank," Neal said without greeting him.
The young man looked concerned. "It is very early," he said. "May I help you, my son?"
"Yeah." Neal rearranged his feet, looked down and away and then jerked his head back up to glare at the priest, sensing he was about to have a fight on his hands. "You can get me Father Frank."
Before the young priest could speak again (his expression seemed to show that he about to refuse), a hand gripped over his shoulder where it was visible to Neal where the door was cracked open, and someone behind him spoke, the sound of this new arrival's words muffled to Neal.
At this, the young priest stepped back within the rectory, revealing an older man, abundantly greyed, and also in a priestly collar, a woolen suit coat around his shoulders. "Bae?" he asked, thinking that he recognized Neal. His mouth almost smiled, before a concerned crease settled upon his brow. "Are you alright?"
"Father Frank," Neal greeted him, a smile of relief crossing his face, but any expression of his satisfaction was short-lived. "Yeah, I'm good. Good. But I need your help."
"Come in, then, come in," the priest encouraged him, standing aside with the invitation.
"No," Neal disagreed, throwing up his hands to wave it off. "I can't. I need you to come out — to my car. I can't leave her."
The priest, used to circumstances sometimes verging on dire, asked no questions and put up no resistance, instead following Neal speedily back to the yellow VW Bug. Once there, without asking permission or asking for any further direction, upon sighting Emma he had the door open and his hand upon her cheek and forehead, his sharp eyes taking in her hand, balled like a fist, which she was attempting to bury in her side.
"What do I do?" Neal asked, anxious concern painted all over him. "I don't know what to do."
"The ER, of course," the priest answered, sincere worry on his face. "And soon, I'd say. Do you need directions? Shall I call for an ambulance? That might be best."
Neal did not answer but asked another question. "What do you think it is?"
"Appendicitis, by the looks of it. She'll need a surgery. I'll go with if you like, but we can't wait, Bae," the father's eyes encouraged urgency. "She can't wait."
"But that's the thing," Neal told him, nervously switching his weight from one leg to the other. "That's the – I can't. Can't take her to the hospital." Knowing the urgency of what needed to happen and his present quandary about it set him on edge, his posture jittery, him unable to stand in place.
"If it's a matter of money," the priest began," we can sort that out after. There are funds set up –"
"It's not money," Neal answered quickly, his eye to Emma's blonde head beyond the car door window. He stretched his hand out and put it on the roof of the Bug, the closest he could get in the moment to touching her.
"Well then, its –" the priest began, and cut himself off.
"Her ID," Neal confessed, lightly hitting a balled fist against the roof of the car. "It's not so good. There's no way –" he looked back to Emma within.
The priest listened and then closed his eyes, before opening them and taking another look at the girl inside the car. "And if they find out who she is, she'll -?"
"Go back into the system."
Father Frank visibly relaxed. "I thought you were going to say 'go back to jail'."
"Emma? Jail? No!"
"So, social services."
"Foster care," Neal confessed with a wince. "She ran away. They'll send her back. I can't do that to her. Not when she -"
"Foster care?!" the priest asked, figuring out the facts. "So she's -–"
"A minor. She's seventeen."
Even a priest could see by Neal's face that this girl in his car was more than just a good friend to him. "How could you, Bae? Seventeen?"
Neal shrugged with a nervous energy. It was hard to hold a conversation when he knew Emma was in such pain. He spoke with an exasperated and under-stress intensity. "I knew her ID was forged — whose isn't? I knew it wasn't a top notch job. But that's NOT the same as knowing she was a minor. I, just — I can't lose her. Not to that, not back to what she ran away from." He brought up his eyes to meet the priest's. "And she can't lose me, Father. We're all each other has. Me, her, this car."
The priest looked at him, then back to Emma.
"I know you know people —" Neal began.
"Hush," said the priest, motioning with his hands for Neal to keep his voice down. "Get in the car. Drive where I tell you to go."
...TBC...
