THE ANGEL ON THE HILL

When we got to the Emergency Room, I was happy to see a friendly face. I was at the Hospital On The Hill, and thanks to the magic of downsizing, the struggles of single-parenting, and corporate and personal obsessions with multi-tasking, the nurse who triaged me was a friend. I had known J since my first days as an attending at that hospital, six years ago. She was a member of the Endoscopy Unit with whom I would do colonoscopies each week. She used to talk about her adventures in the ER, where she often took shifts to support her two teenaged children. When the Endo Unit was consolidated into an Endo Room, J was cross trained as a circulating nurse in the Operating Room, so I would still get to see her almost every week.

It was now evident that the angel taking care of me that night would be working through J. She quickly got me triaged, had my husband register me, got me into an exam room, showed me where all the pads were, found my doctor, assisted her with my exam, and when it was decided the bleeding would be best dealt with in the operating room, stayed with me until they rolled my stretcher into the room. “You shouldn’t be alone right now,” the angel said, piling warm blankets on me and changing my diaper (the bleeding was now too heavy for pads).

I was trembling, not with fear, but with crystalloid, liters of IV fluids “wide open” filling the veins in my arms. In truth, there was no fear. I was a surgeon. I had faith in the power of timely surgical intervention, and felt that we got there “in time.” I had faith in my doctor, the nurses, the ER, the OR, and in God. The angel He had sent was letting me know, now through the suddenly calm eyes of my husband, “Everything’s going to be all right.” I wanted to answer him, but I was weak, and so cold. And then, suddenly, warmth, between my legs, filling the diaper, the warmth of my own blood.