The Day Three Children Came Back

You never know what you might be doing when you come on duty in an ER.

It's a surprise party of sorts, many didn't know they were coming that morning, and it was up to us to help them through whatever it was that brought them in.

We might have to figure out... how to remove enamel paint from the delicate skin of a fifteen-month-old who just dumped a bucketful of it over her head... or why the young mother with an ankle sprain was crying so hard... or how to talk someone down from some ledge of panic... fear... rage... unrest... or despair.

It could be anything.

And then there were the life saving times... when immediate action was needed to stop the bleeding... restore the breathing... or bring a heart back to beating.

I remember Jeff, a young worker who had been pulled out of a car wreck with two collapsed lungs. We were able to re-inflate his lungs just in time for the tide of life to turn and refill his form. Then we saw the light return to his eyes.

I remember Matt, a teen who was struck down by a bolt of white lightning in a roaring, blue-violet summer storm that had turned the daytime black as night. His mother's CPR restored his heart beat on a crash of thunder in the pouring rain. In the ER, we treated his burns and awful pain. His mom and I hugged and cried. Her son had been saved.

Most of all, I remember the 3-year-olds... two boys and a girl... who had been playing hide and seek and gotten locked inside a big black car in 100-degree heat. They weren't found until they were melted down into a heap on the floor of the back seat, with the scarceliest little flicker of life left inside of each one.

Their parents, grandparents, siblings, and half the neighborhood blew open the double doors to our ER like a mob behind the three policemen cradling those three limp, little bodies in their arms. We shifted into superhuman gear, parting the sea of the already teeming ER and swept those toddlers onto stretchers in the trauma bay, flipping on three, big, industrial fans to blow away their heat.

Orders, actions, findings, and equipment wrappers went flying in the hurricane of care that filled that room. At all times someone found a hand to lay on those children as they performed their tasks. People who had never prayed in their lives did so out loud in the whipping wind of those fans.

Before long... their little life forces started to return... first in a trickle... then in a current... then in a torrent... then they seized... next they breathed... color returned to their faces... and we pulled the parents in close to lean down and embrace those little players who had returned to the game.

There were some who came to believe that day, that wailing pleas are heard, and almost death can sometimes be swept away.

No lasting harm came to those three. They played that autumn in falling leaves and went door-to-door together on Halloween.

I've long since forgotten their names, and they never knew mine, but I still feel we are a part of each other 'til the end of time. We met at death's door, where you see things you didn't see before. The gates are open; breezes flow back and forth between the worlds. Differences like you and me cease to be for awhile.