At 1 p.m. on a weekday, the emergency department at St. Luke\u2019s-Roosevelt Hospital in Upper Manhattan is in full cry, with bays crowded, patients on stretchers lining the hallways, and paramedics bringing in more sick people. Time for the Rev. Margaret A. Muncie to work the floor.<\/p>\n
Not shy, this pastor with the clerical collar, the Ann Taylor blazer and the cheerful insistence of one whose own mother called her a steamroller. Among the first women ordained an Episcopal priest and a self-described \u201cCaucasian minority,\u201d\u009d she\u2019s an odd bird among the ethnically diverse staff and especially the patients, most of them black or Latino. But she keeps pecking her head behind curtains, parting gatherings of worried family members, impervious to startled looks of suspicion.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi, I\u2019m Peggy Muncie, a hospital chaplain,\u201d\u009d she says. \u201cWould you like a visit?\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
She\u2019s not there to thump. Deftly, she asks people how they\u2019re feeling, then lets them vent their pain and fear, their anxiety and frustration. She nods, a little pushy with her probing. She flags a nurse. \u201cCan you direct a doctor toward that patient?\u201d\u009d she whispers.<\/p>\n
And always, at the end of a visit: \u201cWould it be all right if I prayed with you?\u201d\u009d The health care chaplain will touch a forehead, hold a hand and quietly pray worries to the Divine, speaking with inflections that, as needed, may be Pentecostal, Roman Catholic, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim. For the Baptist woman in Bed 7 whose anxieties are making her chest pain worse, the chaplain prays for calm to allow the medicine to work. Gradually, the patient\u2019s breathing slows.<\/p>\n