The sound of a pin drop echoes throughout the corridors, against the
white sterile walls, where doctors and nurses try to heal sick people.
Families and friends sleep in uncomfortable chairs, holding onto the
hands of the people they love, the people lying in the hospital beds,
riddled with IVs and fear.
The polished floor is cold, my knees are curled up against my chest,
my eyelids are tightly closed, I’m staring into blackness, and never
before have I prayed such a desperate prayer. Inside the quiet
hallways I hear the soft hum of machines, monitoring oxygen and blood
pressure, the shuffling of a nurse exiting a patient’s room…
To imagine the thoughts that have lived inside of these halls, the
elevators, even the parking lots… memories playing over, regret there
wasn’t more joy, regret for words said, or worse, never spoken. Then
the pleading to a God, maybe a God that person didn’t believe in just
days before… but when someone you love is sick… Sure people depend on
technology, specialists, medicine, relying on those who understand how
human bodies become ill, immune systems break down, but they’re
supposed to know how to make them healthy again, but sometimes
surgeries and chemotherapy cannot fix what’s wrong. That’s when you
pray for a freaking miracle.
Miracle has turned into a fictitious word, cultish, reserved for
children’s books and bibles. It’s so easy to drink wine around a
dinner table and profess our belief in carbon dating and evolution.
Hell it’s almost fun to scoff at the possibility of a higher being.
I can say firsthand that being sick is better than being the one
sleeping in the uncomfortable chair. The one who endures the scent of
stale flowers and morphine drips. The one who has to fake a smile, who
calls the rest of the family to give everyone updates, convey horrible
and depressing news. The one who is ushered out into the hall only to
be told that the test came back positive, the treatment isn’t working,
the infection has spread, the one who is told that this hell will only
get worse.
The parents of sick children, the children of sick parents, no, there
are no pain medications for those sleeping in the uncomfortable
chairs. There is a priest who will stop by your room, there are
counselors who can give you textbook suggestions, but there is no
remedy, time nor money can save a breaking heart…
“An August afternoon in southern Texas I was with a group of friends
from the army, I heard a distinct laugh from across the room, as
beautiful as church bells. I navigated through the people, following
this sound and discovered a woman with dark brown hair and chocolate
eyes, and red lips. And that summer day changed my life. I would come
home from work in a wrinkled shirt and beaten briefcase, with three
kids to feed. Some nights so stressed and frustrated, but when she
would wrap her arms around me and smile, that smile gave me a reason
to wake up in the morning, the woman I would fall asleep next to every
night. Her laugh was musical, is still…” He corrected himself.
“I had been in the Air Force, a WWII pilot and I never believed I
would settle down; born to be a bachelor. But then I met Ann… and well
my plan changed. I had only cared about myself, but now there was
someone in my life who I wanted to make happy. And we got married six
months later.”
A powerful CEO of a steel company at nearly eighty, he’s never spent a
single night in the hospital, he defies odds, he chuckled at fear… he
wasn’t one to be reckoned with… he’d point his index finger to the
sky, having a solution for every problem. He was the man who taught me
how to be brave. He was tough on me; he had high expectations and even
higher standards. But sitting next to me right now isn’t my
grandfather.
He is no different than any other man who just been told that the love
of his life is dying.
At 24-years old I’ve never experienced death firsthand. Counting
myself lucky that I’ve made it this far without losing anybody close,
I’m not a fool… mortality is the one aspect of life, in which we can
rely, cannot dodge, or run from… life will kill us eventually, it’s
just a matter of where, when and then the nasty reality of how. I
didn’t think the “not losing a loved one” wouldn’t change, or not yet.
I had too much left to do before I could lose someone close to me.
There are weekends as recent as last month that I chose a charity
event, a movie on my couch, I chose the things that would always be
available, instead of time with my parents’ parents. Not only are
these the people responsible for my genetic makeup; they’ve survived
wars, watched presidents succeed and fail, they’ve witnessed
generations of their own blood grow up. There is so much knowledge to
gleam, there is so much left to absorb, they weren’t frail or fragile,
or sick, but it’s so easy to forget that death doesn’t normally give
us warning, it shows up at our doorsteps uninvited when we’re
unprepared and unready.
Dancing the waltz, toasting champagne and laughing; her unmistakably
beautiful laugh, a woman vibrant with life less than a week ago is
dying in a hospital bed fifteen feet away from me. Her complexion is
pale and her body is aching and when she has enough strength to open
her eyes, they do not belong to the woman I know as my Mother’s
mother. The soft and gentle eyes belong to a patient who has been told
she has run out of options.
The seconds are passing so quickly and time will not seem to wait. And
I know that I am no different from the hundreds of people who have
whispered prayers throughout these same hospital corridors. However my
prayer is very simple, that one day I can tell people, “It was a
miracle.”
