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ROOM 712The 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 fifteen 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's chest. Over and over we tried. But 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."
================================A THOUSAND MARBLESA few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the basement shack with a
steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other.
What began as a typical Saturday morning, turned into one of those
lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time.
Let me tell you about it. I turned the dial up into the phone
portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning
swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a
tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind, he sounded like he
should be in the broadcasting business.
He was telling whoever he was talking with something about "a
thousand marbles". I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to
say. "Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you're busy with your job. I'm sure they pay
you well but it's a shame you have to be away from home and your family so
much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or
seventy hours a week to make ends meet. Too bad you missed your daughter's dance
recital." He continued, "Let me tell you something Tom, something that has
helped me keep a good perspective on my own priorities."
And that's when he began to explain his theory of a "thousand marbles."
"You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The
average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some
live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years." "Now
then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900 which is the number of
Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now
stick with me Tom, I'm getting to the important part."
"It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this
in any detail", he went on, "and by that time I had lived through over
twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to
be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy."
"So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I
ended up having to visit three toy stores to round-up 1000 marbles. I
took them home and put them inside of a large, clear plastic container
right here in the shack next to my gear. Every Saturday since then, I have taken
one marble out and thrown it away." "I found that by watching the marbles
diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life. There
is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities
straight.""Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and
take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last
marble out of the container. I figure if I make it until next Saturday
then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use
is a little more time."
"It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your
family, and I hope to meet you again.
You could have heard a pin drop on the radio when this fellow signed
off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to
work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few
hams to work on the next club newsletter. Instead, I went upstairs and woke my
wife up with a kiss. "C'mon honey, I'm taking you and the kids to
breakfast." "What brought this on?" she asked with a smile. "Oh, nothing special,
it's just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with
the kids. Hey, can we stop at a toy store while we're out? I need to buy some
marbles."
===============================Today began like so many other days . . .
filled with plans and things upon my list.
But, in my heart there was a call . . .
something I just could not seem to resist.
As I went about my hours . . .
something was stirring deep inside.
It grabbed me and I could not rest.
The smile I gave to others was but a lie.
My mind would not stay on ordinary things . . . it rushed on ahead of me.
I knew there was something I must do . . . Something I must see.
I was experiencing a hunger . . .
more ravishing than I'd ever felt before.
An emotion so intense . . .
like an insistent knocking on the door.
Restless. Seeking. Uneasy.
Like waking from a sleep so deep.
Had I never noticed this emptiness...
that caused my soul to weep?
A mystery, that urged me to follow it . . .
into places I dared not go.
But today I knew I would take these steps,
For my heart could no longer answer, "No!"
No, this was not the first time . . .
I had been right up to the door.
I had walked along this path . . .
so many times before.
I'd reach out to touch the knob . . .
and withdrew my hand in fear.
What did I think was waitng there?
What was it that drew me near?
Did I fear going through the door . . .
not knowing what I'd see?
Or was it that I couldn't bear . . .
to give up so much of me?
Slowly, I approached the door . . .
and noticed something in my hand.
A golden key was glistening there,
the floor beneath me felt like shifting sand.
There was the door. I had the key.
My heart pounded in my breast.
"Come on, my child," I heard a voice.
"I come to offer rest."
It had taken far too long for me . . .
to move beyond this door.
There was one who wanted me
to toss away this key . . . he wanted nothing more.
This time I would not listen.
This time I won't turn and run.
I could feel him trying to rip away the key . . .
as he had so often done.
"No!" I said. "I'm going in . . ."
and I slipped the key into the door.
I turned the knob and said, "Yes! I'm coming, Lord."
Feeling His love envelop me to my very core.
The door was opened!
I'd broken through the lock.
The frightening, sifting sand beneath my feet . . .
turned into solid rock.
I felt a hand upon my heart . . .
it welcomed and comforted me.
"Oh, Father, why did I wait so long,
When in my hand you placed the key?"
Oh, the mystery of life was solved . . .
it had been from the start.
God placed the key for me to use.
Then put the urging in my heart.
Why am I here? Why was I meant to be?
It was but planned for you and me to
. . . pass along the key.
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