Miracles in the ER (32 page)

“Oh yeah. Like I said, this is my medal.” He was laughing now, and slapping his thigh again. “But I usually spell it with a ‘T.’ ”

I shook my head. “Mr. Reynolds, that’s pretty bad.”

Later, as he was walking up the hallway, I noticed his limp.

“It gets worse when he’s tired.” Julia was walking beside me and nodded at her husband. She put a hand on my elbow and we stopped. “Dr. Lesslie, Ed doesn’t talk about the war. You should feel honored.”

I glanced at Ed Reynolds and then at his tall, slender wife. “I
am
honored. I’m glad I got to meet him, and you.”

The following Easter, Ed was in the ER again. This time it was because of weakness and shortness of breath when he walked for any significant distance. I was worried it might be his heart, and we would have been happier with that diagnosis. It turned out that his weakness was due to chronic blood loss from colon cancer.

“Well, we’ll just have to deal with it.” He reached out, took his wife’s hand, and they looked at each other. There was fear in her eyes, but not Ed’s. He nodded and smiled at her. “We’re going to be alright.” Then he looked at me and said, “What’s the next step, Dr. Lesslie?”

He
was
alright after his surgery. The tumor was completely removed and he never had any recurrence or any other problem with the cancer. But there were other things awaiting Julia and Ed Reynolds. They were passing from their seventies into their eighties, and their bodies were beginning to fail. One early winter, Julia contracted the flu, which was complicated by pneumonia. In her weakened condition, she tripped one night, fell, and broke her hip.

I was worried, and I told Ed so. At her age, with pneumonia and now a fractured hip, there was a significant chance she wouldn’t survive.

“I’m afraid the odds aren’t in her favor,” I told him.

He nodded slowly and his brow furrowed, but only for an instant.

“Whatever happens, Dr. Lesslie, she’ll be fine.
We’ll
be fine. We’ll hope for the best, but you know that the best is something beyond all of this.” He waved his hand expansively around him. “Julia knows that. She’s in the Lord’s hands. We’re
both
in the Lord’s hands.”

Julia’s hip was operated on, and she defied the odds. Every day she grew stronger, and miraculously she was able to go to rehab and then home.

For three or four years we didn’t see either of them in the ER. I ran into Ed a couple of times in town, and on one of those occasions he told me about his heart disease.

“Nothing serious yet.” He was grinning, and his large paw of a hand gripped my shoulder. “No surgery or anything like that. The cardiologist just has me on a couple of medications. Julia, though, is a different story. She’s had to have three stents put in. We’ve been lucky that she hasn’t had a heart attack—caught it in time. But she can’t get around like she used to.”

In the end, it was a heart attack that had brought her to the ER this final time. Julia had collapsed at home, and when the paramedics arrived she barely had a pulse. She made it to the hospital, but with Ed standing by her side, holding her hand, she breathed her last.

Lori reached into her jacket pocket and took out a worn, yellowed piece of paper.

“Ed Reynolds gave this to me, just before we left the cardiac room.”

She opened the folded note and carefully spread it out on the counter, smoothing the creases and crimped corners.

“He said he wanted us to have this. It was Julia’s, and he said she didn’t need it anymore.” She looked up at us, her brow furrowed, and she shook her head. “And then he said something about her being on the right side of the door.”

Virginia adjusted her bifocals and we crowded together over the neatly handwritten note.

At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we shall get in.

C.S. L
EWIS
, from
The Weight of Glory

Lila

Samuel Jefferson’s heart had stopped fifteen minutes ago. Lori Davidson had turned off the cardiac monitor and quietly walked out of cardiac, leaving me with the fifty-eight-year-old’s wife, children, uncle, and mother.

I was standing against a far wall, wanting them to have this time together and ready for any questions they might have—if there were any I could answer.

Samuel’s death had not been a surprise. Six months earlier he had been diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor and his course had been rapidly downhill.

“He must have bled into the tumor,” I had told them. “From that moment he was completely unconscious.”

I don’t know if they had heard me, or if it made any difference. But he hadn’t suffered, not today. That part was over.

His wife stood by the stretcher, flanked by their son and daughter. They held each other and cried.

At the head of the bed was Lila, Samuel’s mother. She stood statue-like, resting her hand gently on her son’s shoulder. Her eyes were moist, but there was a smile on her face. Every few seconds, she silently nodded.

Ed Jefferson, Samuel’s uncle, walked over beside me, his footsteps amazingly quiet for such a big man.

He leaned close and whispered in my ear. “I know it was expected—we all knew it was a matter of days. But it’s still…It’s hard.” He nodded his head in Lila’s direction. “This is the third child she’ll bury. I can’t imagine…You’re just not supposed to bury your children.”

Three children. How could that be? How could this frail eighty-year-old deal with that kind of loss?

“She must be a remarkable woman,” I said quietly. “I don’t know how she can remain so peaceful and calm.”

“And strong,” Ed added. “She’s the glue that holds this family together. And I don’t know either. I think it must have started when Gordon died—her husband. He was my brother.”

He motioned toward the doorway and I followed him into the hall.

Ten years earlier
. Gordon and Lila Jefferson lived fifteen miles outside town on a two-hundred-acre farm. Their three boys had grown up, gone off to school, and settled elsewhere.

The land had been in the family for over two hundred years and had successfully supported several generations with cattle, cotton, and soybeans. Gordon had decided to try his hand at growing apples and planted five acres of several different varieties. It was among those newly budding trees that he had his heart attack.

Lila knew something was wrong. Gordon was late coming in for dinner—unusual for him—but it was more than that. She just
felt
something was wrong and went out looking for him.

She found him—propped up against a tree—pale, sweating, and short of breath.

“Sorry, honey. I tried to get back to the house, but I couldn’t make it.”

It was a bumpy ride in the ambulance—through the apple trees, down some rutted tractor paths, and across a rolling cow pasture—but he was still alive when they reached the hospital. The ER doctor quickly diagnosed a massive heart attack and arranged for an immediate heart cath.

Lila was waiting in the family room with two of their sons. There was a knock on the door and Gordon’s cardiologist stepped into the crowded room.

“Your husband is stable…for the moment. A large part of his heart muscle is dead. He had two vessels that were almost completely blocked and we were able to place stents in them. That should help. But his heart is very weak, and he’s not a candidate for bypass surgery. We’re going to move him upstairs to the CCU and watch him closely.”

Samuel stood up and rubbed his hands together. “You said he’s stable for
now
. What does that mean?”

“I’m afraid it means that your father is a very sick man, and there’s a good chance…There’s a good chance he won’t survive this.”

Samuel stared at the doctor, then looked down at his mother. Her face was tired, worn—suddenly years older.

“I’d like to see him,” Lila said, stumbling to one side as she stood up.

Samuel reached out and steadied her.

“We’ll be getting him upstairs as soon as—”

“I’d like to see my husband.” She stood up straight, pulled back her shoulders, and stepped toward the door. No one was going to stop her.

She left her two sons in the family room and followed the cardiologist to the cath lab. Gordon was lying on a stretcher in a small holding area. IVs were inserted in both arms and hands, and an oxygen mask covered his mouth and nose. Cardiac monitor leads dangled snakelike from the edge of the thin mattress.

Lila moved carefully around the equipment and stood beside her husband, gently laying a hand on his damp forehead.

His eyes opened to drowsy slits and he smiled at her.

“Who’s going to get the cows in?” he chuckled weakly.

Lila didn’t smile. She studied her husband’s face, noting every line and crease and wrinkle. “What am I going to do with you, Gordon?”

One of the cath lab nurses walked up behind Lila and lightly placed a hand on her shoulder. “Ma’am, we’re almost ready to move him to the CCU. You’ll need to step out into the hallway.”

Gordon nodded and raised his left hand. Lila grasped it and shook her head. “What am I going to do with you?”

He pulled her close and said, “Lila, listen…I—”

“You’ll be out of here in no time.” She squeezed his hand and squinted at him. “You’ll be calling those cows in and—”

“Lila, that’s not going to happen. Just remember that I love you—I always have—and I’ll be okay. You will too.”

She opened her mouth but no words escaped.

“Ma’am,” the nurse quietly spoke again. “You’ll need to step outside.”

In a few moments she was alone in the hallway, staring at the ceiling and taking long, sighing breaths. Her troubled, tired mind wandered through dark and threatening rooms—rooms she had always been too afraid to unlock—and she closed her eyes.

The air above her exploded.

“Code Blue! Cath lab!” the overhead intercom blasted. “Code Blue! Cath lab!”

Lila’s frail body jerked and she stumbled backward, almost falling.

She stood frozen in the hall—wide-eyed—mouth gaping. A set of footsteps—then two, three—came pounding toward her. She moved against the far wall as a team of hospital staff members descended on the cath lab. Through the closed door she heard orders being barked, metal carts moving and clanging, excited shouting. Minutes passed, and then…silence.