Room 106, opd, in white curtains, before my procedure;
Dr. Raj is kind & firm, “I’ll have to treat you unique…”
This one time I shiver at the word unique: it means I have “painkiller allergy’ and will go through the next half hr without local anesthesia.
There are two nurses, three? How bad can this get? Please sweet precious dear Lord Jesus, I’m leaning on You here. The white ceiling has cross lines, it suddenly is the Cross.
This is no time for shy. Stript of all defense, we humans will baaa like sheep…
Doc talks me thru’, asking about my children, each by name. Ok. He needs to remove polyp and then go deeper for a biopsy. Am feeling insane internal tugs, then without warning it gets better. I’m on my back, too terrified to feel nothing, but It begins: a sensation of Peace. I say, “ThankYou!”
Age 3 – 7, we lived on an island by the sea where my Mother told me about the Peace of God, in the middle of a storm. A storm at sea is a monster ripping out windows and people. Those times we saw how close the sky can fall in the roof, how the cyclone shrieks in trees or pulls them apart- the same trees you climbed yesterday and now you can recognize nothing but Fear. My Ma sat there praying, her face a study in fearlessness.
There are always the miracles.
You grow up and settle into a form of Faith that walks in the dark but with crutches. Then there’s a day, that “crutch”can be taken off you. You’re in a space that needs more than safety belt. You free fall. Somewhere in that acre of the Unknown, you gag with new sensation: the Absence of Human Conditions for Peace.
I have few words to describe the room at Baptist’s pulsing with Medico-compassionate-insistence to hold on. It is the hallmark of true Medicare, of course, but rare. Pain is a Kingdom all by Itself when unblocked. Can all the kindness in the world stop raw pain; maybe. But the Surgeon’s knife knows what it knows. Professional gentleness will still need its scalpel to cut away illness the best it can.
That Cross in the ceiling tugged louder: I’d stopped gritting my teeth. The Whisper from the ceiling kept insisting, Say Thank You …for the nice nurses and Doc’s skill, for the symbolic ceiling here, and safe space, thank You.
Am taken to another time few months ago, outside my husbands’ CatLab-Angioplasty, 3 blocks, 90 %, 80%, 75%.
They had given him 45 mins to live, in which time the ambulance tore kilometers between Zion and Fortis Hospitals. It happened right there, that Whisper, like a stubborn tide. Me- suddenly actually saying, ThankyouLord– for the nurse holding my hand, the driver who picked up my dupatta from the street. They were doing at least 100 miles/hr, that midnight. I’m terrified of speed but here it felt like a drive in slow motion. The next 48 hours was a series of highly charged miracles, rollerblading us through, as if that were normal. As if angels in white coats were absolutely possible,
as if Fear were just a runner-up shadow in the valley of death, a shadow scared of its own hell, it vanishes at the Crossroads where we step out of flesh & bone, into Eternal Perspective,
into that Place at the Cross that tore Christ wide open on my behalf, His Blood shedding all stains: a Sacrifice in my Place. Who else did that? Who cares that much? The portfolio of God could be just another Game of Thrones, of Marvels & Ex men. But this Jesus pursued me from back when I was sick to my teeth of religious people;
…(then again, two specific encounters with Jesus got me staring back at Him. I was physically touched by Him, yes twice. Once in an old church, I was 16, caught unawares by a fire that blazed right thru me. And later with a spinal defect- that got healed by a total stranger’s prayer).
At the Hospital last week, I stammered a thank you to our Doctor and he replies, “We are only God’s Messengers.” His eyes are warm, relieved. I want to tell him about the joy in my heart but I think he knows, right? These rooms see Life & death & things between we cannot see except in the dark:
the Sacred Wound that heals.
Writing this, am still stuttering-grateful for moments that are a Trip into Impossibilities, still staring at how Superior Intelligence can startle us into corners where the Light of God scrambles unashamedly for our attention.
Light: Definition : the Natural Agent that stimulates sight and makes things visible.
🌿🕊🌿
FMF Writers prompt: Rely : confession, this was more than a five min!
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