i jus keep udating, only not really
The hospital was unusually quiet that bleak January evening, quiet
and still like the air before a storm. I stood in the nurses'
station on the seventh floor and glanced at the clock.
It was 9 P.M. I threw a stethoscope around my neck and headed for
room 712, last room on the hall. Room 712 had a new patient. Mr.
Williams. A man all alone. A man strangely silent about his family.
As I entered the room, Mr. Williams looked up eagerly, but drooped
his eyes when he saw it was only me, his nurse. I pressed the
stethoscope over his chest and listened. Strong, slow, even beating.
Just what I wanted to hear. There seemed little indication he had
suffered a slight heart attack a few hours earlier.
He looked up from his starched white bed. "Nurse, would you - "He
hesitated, tears filling his eyes. Once before he had started to ask
me a question, but changed his mind. I touched his hand, waiting. He
brushed away a tear. "Would you call my daughter? Tell her I've had
a heart attack. A slight one. You see, I live alone and she is the
only family I have."
His respiration suddenly speeded up. I turned his nasal oxygen up to
eight liters a minute. "Of course I'll call her," I said, studying
his face.
He gripped the sheets and pulled himself forward, his face tense
with urgency. "Will you call her right away - as soon as you can?"
He was breathing fast - too fast. "I'll call her the very first
thing," I said, patting his shoulder. I flipped off the light. He
closed his eyes, such young blue eyes in his 50 - year - old face.
Room 712 was dark except for a faint night light under the sink.
Oxygen gurgled in the green tubes above his bed. Reluctant to leave,
I moved through the shadowy silence to the window. The panes were
cold. Below a foggy mist curled through the hospital parking lot.
"Nurse," he called, "could you get me a pencil and paper?" I dug a
scrap of yellow paper and a pen from my pocket and set it on the
bedside table. I walked back to the nurses' station and sat in a
squeaky swivel chair by the phone. Mr. Williams's daughter was
listed on his chart as the next of kin. I got her number from
information and dialed.
Her soft voice answered. "Janie, this is Sue Kidd, a registered
nurse at the hospital. I'm calling about your father. He was
admitted tonight with a slight heart attack and " "No!" she screamed
into the phone, startling me. "He's not dying is he ?"
"His condition is stable at the moment," I said, trying hard to
sound convincing. Silence. I bit my lip.
"You must not let him die!" she said.
Her voice was so utterly compelling that my hand trembled on the
phone. "He is getting the very best care."
"But you don't understand," she pleaded. "My daddy and I haven't
spoken. On my 21st birthday, we had a fight over my boyfriend. I
ran out of the house. I-I haven't been back. All these months I've
wanted to go to him for forgiveness. The last thing I said to him
was, 'I hate you.'"
Her voice cracked and I heard her heave great agonizing sobs. I
sat, listening, tears burning my eyes. A father and a daughter, so
lost to each other. Then I was thinking of my own father, many
miles away. It has been so long since I had said, "I love you."
As Janie struggled to control her tears, I breathed a
prayer. "Please God, let this daughter find forgiveness." "I'm
coming. Now! I'll be there in 30 minutes," she said.
Click. She had hung up. I tried to busy myself with a stack of
charts on the desk. I couldn't concentrate. Room 712; I knew I had
to get back to 712.
I hurried down the hall nearly in a run. I opened the door. Mr.
Williams lay unmoving. I reached for his pulse. There was
none. "Code 99, Room 712. Code 99. Stat." The alert was shooting
through the hospital within seconds after I called the switchboard
through the intercom by the bed. Mr. Williams had a cardiac
arrest. With lightning speed I leveled the bed and bent over his
mouth, breathing air into his lungs (twice). I positioned my hands
over his chest and compressed. One, two, three. I tried to count.
At fifteen I moved back to his mouth and breathed as deeply as I
could. Where was help? Again I compressed and breathed, Compressed
and . He could not die! "O God," I prayed. "His daughter is
coming! Don't let it end this way."
The door burst open. Doctors and nurses poured into the room
pushing emergency equipment. A doctor took over the manual
compression of the heart. A tube was inserted through his mouth as
an airway. Nurses plunged syringes of medicine into the intravenous
tubing. I connected the heart monitor. Nothing. Not a beat.
My own heart pounded. "God, don't let it end like this. Not in
bitterness and hatred. His daughter is coming. Let her find
peace."
"Stand back," cried a doctor. I handed him the paddles for the
electrical shock to the heart. He placed them on Mr. Williams's
chest. Over and over we tried. But nothing. No response. Mr.
Williams was dead. A nurse unplugged the oxygen. The gurgling
stopped. One by one they left, grim and silent.
How could this happen? How? I stood by his bed, stunned. A cold
wind rattled the window, pelting the panes with snow. Outside -
everywhere - seemed a bed of blackness, cold and dark. How could I
face his daughter?
When I left the room, I saw her against a wall by a water fountain.
A doctor who had been inside 712 only moments before stood at her
side, talking to her, gripping her elbow. Then he moved on, leaving
her slumped against the wall. Such pathetic hurt reflected from her
face. Such wounded eyes. She knew.
The doctor had told her that her father was gone. I took her hand
and led her into the nurses' lounge. We sat on little green stools,
neither saying a word. She stared straight ahead at a
pharmaceutical calendar, glass-faced, almost breakable-looking.
"Janie, I'm so, so sorry," I said. It was pitifully inadequate.
"I never hated him, you know. I loved him," she said.
God, please help her, I thought. Suddenly she whirled toward
me. "I want to see him."
My first thought was, Why put yourself through more pain? Seeing
him will only make it worse. But I got up and wrapped my arm around
her. We walked slowly down the corridor to 712. Outside the door I
squeezed her hand, wishing she would change her mind about going
inside. She pushed open the door.
We moved to the bed, huddled together, taking small steps in
unison. Janie leaned over the bed and buried her face in the
sheets. I tried not to look at her at this sad, sad good-bye. I
backed against the bedside table. My hand fell upon a scrap of
yellow paper. I picked it up. It read:
"My dearest Janie, I forgive you. I pray you will also forgive me.
I know that you love me.
I love you too, Daddy"
The note was shaking in my hands as I thrust it toward Janie. She
read it once. Then twice. Her tormented face grew radiant. Peace
began to glisten in her eyes. She hugged the scrap of paper to her
breast.
"Thank You, God," I whispered, looking up at the window. A few
crystal stars blinked through the blackness. A snowflake hit the
window and melted away, gone forever. Life seemed as fragile as a
snowflake on the window. But thank You, God, that relationships,
sometimes fragile as snowflakes, can be mended together again - but
there is not a moment to spare.
Thought: Live each day as if it were your last.