Miracles in the ER (6 page)

Virginia Granger rolled her chair closer to Lori and leaned forward. “What can we do?”

Lori took a deep breath and looked at her head nurse.

“Kelly has been crushed by this, and she called me last night in tears. She was angry.”

“Anger is part of the process,” I interjected. “And it might be good if—”

“There’s nothing good about it.” Lori glanced at me, her eyes wet with tears. “She’s mad at God for allowing this to happen. But more than that, she’s mad that he doesn’t answer their prayers about this. The whole family and their church have been in constant prayer since the diagnosis, and her sister just gets weaker every day, and the pain is getting worse, and she…”

Lori’s voice broke and her head slumped to her chest.

“And she called to ask you ‘Why?’ ” Virginia said gently. “You’ve been
her
big sister all these years, and she wants you to fix things, or at least explain them.”

Lori sobbed and nodded.

Silence again, except for Lori’s pained breaths. Amy handed her a box of Kleenex from the countertop.

A minute or two passed and she looked up at us.

“How do you answer that question? How do you begin to explain why God is not healing her sister? I don’t know what to tell her.”

Virginia leaned back in her chair, crossed her legs, and began drumming the armrests with her long, slender fingers.

Amy looked over at her and tilted her head to one side.

The head nurse took a deep breath and the drumming stopped. “Lori, as sure as I’m sitting right here, I know the Lord doesn’t rejoice in our suffering. But in the ER there’s pain and heartache all around us—every day.” She paused but her eyes never left Lori’s. “The Lord is not blind to
any
of this.”

Lori leaned forward in her chair. “But Kelly’s family—all of them—are Christians, followers of Jesus. And if
their
prayers aren’t answered, then…” Her voice was pleading, and it broke off again in soft sobs.

“How do you know they aren’t being answered?” Virginia was peering over the top of her bifocals, her eyes soft, motherlike. I had never seen here like this before.

“Let me tell you what I’ve learned about prayer,” she continued.

Virginia had an older brother, Michael, and the two had been very close during their school years and into their twenties. They lived a few
hours apart but managed to see each other on a frequent basis. He found a niche in the insurance business and she pursued her career in nursing.

“I always took it for granted that we would be close, that our relationship would always be solid, special. And it
was
, up until ten or eleven years ago. Something happened—I can’t even remember what exactly—and we had an argument. I suppose it was the wrong time and the wrong place, but things escalated and words were spoken—hurtful words—things that should never have been said. But they were, and our relationship exploded. Looking back on it now, I don’t…”

She paused, folded her hands, and shook her head.

“Anyway.” Virginia sat up straight in her chair and adjusted her eyeglasses. “That was that, for a lot of years. We didn’t talk, we didn’t write, we didn’t see each other. And I grieved for the loss of my brother. This went on for years. We might bump into each other at a family gathering, but there was no real communication, no sign on his part of being sorry.” She chuckled and shook her head again. “Nor on mine, I suppose. But I was praying every day. I asked the Lord to heal our relationship, to soften Michael’s heart. But nothing happened. No phone call, no letter. Nothing. But I kept praying for the Lord to intervene. I
knew
this could change, that it
had
to change, if only Michael could see the truth. Then he got sick.”

Suddenly, I remembered. Virginia didn’t talk about her personal life very much, but a few years ago she’d told me that her brother had been ill. She hadn’t mentioned his name or what kind of problem he was having. It was another one of our longtime nurses, Harriet Gray, who had told me he had died. Harriet was a year younger than Virginia and was her closest friend. Virginia missed a day of work to go to his funeral, and that was it.

“It was terminal,” Virginia said bluntly. “When I heard, he was already at home, dying. There was nothing else to be done for him. I threw some stuff in a bag, jumped in my car, and headed out to see him. I remember saying a prayer, asking that he not have to suffer, and I prayed once again that his heart would be open and we would be able to talk, before he…”

She looked over at Lori and their eyes met. Virginia smiled and said, “I knew right then, right in that instant, that the Lord had answered my prayer. But it wasn’t at all what I had been hoping and praying for. He had softened
my
heart.
That
was the work that needed to be done and he had done it. All those years, praying for Michael to see the light, and it was
my
eyes that had been closed—
my
eyes that had been blind—
my
heart that
had been hardened. The Lord was answering my prayers, and he was waiting for me to understand.” She stopped and put a hand on Lori’s shoulder.

“But Ms. Granger, I don’t know…” Lori’s voice trailed off and her head slumped to her chest again.

“That’s the point, Lori.” Virginia’s voice was strong and sure. “Most of the time we
don’t
know. We just have to believe and trust. We may not understand the things that are happening around us—happening
to
us—but we have to believe that his ultimate will is for our good, to bring us closer to him. And we have to keep praying. He’ll answer those prayers—every one of them. The important thing is to trust those answers, to learn to accept
his
will. He sees what we can’t. He knows what we don’t. It’s hard sometimes, but our walk on
this
earth is full of things we don’t want, and things we don’t expect.”

The ambulance-entrance doors flew open and a young woman ran into the department. In her arms was a young child, two or three years old, his face a dusky blue. He wasn’t breathing.

“Somebody help me!” she screamed, her eyes wide with fear. “Lord, save my baby!”

We all jumped up at the same instant. But it was Lori who turned the corner of the nurses’ station first.

“Let’s go!”

Without Ceasing

“Now
that’s
an answer to prayer.” Lori Davidson was smiling, watching the ambulance-entrance doors close behind Darren Whipple.

She took a deep breath and turned back to the chart on the counter.

“Darren? An answer to prayer?” Darren Whipple had been one of my partners for more than a dozen years, and I had just relieved him from his overnight shift.
What prayer was he an answer to?

Lori put her pen down and looked over at me.

“Can’t you tell the difference? Don’t you think he’s—”

“Easier to get along with.” Virginia Granger interrupted the nurse and walked over beside us. “Yes, he’s easier to get along with,” she repeated.

“That’s not what I…” Lori faltered. “Yes, he’s easier to get along with, but I meant he seems to be…nicer—different.”

“Wait a minute.” I turned and faced the two women. “What’s going on here? What are we talking about?”

“We’re talking about your partner, Darren Whipple.” Virginia peered at me over her bifocals. “Don’t tell me you’ve been unaware of the problems we’ve had of late.”

“Problems? With Darren again? I thought that was resolved months ago, when I had that long talk with him.”

Virginia frowned and shook her head. “Apparently your little talk didn’t have the effect you thought it did. Or maybe it just didn’t stick.”

Darren Whipple was a well-trained and efficient emergency physician. He had joined us right out of his residency and immediately fit in with the ER and medical staff. His “claim to fame,” as he referred to it, was that his great-grandfather had been a famous surgeon and had an intricate abdominal surgical procedure named after him.

“I have an uncle nicknamed ‘Bones,’ ” Amy Connors had said when she first heard this story. “Does that make
me
famous?”

Darren quickly came to understand the secretary’s unusual sense of humor, and the two became good friends. In fact, Darren seemed to be friends with everyone in the department.

That began to change about a year ago. There was not one particular instance, or individual patient that seemed to trigger things, but Darren gradually became more distant, quieter. “Distracted” was the word Virginia had used.

Over a few months, all the signs began to declare themselves: physical and emotional exhaustion, cynicism, detachment, doubt about what he was doing and why. Virginia was the first to see and understand. It took me longer. Darren was burning out.

“Dr. Whipple, here are the labs you requested.” The young lab tech put the slips of paper on the counter next to the chart of the cardiac patient. Darren was standing there, running streams of heart tracings through his fingers, searching for some clue as to why this man was having blackouts.

The tech had almost made it to the door when Whipple yelled at her.

“Where are his electrolytes? I need to know his sodium and potassium!”

She turned, ducked her head, and mumbled, “Dr. Whipple, you didn’t order electrolytes. You only ordered—”

“I most certainly ordered them! What’s the matter with you? I’m trying to take care of this man and you’re…you’re…Oh, get out of here!”

The tech backpedaled, broke into tears, and scurried down the hall.

Darren looked at his wide-eyed patient, grabbed the clipboard, and stomped out of the room and over to the nurses’ station.

“Here.” He handed the clipboard of cardiac to the doctor working with him. “I need to take a break.” He stalked down the hallway and disappeared into our lounge.

That was the first of several quickly recurring episodes. Invariably Darren would lose his temper, blow up over some trivial issue, and yell at a tech or staff member, frequently bringing them to tears.

It was a radical change in his behavior, and we all noticed it.

“When are you going to talk with Dr. Whipple? He’s really messin’ up.” Amy was not known to mince her words and was obviously concerned about her friend. “Not just here, but at home too. He told me the other night that things were rough with his wife. ‘Difficult,’ I think he said.”

A few days later, I came in early to relieve him.

“Let’s go back to the lounge for a few minutes,” I told him. “We need to talk.”

We spent the next forty-five minutes discussing his recent “difficulties.” At first he was defensive, but gradually he began to listen. We were concerned about him, and wanted him to be happy—at peace. At present, that wasn’t the case, and it was affecting the entire department.

“Burnout is a common problem among those of us in medicine,” I told him. “Especially ER docs. Long hours, difficult and complex patients, holidays, nights, weekends. And only an infrequent thank-you. You’ve been doing this more than ten years, and that seems to be the breaking point. Somebody either figures out how to carry on in a meaningful, productive way, or they do something different. I think that’s where you are, Darren.”

He had lowered his head and was silent for a moment.

“Robert,” he finally said. “This is what I love to do. I’ve just got to get things together. Thanks for talking with me.”