Angels of Mercy

Some people go to work each morning to pursue the sullen craft of bullying others into submission.

Others, less able or interested in making the world revolve around self, simply re-enter their appointed niche each day for un-heroic but faithful service.
Perhaps most find themselves in this latter group.
There may be no trophies at the end of a day and not even a eulogy at the end of a life, but the value of life for some does not lie in fancy trophies or in fine testimonies.

Yet I would give both to those who in times of need have been angels of mercy to me and to so many others among us in this family of mortals for whom sometimes the routine of a hospital becomes more familiar than that of home and job.

As I think back now, I would give both to Mrs. Sobota, LPN, who often functioned as a mother substitute. 

A civilian nurse in an Army hospital, Mrs. Sobota would greet me cheerfully each morning, place a caring cool hand on my forehead, and begin to transfer her jovial mood to me. 
I still remember the tenderness and love with which she held me at those times when I was feverish and anxious and in pain as doctors probed and squeezed and performed their sometimes unwelcome medical services.
To most who knew her, Mrs. Sobota may have seemed a very ordinary human; to me she was an angel of mercy.

And I will always remember Lt. Pat Philips, RN, who would on those nights when sleep would not come take time for a personal chat.

I don’t remember what we talked about.
But I know that her human kindness proved invariably conducive to sleep; and even when it did not, the reassurance blessed me that to a young Army officer I was not merely Pvt. US 56227916 but cared for and cared about as a real person who felt a bit lonely and fearful now and again.

There have been others: in isolation wards, recovery wards, and ambulatory wards: in military, VA, and private hospitals – God’s angels of mercy are needed and found everywhere. 

I’m grateful still for their special touch and spirit, for they were surely as vital to me as all the medicine prescribed to make me well.

Of course, as anyone who’s been hospitalized knows all too well, there’s another kind:  one who makes the rounds, delivers the medicine, jabs in the needle, takes pulse and temperature with icy efficiency and indifference.

They chill the room and leave the patient feeling guilty for being so burdensome.
At best they’re the competent mechanics of medicine; at worst they’re the cruel compounders of human misery.
In either case, they chose the wrong profession.

That may not be fair.

A hospital isn’t exactly a country club.
The pressure is enormous, the human pain and grief everywhere, and the work emotionally and physically exhausting.
In that environment day after day, year after year, many may become rather grim if not calloused human beings who impose on self a degree of insensitivity in order to preserve some inner resources.
Outside of a hospital, one can understand that.
Inside, as a patient, one will never appreciate it.
And that makes the angels of mercy so special.

Most of us will need hospitalization sometime in life.

Nearly all of us will spend our dying hours inside a hospital or hospice room.
At such times, when we confront the fact of our frailty and mortality, when we feel utterly vulnerable and dependent, when we are frightened for ourselves and our dear ones – then the soft touch of a doctor’s or nurse’s hand and an encouraging word minister to us as a balm in Gilead.

Praise God for the gift of caring, of compassion and empathy.

Praise God for the angels of mercy among us.
And though there may be no trophies or eulogies, all of us remember the words of Christ himself:
“Blessed are the merciful.”