The Rattnor Hospice had an awkward problem. Terminal cases rallied. People walked out instead of being carried out. The whole purpose of a hospice, to add comfort and dignity to a loved one’s final days, was undermined. There were no final days. It was not a situation to go unnoticed. The boom days of the Rattnor Valley had long passed. The mines had been worked out by the thirties. The slag heaps were their only memorial. Of the pithead machinery and buildings there remained not the least trace. The Railroad Engineering Workshops, another major employer, had closed in the late 40s as the G.M. diesels began ousting steam. A much reduced town of Rattnor had lived on to service the valley’s agricultural community. When the hospice movement had begun gathering momentum in North America as it had previously in Europe, a public meeting was held, a committee elected, and the former Lutheran hospital, empty for years, was purchased. For several decades, the hospice operated as it was meant to. It came to have a good name. Then, inexplicably, the situation changed. Rattnor suddenly ceased to be an unknown backwater. Rattnor Hospice featured prominently in medical journals and the popular press. Top experts arrived and every possible cause was subjected to minute scrutiny and analysis. The drugs, the nursing methods, the food, the water supply, even the very air. It appeared impossible to postulate any connection with the medical regime. The facility had its own medical director but patients remained under their own doctors who prescribed the needed drugs and these were, in every case, drugs widely used elsewhere. And nothing else had changed. The routine was as it had always been. Though Rattnor was well north of the bible belt, there were many in the community ready to accept that miracles were involved. The building was, after all, a former Christian DOCTOR DAN. Page 2 hospitaland dedicated to the greater glory of God. The experts, however, treated this idea with the scorn it deserved. ‘Miracles in this day and age?’ And then, again for no apparent reason, things returned to normal.
Darren Parker spent his childhood on his grandparent’s truck farm. His father,Josh, would be away for months at a time leading revival campaigns or attending religious conventions to canvas invitations for the coming year. Darren could not remember his mother but according to his grandparents she had been an evil woman who had made wicked accusations against his father. He was better off without her. It seemed that there had been a bitter custody battle. Darren had accepted his father’s ambition as being of The Spirit’s leading. Josh Parker’s craving was for the stature of a television evangelist. The programs of those who had reached this lofty pinnacle were carefully studied. Their dress, words, vocal and facial expressions, body language, showmanship. They were recorded, played, and replayed. It seemed a hopeless dream. Television evangelism was a career near impossible to start. The cost of time on even one station was beyond the means of an itinerant preacher. Having lived with it from birth, Darren accepted the tenets of his father’s and grandparent’s religion. The orchestrated fervour at meetings was Holy Spirit. Incoherent babble was speaking in tongues. People were struck down by The Spirit and the healing was real although he had seen the same people go up again and again. It was only in his late teens, when his father took him on the road, that he began to wonder a little. They worked a succession of forgettable towns across the country’s mid-riff and Darren began to see another side of his father. The man, who supposedly had a direct line to Jesus, tended to be less than saintly in places where he was not known. Bourbon was the
DOCTOR DAN. Page 3 favourite anodyne that helped him sleep after the emotional orgy of his meetings. He popped pills. And there were times when Darren was left for days in some motel while his father disappeared. The tours were a torture. Darren was by nature quiet and undemonstrative, the complete antithesis of his father. The idea had been for him to open meetings as a sort of warm-up man to force him out of his unhealthy reticence. That had proved a disaster and, to his relief, he was finally relegated to a background role. Faith healing was his father’s main drawcard. He pushed healing with the same excessive claims and with as little real success as others in the field. True, pains disappeared and cripples walked while the hysteria of the meeting was strong in them but, afterwards, disappointment followed when it didn’t last. And then it was the universal let-out. Their faith had not been strong enough. But, at one meeting it yet another featureless town, a lady, elderly and almost impossibly frail, had been wheeled forward for healing. It was her faith and dogged determination that helped her to struggle to her feet and take a few tentative steps. A triumph for the Holy Spirit? Darren now believed otherwise. It was really a triumph for her own spirit and he felt compassion for her. It was absolute cruelty. He had taken her arm to assist her and been conscious of something going out of him. At every step, she became stronger. Darren said nothing of this to his father. Surely it was his imagination. It was presumptuous even to think that a miracle might come through him. His father was God’s channel. But months later, when he had felt this outgoing many times and seen its result, he still said nothing. The remarkable recovery of that elderly lady became the first outstanding miracle of evangelist Josh Parker. Other cures followed. The medical fraternity cried fraud as a matter of DOCTOR DAN. Page 4 course. Believers believed. But not everyone was cured. Darren did not always have a chance to touch supplicants without drawing attention to himself. Josh Parker was suddenly hot property. Backing became available. Josh Parker’s Hour With Destiny appeared first on several middle-western stations and quickly established him as a top religious hustler. Soon, time was being purchased nationwide. From Spartan beginnings and rented facilities, the organisation mushroomed.Within a year, they had their own studios and, in a few years more, a Cathedral of Praise in which Josh could perform for his adoring public. By then, there were writers, producers, a musical director and musicians, a professional choir, camera operators, floor men, wardrobe and makeup people. the shows were choreographed and scripted. The most impassioned cry of praise was right there on the teleprompter. The need was always for more money to buy more time on more stations in order to bring in more money. There was a large staff to pay at industry rates and top executives with top rewards. Every prayer made at least one plug for giving. Behind the scenes was the office staff. A computer data-base held names, addresses, and relevant information on everyone who had asked for prayers, signed a pledge card, or requested one of the free-gift come-ons. The mailing department added its solicitations to those on the air. At one stage, a whisper had gone through the organisation that a woman claiming Josh to be the father of her child had been silenced with a large cash payment. Some versions said several women. Although Josh had always waxed hot against the sins of the flesh, no one charged him with hypocrisy, no-one considered for a moment that he should step down. America needed him. Meaning that they needed him. They were already concealing other weaknesses. Darren would have walked away from the whole business early on had it not been for an DOCTOR DAN. Page 5 ingrained loyalty to his father. If he left, there would be no cures. He had an obligation there. He still assisted those needing healing, the efficacy of his touch unnoticed. His father’s histrionic calls for Holy Spirit took everyone’s attention. He was under pressure from his father to play a more prominent role. To hold back as he did was a lack of faith. He was under mounting pressure from others in the organisation as well. Alcohol was making his father less reliable and often less coherent. It was becoming more and more difficult to hide the problem and get the program out. It called for tighter editing, fewer close- ups, and sometimes cuts from earlier programs. Other pastors in the organisation could fill some of the gaps but Josh was their star, their money spinner. But for how much longer? Could they groom Darren? It was an idea born of desperation. But the day came when Darren Parker, crown prince, was no more. the moral price was too high. The princely income, expensive wardrobe, and the free apartment were not worth it. It was a decision made in a moment. He had had yet another argument with his father and was walking off his anger. His credit cards, driver’s licence and other identification, trappings of a hated life, went into the nearest mailbox. With just the cash in his wallet, He took an interstate bus ride to anonymity. Three days later, still in the same clothes and with a three day stubble, his money ran out. By then, he was in a former coal town in Kentucky. The American Rescue Workers provided him with a meal and a bed and the next day found him a job as a cleaner at the Rattnor Hospice. He gave his name as Daniel Prentice. He was happy to take the position. Menial though it might be, it was more congenial than the world of pressure and competition that he had left. He was out of the public’s eye although there would be occasions when people would look at him in puzzlement sensing DOCTOR DAN. Page 6 something familiar about him. Hospice love he found to be real, not a glossy veneer, not something to be trumpeted, but the underlying basis of everything that was done. He was at home. It quickly became more than a job. He felt concern for those who had come to this pass. He chatted with them as he worked if they were feeling up to it. He ran errands for them. He called back after working hours if they were going through a bad spell and had no relatives at hand, sometimes sitting through the night. Patients claimed to feel better when he was around and called him Doctor Dan. The name was meant to be facetious but the feeling better was more than imagination. Darren was careful to avoid physical contact. He had no control of his gift and there must be no instant miracles to blow his cover. He was aware, though, of a constant slight leakage of power and thought this all to the good. But it was from this leakage that the hospice gained world attention and its inundation of experts. Fortunately, the cleaners were the one group not subjected to scrutiny. No-one could imagine them being involved. But with the experts came the news-crews, television vans, and cameras taking Rattnor to millions.There was every chance that someone would recognise Darren in the background of a shot and broadcast the truth of the situation. Much as he hated the idea, it was time to move on. And with his departure, things returned to normal although this only gradually became obvious. Some part of him seemed to linger for a while in the fabric of the building. So it was that, although Doctor Dan was the only staff member to leave, no-one ever quite made the connection.