She wasn’t my patient. I just went into the room to adjust one of the many IV pumps that were hanging by her bed. It was about 2:00am. It was quiet and dark. The only light in the room was the glow from the monitor that was currently saying that she was very sick. I thought she was asleep.
“My mother was just here” she whispered. “Maam?” I asked.
“Oh, I know she’s dead, but she was just here.” “She talked to me.”
Maybe it was the morphine. Maybe the neurons in her brain were misfiring after her stroke - but, then again, maybe not…
“What did she say”? I asked.
“She told me that I had helped her during her lifetime, so now she was here to help me.”
By this time the nurse who was assigned to her had slipped into the room and was listening to our conversation.
“That is wonderful” I said quietly. “God works in mysterious ways”
As we left the room the other nurse told me about her other patient. He was in the room next door. He had just become well enough that day to be taken off of his ventilator. He had just finished telling her about “Seeing the Master that day at the foot of his bed”.
The ICU straddles the line between life and death. Sometime the angels come and take souls home, but most of the time they are just there to help.
There is a place on our nurse notes where we can document when a patient's family is at the bedside visiting. So, that night, in a dark quiet intensive care room, with no one around but the nurses, we documented that her family was by her bedside.
My heart knows but my head says are you sure??
10 years ago
