A Holy Place

I lay in that elaborate bed, in that quiet night. Tubes and wires held me in place, and little alarm bells would sound if any were disturbed. Nurses would come and fix things, they would come to ensure my safety, comfort, and healing.

One was with me; it was time to “Take my vital signs.” She apologized for waking me and I kidded her about possibilities of sleeping at all at night in a hospital. I knew that by my bed, in her, were years of study, years of experience, and the nearly divine inclination and motivation to help those who needed help. And deeper than that, centuries of efforts of good people to make life better for everyone.

To the French, a hospital is a house of God: Hotel Dieu.

 We are heirs to the western Christian Church. The Byzantine Church and Islam developed hospitals where the sick were cured. The western churches placed hostels by their cathedrals as places where alms were dispensed, pilgrims housed, and the poor came to die. Monks and nuns tended them. They were conceived to fulfill Saint Paul’s admonition to practice “Faith, Hope, and Charity.”

That nurse left and soon after another came. She was called the “Vampire Nurse” and she came in the middle of the night collecting blood. Unlike the others, hers was a lonely job. We were not people, we were rooms and veins.

Room 242, young, good veins. Lost blood, some accident or shooting. Room 243, Old lady, fat, hard to find the veins. Room 244, Old, starved, no blood pressure, no veins. Stab and hope.

Awake, I had awaited her. Light left on. Large she loomed, dark with hair in a pile on her head, adorned with beads. I offered my arm and she scanned the band on my arm. She pumped the meager flesh and I made a fist. Her needle was in her hand and I felt a sharp pain. Several vials lay on the covers, soon to be filled with red. She was intent and silent.

“”That blood is pretty important, isn’t it?” I asked.

I looked at her eyes and she looked up at me. We were two people then. She spoke and there is feeling in her words. “Every drop tells a story about you when it gets to the lab. Blood tells everything. What’s wrong, what to do. The doctors are told by the lab in the morning.”

The last vial was full of red and she took back her needle and threw it away.

“Have a good night” she said as she left.

Alone with my thoughts, I pondered and recalled the people who had formed the preceding day and would form the one yet to dawn.  

I had never felt destined to spend days in hospitals. I had regarded them as big buildings with many people providing services. Businesses where every malaise has a code and a price. And then I had seen them as a place to die. My mother first, my father, then my step mother. And most recently my sister, but I was not there for her in the end.

And then this year it was me. I wondered if it were my turn. Now I was aware maybe not.

The ancient hospitals were a place to die. But times have changed. More than ever they are a place to be healed, cured, fixed, and sent out again.

The day nurses came before breakfast. They introduced themselves; supervisor, two others. “Call if you need anything.” One nurse came several times during the day and would stay a while. From the Philippines, she was homesick for her family. She said I reminded her of a grandfather and a great uncle she loved.  That I had any semblance to those men of a far culture brought home the knowledge that we are all one race.

Then the doctors came. White coats and stethoscopes. No longer the round mirror with the hole. No more peering down throats, but now listening to hearts. Identifying and solving problems they made their healing rounds.

Once adjuncts to cathedrals, hospitals have become special places attended by special people. The concept of divine messengers – angels – is ancient. Artists have portrayed them as cupids, winged babes, everywhere-presences. Other religions see them as unseen manifestations of an unseen God. As I lay, dehydrated and a bit closer to being among them, I sensed that I was where so many of them were present in everyone about me. Better angels. Inclinations and divine inspirations to care for those who needed care. More than in any church or cathedral where I had ever been, this place was truly holy, a house of God.