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Love You |
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 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 since 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 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
breathed. 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' 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. I crept from the room and hurried
to the phone. I would call my father. I would say, "I love you."
-- Unknown |
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