“Emergency”

All of us have memories.

Some are so smashingly good, they still have the power to induce goose bumps.

Some are so grindingly painful, they nearly stop the heart.
For very different reasons, it’s good to revisit both kinds now and then.
 

The memory of this “emergency” partakes of a bit of both dimensions.

 
Pain, like an alarm clock inside the stomach, early in the morning. 
Nauseating pain.  Can’t be up.  Call in sick.  Go to Med Center.
Back home again, sleepy from the pills, but the pain still stabbing the insides, somewhere.
Where?
Why?

 Late afternoon now.

        The pain is getting worse.
Back to the Med Center.  This time a referral to own doctor.  Meet him at Emergency in an hour.
We go, vexed more with the inconvenience of it all than worried about some pending doom. 
After all, what could go wrong so suddenly?  It must be some minor thing the doctor will soon be able to fix.

We reach the hospital’s Emergency Department.

By the time we get to the nurse’s desk, my wife needs it to lean on.
She’s “getting sick”; the nurse quickly escorts her away from the desk and into the waiting room, then goes for the barf tray.
It’s too late; Ruth empties her stomach on the waiting room floor.
Now I know why they don’t carpet those floors.

They take her somewhere now. 

I stay in the waiting room, waiting.
Not much happening.
One little boy, looking like a miniature doctor with glasses, tie, and sport jacket, walks around, holding a bandaged hand slightly away from his body.  He makes the rounds, stopping here and there and asking what’s wrong.
I tell him my wife is sick.

During the next few minutes the activity picks up a bit.

A couple walks in.  He’s a skinny guy in a leather jacket, a scrubby beard, and a look as if he hasn’t washed in a while.
He takes a 10-inch knife from a holster in his belt that was hidden by his jacket.
I watch him grab the woman’s hand and make a light cut in the band aid on her finger.
She cringes.
He says loudly: “Nobody said it wasn’t going to hurt.”
She turns away from him.
He’s put his surgeon’s knife back.  He sounds angry now: “You act like you’ve been hit by a grenade or sumpin’.”

A mother comes in with a howling girl of about 12, holding a bloody towel to her mouth.

The mother hops around the screaming girl, shouting that she has to control herself.
She tries to shake her into calmness and says: “You better cooperate or they’ll put you in a straightjacket again just like last time!”

They’re taking my wife’s pulse and blood pressure.

I fill out the usual forms.
Then they put her to bed in a room not far away.
They’ll be doing x-rays and a battery of tests.
It’s going to take a while.

I go back to the waiting room.

An Hispanic couple has come in with a baby, but it seems to be nothing urgent.
The little doctor boy with the sore hand comes back to me.
I find out his name.
Bobby asks me why I have a gray beard; he says his dad’s is dark.
I say, “That’s nice.”

The woman’s finger is examined now.

It looks like an ordinary cut to me.
The man with the knife hovers close, more threatening than concerned, it seems.
They take the woman’s pulse and blood pressure too.

The girl with the bloody mouth is calm now.  Maybe they gave her something – a sedative rather than a straightjacket.

Her mouth injury looks like nothing more serious than a cut lip.
Her mother walks to the payphone and in a hushed, emergency tone talks to someone.

The Hispanic couple is still walking their baby girl.

Everybody is waiting for something, for someone, but the emergency nature of many things tends to dissipate in an emergency waiting room.

I go to see if my wife’s been wheeled back down again.

         I find out they want her to stay.

They need to do more testing, maybe even exploratory surgery to find out the cause of the pain.

         The doctors are obviously concerned.
Now, for the first time, I am too.
Sometimes an emergency turns out to be real.

I walk back to the car.

Must go home to arrange for another baby sitter who can stay late into the night.
I call my college student daughter.
I call our pastor.
Then I drive back to the hospital.
         I feel scared.
I worry what God might have in mind for us.
I pray, but my thoughts won’t focus; not yet.
There’s too much uncertainty now.

Back in the hospital I discover the doctors have decided that exploratory surgery is necessary.  Apparently something is constricting the bowel, but they have no idea what they’ll find; it may or it may not be serious.

Ruth is calm, even serene.
She doesn’t feel the pain now; they’ve taken care of that.
She says she’s ready for whatever may happen.
Both sedation and faith enable her to say that.
But I’m not ready.
And I know that I won’t be until I have to.
Or even then.

I watch her as she’s wheeled to OR.

          Then I’m alone.

Almost time for surgery now.

Our daughter comes, and then our pastor too.
I’m glad to have both there.
Psalm 103 is read, and then we pray together, placing this emergency into God’s caring and healing hands.
But my heart keeps pleading.

The three of us sit in another waiting room now, close to surgery.

It’s past midnight.
I think of the line “take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.”
I try, and discover how hard that is.
I still feel part of the weight myself and can’t let go.
We try to talk a little, make the time pass.
But mostly we wait.
And wonder.
And worry.
And pray, deep inside ourselves.

Waiting for a possible life-or-death verdict is a fearful thing.

Shortly after one o’clock, the doctor comes.

            He has good news: the surgery went well.
Scar tissue had put its squeeze on the bowel; fairly simple to correct.
She should be fine.

Prayers of thanks flow freely on the ride back into the night.

But I remember keenly how frail is our life, how vulnerable to emergencies of every kind.
And remember, too, with profound gratitude, that the Lord is near to all those who call on him, and that he has us not only but the whole world in his hands.