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We should never assume in life that we have tomorrow to make things right.
Many times we postpone making things right with those whom we love because
we think there is plenty of time in the days, months and years to come to
make amends and apologize for things that were said and done in the past.
The Bible says that our life is like a vapor that appears for a short time
and then vanishes away and so we are to use this day to the best of our
ability to tell those nearest and dearest to us that we are sorry and that
we love them no matter whose fault it was. (James 4:13-16) (Ephesians 4:25-32)
I hope you are both blessed and challenged by today's message.
ROOM 712
The hospital was unusually quiet that bleak January evening, quiet and
still like the air before a storm. I stood in the nurses' station on the
seventh floor and glanced at the clock.
It was 9 P.M. I threw a stethoscope around my neck and headed for room 712,
last room on the hall. Room 712 had a new patient, Mr. Williams, a man all
alone. A man strangely silent about his family.
As I entered the room, Mr. Williams looked up eagerly, but drooped his eyes
when he saw it was only me, his nurse. I pressed the stethoscope over his
chest and listened. Strong, slow, even beating. Just what I wanted to hear.
There seemed little indication he had suffered a slight heart attack a few
hours earlier.
He looked up from his starched white bed. “Nurse, would you...” He
hesitated, tears filling his eyes. Once before he had started to ask me a
question, but changed his mind.
I touched his hand, waiting. He brushed away a tear. “Would you call my
daughter? Tell her I've had a heart attack, a slight one. You see, I live
alone, and she is the only family I have.”
His respiration suddenly speeded up. I turned his nasal oxygen up to eight
liters a minute. “Of course I'll call her,” I said, studying his face. He
gripped the sheets and pulled himself forward, his face tense with urgency.
“Will you call her right away, as soon as you can?”
He was breathing fast - too fast.
“I'll call her the very first thing,” I said, patting his shoulder. I
flipped off the light. He closed his eyes, such young, blue eyes in his 50-
year-old face.
Room 712 was dark except for a faint night light under the sink. Oxygen
gurgled in the green tubes above his bed. Reluctant to leave, I moved
through the shadowy silence to the window. The panes were cold. Below a
foggy mist curled through the hospital parking lot.
“Nurse,” he called, “could you get me a pencil and paper?”
I dug a scrap of yellow paper and a pen from my pocket and set it on the
bedside table. I walked back to the nurses' station and sat in a squeaky
swivel chair by the phone. Mr. Williams's daughter was listed on his chart
as the next of kin. I got her number from information and dialed.
Her soft voice answered. “Janie, this is Sue Kidd, a registered nurse at
the hospital. I'm calling about your father. He was admitted tonight with
a slight heart attack and...”
“No!” she screamed into the phone, startling me. “He's not dying is he?”
“His condition is stable at the moment,” I said, trying hard to sound
convincing. Silence. I bit my lip.
“You must not let him die!” she said. Her voice was so utterly compelling
that my hand trembled on the phone.
“He is getting the very best care.”
“But you don't understand,” she pleaded. “My daddy and I haven't spoken.
On my 21st birthday, we had a fight over my boyfriend. I ran out of the
house. I haven't been back. All these months I've wanted to go to him for
forgiveness. The last thing I said to him was, 'I hate you.'”
Her voice cracked, and I heard her heave great agonizing sobs. I sat,
listening, tears burning my eyes. A father and a daughter, so lost to each
other. Then I was thinking of my own father, many miles away. It has been
so long since I had said, “I love you.”
As Janie struggled to control her tears, I breathed a prayer, “Please God,
let this daughter find forgiveness.”
“I'm coming. Now! I'll be there in 30 minutes,” she said. Click. She had
hung up. I tried to busy myself with a stack of charts on the desk. I
couldn't concentrate. Room 712; I knew I had to get back to 712. I hurried
down the hall nearly in a run. I opened the door. Mr. Williams lay
unmoving. I reached for his pulse. There was none.
“Code 99, Room 712. Code 99. Stat.” The alert was shooting through the
hospital within seconds after I called the switchboard through the intercom
by the bed.
Mr. Williams had a cardiac arrest. With lightning speed, I leveled the bed
and bent over his mouth, breathing air into his lungs (twice). I positioned
my hands over his chest and compressed. “One, two, three,” I tried to
count. At 15, I moved back to his mouth and breathed as deeply as I could.
Where was help? Again I compressed and breathed, compressed and...He could
not die!
“O God,” I prayed. “His daughter is coming! Don't let it end this way...”
The door burst open. Doctors and nurses poured into the room pushing
emergency equipment. A doctor took over the manual compression of the
heart. A tube was inserted through his mouth as an airway. Nurses plunged
syringes of medicine into the intravenous tubing. I connected the heart
monitor. Nothing. Not a beat...
My own heart pounded. “God, don't let it end like this. Not in bitterness
and hatred! His daughter is coming. Let her find peace!”
“Stand back,” cried a doctor. I handed him the paddles for the electrical
shock to the heart. He placed them on Mr. Williams' chest. Over and over we
tried, but there was nothing, no response.
Mr. Williams was dead. A nurse unplugged the oxygen. The gurgling stopped.
One by one they left, grim and silent.
How could this happen? How? I stood by his bed, stunned. A cold wind
rattled the window, pelting the panes with snow. Outside -- everywhere --
seemed a bed of blackness, cold and dark. How could I face his daughter?
When I left the room, I saw her against a wall by a water fountain. A
doctor, who had been inside 712 only moments before, stood at her side,
talking to her, gripping her elbow. Then he moved on, leaving her slumped
against the wall. Such pathetic hurt reflected from her face. Such wounded
eyes. She knew...
The doctor had told her that her father was gone. I took her hand and led
her into the nurses' lounge. We sat on little green stools, neither saying
a word. She stared straight ahead at a pharmaceutical calendar, glass-
faced, almost breakable-looking.
“Janie, I'm so, so sorry,” I said. It was pitifully inadequate.
“I never hated him, you know. I loved him,” she said.
God, please help her, I thought.
Suddenly she whirled toward me. “I want to see him.”
My first thought was, “Why put yourself through more pain? Seeing him will
only make it worse.” But I got up and wrapped my arm around her. We walked
slowly down the corridor to 712. Outside the door, I squeezed her hand,
wishing she would change her mind about going inside. She pushed open the door.
We moved to the bed, huddled together, taking small steps in unison. Janie
leaned over the bed and buried her face in the sheets. I tried not to look
at her, at this sad, sad good-bye. I backed against the bedside table. My
hand fell upon a scrap of yellow paper. I picked it up. It read:
“My dearest Janie, I forgive you. I pray you will also forgive me. I know
that you love me. I love you too, Daddy.”
The note was shaking in my hands, as I thrust it toward Janie. She read it
once, then twice. Her tormented face grew radiant. Peace began to glisten
in her eyes. She hugged the scrap of paper to her breast.
“Thank You, God,” I whispered, looking up at the window. A few crystal
stars blinked through the blackness. A snowflake hit the window and melted
away, gone forever. Life seemed as fragile as a snowflake on the window.
But thank you, God, that relationships, sometimes fragile as snowflakes,
can be mended together again - but there is not a moment to spare.
I crept from the room and hurried to the phone. I would call my father. I
would say, “I love you.”
By Sue Kidd
Never put off for tomorrow what could be done today because today may be
the last day to make things right.
Read and meditate on these scriptures:
Mark 11:24-26 Jesus declares “Therefore I say unto you, What things soever
ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have
them. And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any:
that your Father also which is in Heaven may forgive you your trespasses.
But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in Heaven
forgive your trespasses.”
Romans 12:9-10 “Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is
evil; cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affectioned one to another
with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another.”
1 John 1:6-9 “If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in
darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as
He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of
Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no
sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our
sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness.”
All of these scriptures can be found in the King James Version Bible.
Today’s Selected Poem: THIS MOMENT
Click here to read --- http://www.Godswork.org/inpoem45.htm
Today’s Selected Testimony: LOOKING FOR MY FATHER
Click here to read --- http://www.Godswork.org/testimony138.htm
In Christ’s Service,
Dwayne Savaya
Gods Work Ministry |
