Miracles in the ER (5 page)

“I’ve got something.”

The boy’s mother let out a loud gasp.

The paramedic opened his eyes and looked over at the monitor. The blips had become regular now, with a rate of about a 100 beats a minute.

“I can feel a pulse with each of those complexes,” he told me.

I had been watching Denton and the monitor, and for a second I stopped bagging the boy. I was about to deliver another inspiration, when BJ’s chest jerked and air rushed through the tube.

I removed the ambu bag from the tube and watched as the boy took a breath, and then another.

“He’s breathing!” His father jumped up from the chair and bounded over to the side of the stretcher. “I saw it, he’s breathing!”

An hour later, BJ and his parents were on the way up to the ICU. He still had a pulse and a good blood pressure. And he was still breathing on his own.

‘How do you explain that, Doc?” Denton was helping us straighten up the room and was restocking his emergency supplies. “He was under water for at least five minutes, maybe more.”

“You said the water was cold,” I ventured, wondering the same question.

“It was freezing. Apparently they get the water from a well, and the nights have been cold. That’s supposed to help, I know, but…do you think he’s going to be okay? I mean his brain and everything.”

“He was making purposeful movements and was starting to look around,” I answered. “Those are good signs. And when you consider the condition he was in when you found him, and when he got here…It usually doesn’t turn out this way.”

“He’s going to be okay.”

There was that tone of voice again, that assurance. Denton and I spun around and looked at Lori. Her back was to us as she organized supplies on the countertop.

She slowly turned and faced us.

“Something told me, and I just know. He’s going to be fine.”

T
HE
Miracle
OF
A
NSWERED
P
RAYER

The L
ORD
is near to all who call on him,

to all who call on him in truth,

He fulfills the desires of those who fear him;

He hears their cry and saves them.

P
SALM
145:18-19

Chauncey Taylor

Ida Fleming was in room 3, gasping for breath and barely clinging to life. Again.

She was eighty-three years old and her failing heart brought her into the ER once or twice a month. This was the third time in four weeks. Things were getting worse.

“Ida, if we can’t turn things around pretty quickly, I’m afraid you’re going to have to go back on a ventilator.”

She looked at me with kind, fearless eyes, and nodded her head.

Lori Davidson had started an IV and was pushing some medicine. Hopefully this would improve things, but we would soon reach the point where nothing we did was going to help.

Always cheerful, always calm, Ida had been in and out of the ER and the hospital since I’d begun working in Rock Hill. It was impossible not to be drawn to such a beautiful spirit. She was a rare woman.

Several years earlier, I had seen her in the ER when she was
not
short of breath. She wasn’t a patient, but had ridden in the back of an ambulance with her twenty-five-year-old grandson, Chauncey Taylor. He had been involved in a drug deal gone bad, been shot twice in the belly, and had dragged himself onto her front porch. Bleeding and stoned on an assortment of illegal substances, he had pounded on the wooden deck until she came to the door.

Chauncey nearly died that day. Most of his blood was left behind on Ida’s porch, and we barely got him to the OR in time. Ida had been standing beside him in major trauma when I walked back into the room. The nurse stepped out into the hallway, and it was just the three of us.

“Doctor, if you don’t mind, I’m going to pray.”

I stepped over beside her, rested both hands on the stretcher rail, and
closed my eyes. What followed was a woman of faith talking with her Lord. No pretense, no flowery language or lofty petitions. She asked the Lord to save the life of her grandson. And believing and knowing he was going to do that, she asked him to change his life. She asked him to lead Chauncey away from drugs and alcohol, and from the company of his so-called friends who “brought him to low places.” Then she patted the unresponsive Chauncey on his shoulder and uttered a simple yet promise-claiming “Amen.”

Chauncey survived his gunshots and lived. It took him a while to get back on his feet, but when he did, it was the same old thing—drugs, alcohol, and the law.

We treated him for a variety of problems over the next couple of years. Drug overdoses, chest pain from snorting cocaine, two or three DUIs involving injuries to other drivers. And there were stab wounds on at least two occasions, though no more gunshots. Everyone in the ER knew him, as did everyone on the police force. He was bad news.

Sometimes, when I hadn’t seen him for a couple of months, and when Ida was in the ER and could talk, I would ask her about her grandson. She never failed to smile at the mention of his name, and to begin nodding her head.

“Not so good just yet, Dr. Lesslie. But the Lord is going to change that young man. I pray for that every morning and every night. It’s going to happen—just hasn’t happened yet.”

Then one day there was a chance, a real opportunity for Chauncey to turn things around. He was involved in a minor burglary and was sentenced to eight months in jail. He would be away from his friends and his drugs and would be offered counseling for his substance abuse. Ida was hopeful this would be the turning point.

When he was released, he told her he had seen the light and was going to mend his ways. No more drugs, no more alcohol. He was even going to stop smoking and get a job.

That lasted four days. He was soon right back where he had been.

“It’s just so hard to turn away from that kind of life,” Ida had told me. “Just so hard. But I’m prayin’.”

He was paying a steep price for his chosen lifestyle, not only with the heartache he caused his family and Ida, but also in his own body. One morning I picked up the clipboard for room 2 and saw his name, and then
his complaint—“sick.” I pulled the curtain aside and was shocked by what I saw. He had lost twenty or thirty pounds and was jaundiced—a deep orange color. His IV drug use had given him hepatitis B and the virus had nearly destroyed his liver. Chauncey
was
“sick” this time, and he nearly died. Just before he was released from the hospital, I visited him upstairs on one of the medical floors.

“This is it, Doc. I’m done with drugs, and with alcohol. I don’t want to go out like this. Done. I swear I am.”

His grandmother was sitting in the corner of the room, looking over at her Chauncey and smiling. Hope springs eternal, but I was afraid I knew better.

We didn’t see Chauncey Taylor in the ER for a long time and didn’t hear a word about him. Months passed, and Ida came in a couple of times, her heart continuing to weaken, each visit worse than the last.

Finally it happened. EMS called in a cardiac arrest—it was Ida. She had managed to get to her phone and dial 9-1-1 and had then collapsed onto the living room floor as she hung up the receiver. We tried everything, and worked with her for almost an hour, but she was gone.

The paramedics and respiratory therapist left the cardiac room, and Lori and I were alone with her. We stood in silence beside the stretcher, gazing down at this remarkable woman. She was finally at peace—no more shortness of breath, no more near brushes with death.

The door opened and closed behind us, but we didn’t look up. Slow, deliberate footsteps made their way to the stretcher. Sure and steady hands grabbed the rail opposite us, and we looked up into the face of Chauncey Taylor.

He smiled at us, then reached out and gently caressed the top of his grandmother’s head.

I studied the man, first noticing the clothes he was wearing. Neat, clean—something unusual for Chauncey. And then I looked at his face. He had gained some weight, and his color was good. He looked healthy.

“I didn’t make it in time,” he whispered, his voice low, reverent.

“It all happened so fast,” Lori told him. “She wouldn’t have known you were here.”

He gazed at his grandmother and then his eyes found mine. “She knows.” He was still whispering, and slowly nodded his head. “She knows.”

“She was a great woman,” I told him. “We’ll miss her.”

“She saved my life, Doc. It’s because of her that I’ve been clean for six months. And it’s because of her that I’m going to stay clean.”

I searched his eyes and wanted to believe him. No, I
did
believe him.

Your
Will—Not Mine

Tuesday, 6:35 a.m.
Lori slumped into a chair and folded her arms across her chest. She sat there for a moment then sighed and shook her head. “I need some help.”

I glanced around the department and checked the patient ID board. The department was empty. Our shift was just beginning, and Virginia Granger and I had been sitting at the nurses’ station when Lori had walked over. We both looked at her and waited. It was rare for our “resident helper” to ask for help.

Amy Connors, our unit secretary, walked up and deftly moved her chair back with one knee. She carefully set a cardboard container holding four steaming cups of coffee on the desktop and sat down. She had heard Lori’s words, and now turned to the nurse and said, “What’s up?”

Lori sighed again. “It’s one of my closest friends, Kelly. We went to grade school and high school together. We were bridesmaids in each other’s weddings. A little over six months ago, Kelly found out her sister has ovarian cancer. Thirty-two years old, and the doctors told her nothing could be done. It was too far advanced.”

“Wow, that’s quick,” Amy said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s been hard on everybody,” Lori continued. “But especially Kelly. She was the older sister, the role model. Whenever her sister got hurt or got into trouble, Kelly was there to fix it.” She paused and looked down at the floor. “She can’t fix it this time.”

We sat in silence for a moment, and I thought about this disease we call
cancer—
the “crab.” It comes in many forms, but not many more aggressive, merciless, or ruthless than ovarian cancer. The diagnosis is usually made at a point when the illness is long past being treatable.