Helper of the Leper

From dawn to dusk and often beyond midnight, she cleans incurable wounds, assures the frightened, and emboldens the lost, the desperate; She gives soothing company to the delirious and the dying, and whispers a prayer for anyone who eventually, inevitably, dies and is buried here; She's got no time to suffer from her own wounds or to tremble at her own nightmares, or to crumble under the weight of her own frustrations; Her life has been a wall windowed wide to a view upon the dire needs of the outcast, slowly wasting away, the leprous dregs of hygienic society; "Transcending the selfish self as a person for others" - - of themselves, these words may just be pious, hollow cliche, elating yet essentially empty; But with her generosity, the words acquire a meaning more profound than their syntax, truer than their intent: Sister Fidela, helping her fellow lepers.