hello again.

I started crying on the phone. I talked to her by accident. I was just trying to help another nurse and got blindsided with the moment. A patient had come in late in the night and needed surgery in a fairly urgent time frame. The surgeon had come around early in the morning and made some decisions, but because of how sick the patient was and his history of mild dementia, he wanted to talk to some family about the surgery before he proceeded. I made multiple phone calls, to several more distant family members, but we had not been given much information. We knew he had come in from a nursing home that we had been told he lived at with his wife, who also purportedly had severe health problems as well. I tried all the family, with no success. My last attempt was to call the facility to see if they had any more information, however, the phone number I found was not to the nursing staff like I had been told. I dialed a number thinking I was going to talk with a nurse and find out clinical information, when a thick muffled voice answered a very labored “Hello” to my ring. It took several minutes of awkward conversation to deduce that I had accidently reached his wife, who, I soon figured out, struggled with severe expressive dysphagia related to a stroke. My first response was to apologize and ask to talk to the staff instead of her to get the information I needed, but the tone in her voice stopped me. She was so excited to hear his name. “How is he?” She asked arduously. “How is my sweetheart?” I could barely understand her and had to have her repeat everything she said at least once. Her tongue was thick and childish sounding, every word a struggle and stutter for her to form and express. I gave her a brief abbreviated version of his condition, and one would have thought I just gave her a million bucks. “I did not know.” She mumbled. “I didn’t know. How he was. Can you tell my sweetheart I love him? Please tell him I love him!” She had been up all night, wondering, worrying, with no way of hearing or finding out if the love of her life was alive or hurting or alone.  “Thank you. Oh oh thank you.” Repeating over and over her gratitude at hearing his name, his condition, his livelihood. And then came the question that took me completely off guard and brought my tears, “Thank you so much! Thank you. What is your name?  Do you have Gooheed in your heart? Do you love him?” It took me several unsuccessful attempts to figure out what she was asking, “Do you have God in your heart?” she asked me again. I stopped. Here this woman was severely debilitated, alone, unable to even be with her husband of 60-plus years while he went through surgery, and she wanted to know me. Caring to know how I was, to know about my heart, if I was someone who loved God. I think she could sense it in me. I was too busy, to deaf, to self-focused to sense it in her, but she saw through that in our brief rushed conversation. A strange woman I have never and will never meet, here on this earth at least, called me out. Of a hole that that I hide in at work. It’s safer, for all of us, to stay busy, to not offer your heart, to focus on tasks and skills and projects and numbers, and miss the deeper, the eternal voice at work underneath it all. “Yes,” I answered after a moment of silence, “Yes, I do love God. He is in me, in my heart.” I could hear the excitement in her broken voice as if she had just made a new best friend, “Oh, I will pray for you!”  I was so humbled by the thick jerky inarticulate voice. My stress and agenda and task list melted as I held the phone close to my ear, wanting to soak in the brave hope she offered. She should have been the stressed angry one, but instead she was the one offering me hope and peace, gratitude and compassion. I had a hard time hanging up the phone. I wanted to stop that moment and preserve it. I wanted to learn from her. Learn how to hope the way that she did. God help me. This is what I want.

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