The Unseen Here and Now . . .

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Stuart Revercomb

Stuart Revercomb is a marketing consultant and joyously married father of four children. He seems to remember someone once telling him he ought to be a writer. "The Unseen Here and Now" -- Thursdays.

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June 21, 2001

Trust

It is July 1st 1995. My friend Mark and I have taken our families to his parents beach house outside of Charleston S.C. . It is Saturday Night and Mark and I are beneath the house in the carport. The girls are tucking the children in bed, and having forgotten a tape deck we have snuck down to the car to listen to a tape by Dwight Yoakam.

Mark and I are close friends, but lately family and career responsibilities have kept us apart. It doesn't take long before we have turned up the music and begin to sing and laugh and tell "war stories". The conversation winds like a stream from our early days of knowing each other in High School to our first born children - both boys born three days apart. Eventually one of the girls calls down the steps and tells us they are going to bed. We say we will be right up. We have lied. We don't come up for hours. It is a great first night at the beach.

But it is not followed up by a very good one. At least not for Mark. He awakes with a fever and headache and other flu-like symptoms. He comes down to speak with us on the beach that morning, but you can see it in his eyes, he does not feel well. A short time later he tells us he must rest and returns to his bedroom. By that afternoon things are much worse and his wife Margaret takes him to a local Medi-Center where he is diagnosed with "a touch of pneumonia". They give him some over the counter fare and send him home.

But when he arrives he feels worse than ever and goes immediately to bed. I tell him to signal us if he needs anything by dropping a tissue on the floor next to the bed that we can see when we walk between the family room and the kitchen. He has gotten very weak and this way he won't have to yell for us, and we won't have to wake him up to check on him. A couple of hours later I see a tissue lying next to the bed. I walk in and lean over Mark who is facing the wall on his side, "You O.K. Pal?", I ask.

Mark can barely offer a raspy whisper. "I can't move", he replies.

"What?", I respond.

"I can't move.... I mean... I can... but I can't... too weak...". He is breathing heavily from trying to talk. I tell him I am going to get Margaret who aside from being his loving wife is an Intensive Care Nurse of over 8 years. She takes one look at him and says we have to get him to a hospital. I put him over my back and carry him down the steep steps to their car below. Mark insists that I stay with Beth Anne and the kids. Margaret whisks him to Mount Pleasant Hospital, a 20 minute drive to the west.

The report later that night is that he is doing fine. The doctors on duty feel he has developed a solid case of pneumonia, but nothing that "a few days rest won't handle." They admit him and start some basic IV's to ward off dehydration. About 1:00 PM the following day Margaret returns briefly from the hospital and her report is even better - she has gotten him to eat some saltines and drink some ginger ale. Although Mark has requested that no one come see him lest "he ruin their vacation", I insist on going back with her. We decide to take two cars, so I will have a way back. Margaret says she'll meet me there. She needs to drop off some movies on the way.

It takes me a few minutes to navigate the unknown hospital corridors, but I find the room. At first I think I have read the number wrong. There is someone in the room but he is breathing extremely heavy, literally gasping for air. I warily peek around the corner and am shocked to see that it is indeed Mark. He is half conscious and his breathing is so labored that I know instantly that this is not how Margaret left him. I call loudly down the hall for a doctor. There is no response - it is July 4th and the small hospital is operating on a skeleton crew. I go back to Mark. He is worse and I feel a swell of panic inside me. Stay calm, get help the voice says.

As I am going out the door Mark's parents arrive - they have just cut short a vacation in Florida to come see how he is doing. I feel terrible that I don't have time to explain the situation. "He's going to be O.K.", I halfheartedly say as I move past them towards the door. Thankfully, they are followed almost immediately by Margaret who hears his breathing and goes immediately to work. She gets him on his side and tells him help is on the way. I am all thankful that Margaret is an ICU nurse, but she is 6 months pregnant with their second child, and seeing her husband in this condition must be taking its toll.

I have reached the nurses station and actually must plead for the over worked, under trained nurse on duty to come down the hall. She finally makes it, and just as she does, another nurse arrives from out of nowhere. She smiles and calmly says, "everything is going to be alright". At exactly that moment Mark stops breathing.

"Call a code", says the experienced sounding nurse as she turns to leave the room, "You'll need an airway and a crash cart". The slow nurse from down the hall fumbles her way over the phone and finally makes an all call. "CODE - ROOM 227!", she yells near hysterically. In what seems like only seconds, doctors and nurses arrive from everywhere - someone yells for a "crash cart" but the calm nurse has already delivered it and is speaking to me.

"I think you should gather the family and leave the room... there is a little waiting area down the hall - why don't you take them down there for a moment and someone will be right with you."

She turns and walks down the hall. We never see her again.

The young nurse that does show up 10 minutes later is tearful and uncertain of what to say. She can tell us nothing except it will be longer. At this moment I more believe than not, that Mark is no longer with us. But I, like the others, am hopeful. We all sit around the table in shock, trying to comfort each other and come to grips with what has just happened. Silent prayer is offered amidst tears. We are in a terrifying dream.

Finally a Doctor arrives. Mark is stabilized but he is not conscious. They are rushing him to the University of South Carolina Medical Center in Charleston. Somehow our worst fears have made the words "stabilized and unconscious" seem like pretty good news, but over the next 24 hours our hope begins to wane. CAT Scans reveal that the virus, if it is that, is causing Marks brain to swell. The Neurosurgeons have drilled a hole in his skull to relieve the pressure. They have flown in "Super Drugs" from around the country. But nothing is working. By the second night the Chief of Neurology at one of the best medical facilities in the country has told Margaret that the outlook is dim. He has begun to prepare her for not only the worst, but for what he clearly expects to take place. I finally convince Margaret to come back to the house that night to try to get some rest. It is a long ride home.

When we arrive, Mark's mother and Beth Anne take over with Margaret, and I join his father on the deck for the only stiff drink I've probably ever really needed. We talk about the difficult moments of the last few days. We talk about God. And we pray there together beneath a silent moon and a million lonely stars. It is very late. Ruben turns in to bed, and I find myself wandering down the front steps and then beneath the house to the exact spot where Mark and I sat 5 nights before listening to the music and laughing over old times. The weight of the week descends upon me and I began to cry at the thought of losing my friend, and what it would mean to Margaret and the children.

Eventually I compose myself and decide it is time to pray - not just a short or urgent prayer but one that somehow might speak more of what I am really feeling inside. I do not remember what I prayed, but like all prayer I imagine it started out as a one way conversation...

"Dear Lord... if there is any way... Any way that you can save Mark from whatever has a grip on him, please do it now.... take it away... make him whole and complete again.... comfort Margaret and the rest of his family and restore within them a..."

It was somewhere in here that the conversation started going both ways.

"Pray for his will and not your own".

The words seem to come from both within and without me as though spoken in a dream, but I am far from asleep. In fact I feel especially present in the "here and now"of things. Somehow, I don't seem particularly amazed one way or the other, and the next thought I have is that it is indeed some pretty good advise. But when I try to do it - to really pray for God's will even if that means the loss of my friend, I am completely unsuccessful. I keep "falling off" the thought...

"How can I possibly pray for that" I query?

"You're not." comes the response.

"But what if that is what God's will ultimately is?", I reply.

"Then you'll have to trust him with that...". There is a long pause as I consider what this means. Moments later I am interrupted again by the same thought spoken powerfully within my consciousness, "Pray for God's will and not your own."

And with a little help, that's exactly what I did.

Later the next day in front of a dumbfounded Chief of Neurosurgery, Mark began to squeeze Margaret's hand in response to some comments we made. Within hours he was attempting to spell out letters in the air complete with an occasional expletive. Several more Doctors arrived to witness the miracle that in all of their words "Just should not be happening." As the hours passed and Marks vital signs improved, even the normally stale air of the ICU ward tasted somehow fresh and sweet. Life could begin again.

Mark went on to make a full recovery, though it took several more weeks in the ICU as well as months of physical rehabilitation to reach what he calls "99.2 percent". (The balance he leaves for when he needs a convenient excuse.) The Doctors were never able to give a full answer on what caused the encephalitis or the amazing recovery that occurred. But I have my suspicions.

My prayers? Like the others that were offered by family and friends during that time of crisis, I am convinced God heard them all. And I am thankful beyond words that in all the mystery of time and space and hope and love they were sufficient to help order things in accordance with what seems to me God's perfect will. I am also thankful for a lesson in trust, that is as essential to prayer as it is to life - and even in the end, to death as well.

Thanks be to God for the voice that whispers not only beyond our everyday reckoning in the deepest part of our souls, but also at times so pure and clear and true that to mistake it's nature would be to deny the very life it has come to give.

May we be given the ears to hear it, the wisdom to listen, and the courage to share it's power.