Miracles in the ER (18 page)

She took a few steps toward the gaping front entrance, and had to stop. Fireman Andy West was standing in the doorway, completely blocking it.

“Ma’am, I’m afraid you’re not going to be able to stay here.”

Kimberly’s mouth dropped and her face flamed to a fire-engine red.

“But…this is our home! Where are we supposed to go? This is the only…”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry.” Andy spoke quietly, and looked down at his heavy boots. “We don’t have a choice. It’s dangerous, and there’s no power—no water. You just can’t stay here.”

Kimberly turned to her husband, question marks firing from her eyes. He hung his head.

A few days later, Mike and Sharon were starting an early breakfast at Anna J’s, having just finished their twenty-four-hour shift.

“More coffee?” their waitress asked.

“I’ll have some,” Lou Warner said from behind the young woman, startling her. “And Mike, you can slide over. I’m hungry.”

The deputy sheriff sat down and ordered breakfast. He handed the menu to the waitress and settled back into the comfortable booth.

Sharon stirred butter into her grits. “Any word on those folks who had their house broken into?”

“The Fields family? We’ve got a couple of leads, but nothing solid yet. We’ll find ’em.”

Lou sat up straight, folded his arms on the table, and shook his head.

“That was their dream house, you know. They moved up here a couple of years ago from some small town in Georgia. Gary—the father—was working two jobs, trying to save up enough money for a down payment. His wife wanted to get a job too. But he insisted on her staying home with the kids. Hannah, the girl, is four and Mark is five, I think. Anyway, they saved up enough to buy a little piece of property and get started on a small house. I think one of the local contractors helped them out. They had only been in the place a couple of months.”

The waitress stepped to the table with a steaming plate and Lou leaned back, giving her room to set it down.

“Where are they staying now?” Sharon asked.

Lou surveyed his breakfast—a fork in one hand and his coffee mug in the other.

“No family anywhere near,” he answered. “But they’ve managed to find a room at one of the motels on Riverview Road. To make matters worse, that old truck of theirs broke down as soon as they got to the motel and they can’t afford to get it fixed. It’s a half hour away. Gary can walk to his first job, but he has to catch a ride every day to his second one. They’re stranded—stuck.”

“What about the house?” Mike wiped his mouth with a napkin and dropped it onto his empty plate.

“No insurance, no money. It’s just sitting there with the doors boarded up. The whole thing is really sad.” Lou paused and sighed heavily. “But what are you going to do?”

“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.” Sharon slid to the end of the
booth, stood up, and looked down at her husband. “Come on, Mike. I’ve got an idea.”

Sharon and Mike Brothers, together with Lou Warner, Andy West, and a bunch of their friends, decided on a plan. Some in the group had carpentry skills, some were part-time electricians and plumbers, and Sharon could cook. For the next three weekends, these big-hearted and selfless volunteers would descend upon the desolate house on that lonely graveled road. Soon, it was transformed once again into a warm, inviting home.

“No reason they can’t stay here now.” Andy West smiled at the group and taped a “certificate of occupancy” to the brand-new front door. A control box was fastened to a wall just inside and he tapped it a few times. “And now they have an alarm system—hooked up direct to the County.”

They were admiring their handiwork when the blaring, obnoxious horn of an approaching vehicle caused them to turn and stare. An old Dodge van cleared the last of the cedar trees, drove toward the house, and came to a sudden stop right in front of them.

Sharon Brothers jumped from the driver’s side—key in hand, arms waving.

“Look what we have!”

A member of her church heard what was going on and had donated one of his used vehicles.

“Ted Wiley sends his regards!” she told the group. “He even threw in two extra tires and twenty dollars for gas.”

“Let’s go get the Fields!” someone shouted. “We’re ready, aren’t we?”

Sharon and Lou were elected to drive into town and pick up the Fields family. They knocked on the motel room door, let Gary and Kimberly know they had a surprise for them, and told them to pack up some clothes—and to not ask any questions.

Gravel complained and crunched under the van’s tires as the Dodge slowly approached the house. Gary and Kimberly stared with wide eyes and open mouths at their front yard.

“Mama, who are all those people?” Mark, their little boy, had rolled down his window and was leaning out of the van.

Twenty waving and hollering people stood in front of the Fields’ home.

“Merry Christmas!”

Mark and Hannah jumped out and ran toward the cheering group. Gary and Kimberly slowly got out of the van, put their arms around each other, and took a few hesitant steps.

They stopped, tears flowing down their cheeks, and could only shake their heads.

There were only a few days remaining before Christmas. Mike and Sharon were sitting at their kitchen table, drinking coffee.

“Did you see any toys or Christmas presents when we moved the Fields into their house?” Sharon asked her husband.

Mike leaned back in his chair and shook his head. “Don’t remember any. Why?”

“Come on—let’s go.” Sharon jumped up and headed toward the backdoor.

Her hand was on the doorknob but Mike was still sitting, staring at his wife.

“I said, come on.”

After a trip to Walmart and Target, they were headed toward the Fields’ house.

“Just how are we going to do this?” Mike asked. “You said you wanted to surprise them.”

“Don’t you worry. I’ve got a plan.”

They drove out to the Fields’ home and just after turning onto the graveled road, Sharon shut off the engine.

“This is close enough. Let’s get the stuff.”

Mike shook his head and followed orders.

Dozens of merrily wrapped packages sprawled in the back of their SUV. It was all they could do to secure them in their arms and still be able to see where they were going.

They slowly made their way toward the house, occasionally scrambling to keep some of the gifts from falling to the ground. Finally, they cleared the last group of cedars. A lighted Christmas tree could be seen through the living-room window, but there was no movement—no sign of anyone who would detect their presence.

“Come on,” Sharon whispered. “Let’s go.”

They veered toward the left side of the house, then edged along the front to the small stoop.

“Put ’em down here, but be quiet.” Sharon began stacking her packages, building a whimsical, brightly colored pyramid.

Mike carefully placed the last small box on the top of the pile. “That’s it. Let’s get going before someone comes out.”

They retraced their furtive steps, got fifty feet from the house, and took off running.

Sharon started giggling and Mike shushed her.

Neither of them saw the brown-eyed, towheaded boy peeping at them from a front bedroom window.

It was a week after Christmas, and Hannah Fields was sick. Her parents brought her to the ER and Lori Davidson took her back to the ENT room. The note on the chart was typical for the season:

Fever, crying, earache.

Thankfully, it was something simple—a routine ear infection—and I told Kimberly and Gary what we needed to do.

“Did you guys have a good Christmas?” I asked, looking at the two children. I didn’t know anything about the “special delivery.”

Hannah had sat with her head hanging and lower lip sticking out the entire time. When she heard me say “Christmas” everything changed. She started smiling and bouncing on the stretcher.

“Santa came to our house! Santa came!”

Gary looked at his wife and raised his eyebrows.

“It was the best Christmas
ever
!” Mark chimed in. “
Ever
!”

“That’s great.” I tousled his light brown hair and looked up at his parents. “I’ll write those prescriptions and one of the nurses will be right back.”

One of the EMS units had brought in a possible hip fracture and I was talking to the two paramedics at the nurses’ station.

Lori had taken Hannah’s prescriptions to ENT and I heard her coming up the hall with the Fields family.

I turned in their direction and watched as she led the parade toward us. Hannah was being carried by her father, and Mark was hanging back a little, playing with one of his Christmas games. The boy stopped, energetically pushed a couple of buttons, then shook his head and sighed.

He looked up, took a few hurried steps trying to catch up with his
parents, and suddenly froze in the middle of the hallway. His eyes widened and he pointed in my direction.

“Mama! Daddy! It’s Santa Claus!”

I glanced behind me. Mark was pointing to Mike Brothers—and his blushing helper.

A Time to Be Born…

It was almost dusk, and the light was quickly fading. Its scattered beams penetrated the deep woods at the back of the ER parking lot and settled comfortably on a dogwood tree growing in a natural area near the ambulance entrance.
The
dogwood tree.

Camille Anderson was forty-two years old. You would never guess it if you got a close look at her. I wouldn’t. I thought she was in her mid to late twenties—thirty at the most. Her face and skin were radiant, set off by bright, sparkling eyes. And that constant smile, always outlined by bright-red, flawlessly applied lipstick.

“She looks like an angel,” one of her patients once remarked.

She might have been. One thing for sure, she was a great ER nurse—caring, observant, always helpful, and patient. Well,
usually
patient. She would occasionally let you know of her displeasure if she felt someone was being mistreated, especially if that someone was a child or an older person.

The angriest I had ever seen her was on a Sunday afternoon. This is almost always a busy time in the ER. After church, family members would visit their loved ones residing in “retirement” homes, find them in some worrisome state, and have them brought to the emergency department for an evaluation. Their primary-care doctors weren’t available and it fell to us to try to sort things out. Usually it was something simple and straightforward. Occasionally it was something worse.

On this particular Sunday afternoon, it was something worse. An elderly gentleman had been brought in by his children because of what they thought were some infected insect bites on his arms and legs. The staff of the nursing home had tried to cover these up with hastily applied bandages, but weren’t successful. The man’s son had seen the wounds and became suspicious when he received evasive answers from the staff. He put his father in the car and brought him to us to be examined.

“These are starting to get infected.” I leaned close and gently touched the skin surrounding these scattered pencil-eraser-sized marks. The elderly man didn’t say anything, but pulled his injured arm away from me. There were dozens of these wounds on his other arm and on his legs.

Camille was standing beside me. Her eyes were open wide and her bright-red lips were trembling. She knew.

“These look like cigarette burns,” I told the son. “And they need to be taken care of. I don’t think he should be going back to that retirement home.”

His son’s face turned a chalky white and his mouth fell open. “Cigarette burns? You mean someone has—”

Camille spun around and bolted out of the room. I knew where she was headed, and I also knew there were no retirement home staff members here for her to confront. They were fortunate.

A few minutes later, I walked over to the nurses’ station and overhead Camille’s telephone conversation.

“That’s right, Officer. This is the ER and we need someone over here right now to investigate an assault—abuse—whatever. Just get over here!”

She slammed the phone down, turned around, and looked at me. Her face was flushed and I could see the struggle in her eyes. She took a deep breath, flattened the front of her dress with the palms of her hands, stood up straight, and said, “Okay, I need to go take care of that gentleman’s burns.”