The Chaplain By Andrea S. Givens

    marc falardeau CC



The Chaplain

   I run through the doors of the emergency room, give my name at the desk, and right away the triage nurse tells me to follow him. We walk fast, faster than I’ve ever walked, maybe I am running, and the nurse points at a room with the curtains drawn. Someone slips their hand in mine. I look down at the hand. It is not one I recognize. I look up into the deeply compassionate eyes of a brown-haired lady. I have no idea who she is and what she is doing here, and why she is holding my hand. She asks me if I would be willing to come into this room with her, and she gestures toward a small, dimly lit room, with soft couches and a salt lamp. “Fuck no,” I tell her. “I’m not going in there.” I know what happens in rooms like that: they tell you your loved one is dead. I pull my hand out of hers and ask to see my daughter, who was found by her brother, unconscious and bleeding, in the street in front of our house. She tells me not right now, she’s still with the paramedics, and I can hear things like no response and I’m confused, I don’t know what that means, and the lady tells me she is the chaplain here, and asks me if I want to pray. Prayer is how I was raised, and although it’s been a stranger to me for 20 years, it seems like the only thing and the right thing and the best thing I can possibly do right now, so I agree, and she prays. She prays a prayer that is in earnest to a God she knows. I come to a place of calm, hanging on to her relationship with Jesus for her petition for my daughter. After the prayer she tells me to go home and wait. Come back in the morning. She is kind and gentle, but firm. She has my own mother’s command. I respond to the chaplain’s mother-voice. 
I turn around and leave the hallway where my daughter is suspended between death and life and I stumble into the darkness, into the parking garage. When I find my car I immediately get in, close and lock the door, and open my purse. Inside I find a tiny bag. I shake a small pile of cocaine onto the black leather mid rest, pull out a rolled up dollar bill, and snort it all. Before it even has a chance to drip down the back of my throat, I dig for my cell phone and call my parents. 
   Two hundred miles away, my mom answers the phone. She listens as I choke out what happened, only I don’t know what happened, I only know my daughter is non responsive and my brain will not allow me to process anything else. She tells me she’s going to pray, and she does, and I listen to her commune with God as I have many times in my life: at the dinner table, over a skinned knee, when my sister was accidentally shoved through a plate glass window, when I put rock salt in my eye like a contact. I am swept by her sincerity and her confidence, that God will take care of my daughter and provide me comfort and peace for the duration.
In the neighborhood, I press the code to get through the gates. Pound 1-1-4-0. No. Pound 1-4-4-0. Shit. 1-1-4-0 Pound. Fuck. For 16 years I’ve used this code but I can’t recall it now. I start punching keys, anything, hoping to attract the attention of my neighbors so they will take pity on me and let me in. I scream into the intercom, but nobody responds, and I hit 1-1-4-0 Pound Pound; 1-4-4-0 Pound Pound, nothing, fucking nothing, just a dial tone and closed gates. I lean out the window and see headlights coming behind me. I let him pass; he opens the gates and I gratefully slide through behind him. Down to the end of the street, turn right, turn right again, then two immediate lefts. Two thirds down 187th Street Court East, my house is on the right. Nearly there, I slow to a crawl and stop. There is something in the street in front of my house. I pause, open the door, get out of the car. I go to where the item is, and I look down. It is my daughter’s blanket. It is my daughter’s blanket, the blanket she wrapped herself in to sit on the porch and fight with her boyfriend over the phone. It is the blanket she wore to take walks around the neighborhood, where she could be alone with her thoughts. It is the blanket she wrapped around herself to keep out the cold while she smoked cigarettes on the side of the house. It is the blanket she was found in, not breathing, non-responsive. I pick it up and roll it into a ball; clutch it to my chest. I want to fall apart, to drop to my knees and wail, but I don’t. I put the blanket next to me in the car, drive into the driveway, shut the car off. In the silence of the night, I snort another tiny pile of cocaine and go into the house. Inside my boys are waiting for me. They want to know if their sister is okay. Absolutely, I tell them. She’s okay. And inside I hope to God I’m telling them the truth.
   I go upstairs, close the door to my room. I pull off my pants, kick them into the closet. I go into the bathroom and pee with the door open. When I get back to my bedroom, my littlest son is there, waiting, in the bed, on the side where his father used to sleep. He has his Pikachu pillow and his iPad. He is playing Minecraft, wearing earbuds I require to avoid the grating sing-songy music of video games. I sit on the edge of the bed, my brain exhausted but my body revved up from the coke. I want to sleep, to close my eyes and forget I left my oldest child, non-responsive and alone, in the ER.
   In the night I am not awake but I am not asleep, either. I am assaulted by images, my stomach cramped with fear. In my twilight I see myself kneeling beside my daughter, who is laying in the middle of the street in front of our house. She is not breathing. Her mouth is bloody. In my twilight I see a man across from me, on my daughter’s other side. He, too, is kneeling. His phone is on my daughter’s left leg. The 9-1-1 operator is directing this stranger to perform CPR on my dead daughter. When he pauses I take control, and I press down on my daughter’s chest, one, two, three, and I’m thinking about the class I took where I learned CPR, how me and my colleague Matt, MMA Matt, took turns practicing CPR to Queen’s, “Another One Bites the Dust.” In my twilight I continue to press down, to talk to her, to press down, to ask her what happened, to press down. The neighbors are out there, watching, and I am aware that I am in a t-shirt and underwear but now there are lights and sirens, there are lights and sirens, and I only take my hands off my daughter’s chest when the paramedics remove them. 
   At 5:00 am I text my supervisor and tell her what happened. She wants to know when I’ll be back. I take a quick hit of coke and respond, “tomorrow.” I don’t bother to wash my face, brush my teeth, or shower. I don’t change my underwear or the t-shirt I slept in. I pull on some sweats and a hoodie, shove my feet into my black furry Uggs, and go outside. In the freezing November morning, ice covers my windows. I scrape off a tiny section on the windshield with my credit card, and peer through it driving through the fog to the hospital.
   Good Samaritan, third floor, ICU. My daughter lays behind a curtain. She is intubated, and all of the machines are doing the work her body refuses to do. Her body, without oxygen for over 50 minutes, has cooled to an unsafe temperature. The doctors are trying to warm her body slowly, to see whether she will awaken when her body becomes a normal temperature, in the range of 97-98.6. To the left is a white board. In black marker is her name,  the names of her doctor and nurse, and other details about her care. At the bottom of the white board it offers today’s goal: wake up and breathe.
   I pull a chair from the corner of the room and sit next to my daughter’s bed. I pick up her hand, warming it in my own. Her nails are perfectly rounded, a red French manicure with tiny stones on the tips. Her left pinky nail is jagged and the ring finger nail is broken off entirely. Her mouth around the tube is covered in dried blood. Her front teeth are broken and her bottom lip is split. Her long eyelashes, perfect black cat’s-eye eyeliner, and shaped eyebrows are incongruent and cause a moment of confusion. 
   I sit in silence. After a moment, or maybe two moments, the curtain opens and there is a gentle knock on the wall. I look up, and it is the chaplain from last night. She asks if she can sit next to me, and I agree, so she does. Her voice is soft and easy. She asks me if she can pray for me and for my daughter, but before I can say anything, the curtain opens again and it is the doctor. He introduces himself as the head cardiologist, and explains to me that my daughter had a heart attack that almost killed her. He shakes his head and says her toxicology screen was clear for everything except marijuana, and for now there is no indication why, at 21, her heart stopped. He explained that until her body is warm they will be unable to run any meaningful tests, and he warns me that if she wakes up, I am going to have some hard decisions to make. I cannot process what hard decisions he is talking about, so I turn back to the chaplain as the doctor exits the room. “She is my oldest baby,” I start to say, and then a sob emerges from my throat, unwelcome. The chaplain reaches for the hand that is not holding my daughter, and her steadiness offers me solace in my distress. 
   For an hour she sits with me, alternately holding my hand and reading from Psalms. She asks first if that is okay, to open the Bible and provide comfort through its words. I recall my childhood, how my mom would sit at the dining room table, especially built by my father for six sons, seven daughters, and two parents; or in the corner of the living room, lighted by one single lamp; next to my bedside if I was sick; on the couch in the family room the morning my brother hung himself. Her voice was steady, confident, assured. I wanted that peace, and so the chaplain opened the Book of Psalms and covered our pain with words of praise to God. Before she leaves, she asks if I want to keep the Psalms with me, to keep reading, either to myself or out loud to my daughter who is in a coma next to me. To this I can’t say yes, but I also can’t say no, and in my indecision the chaplain squeezes my shoulder and tells me that even though it may not seem like it, God has this under control. I take the book and put it on my daughter’s bed, and she exits the room. I wait five minutes then head to the single bathroom at the end of the hall, snort three quick lines. I see my stash is getting low; it won’t last the day. My mind starts whirling. I have to get more dope but I need to stay with my daughter. 
   When I return to the hospital room, three of my sisters are there, standing next to my daughter, holding her hands, touching her hair, talking to her. At this outpouring of love I completely lose my shit. They are there to hold me up. After a while they ask me questions, but there are no answers. All I can tell them is that my daughter was standing in the street, screaming at her boyfriend over FaceTime, and my youngest son saw her fall, face first, onto the asphalt. He ran inside to get his brother, my oldest son, who checked his sister’s pulse and found none. My oldest son came and got me, yelled from the bottom of the stairs that his sister wasn’t breathing and had blood coming out of her mouth. I told them I ran outside in the dark in my underwear, and how the neighbors gawked but never came to our side, but one I didn’t know and had never met performed CPR. I told them my fucking boss was expecting me at work tomorrow. I said I had called my estranged husband, Tracy’s father, over 20 times but he wasn’t answering my calls. My sisters cradled me with their love and concern. Each of them had driven over 200 miles overnight to be by my side, to provide strength for me in that moment.
   I told my sisters I had to run out for a second. They looked at each other. I told them my daughter’s boyfriend was blowing up my phone, and her phone, and the phone at the hospital, and I was going to the courthouse to file a restraining order against him. This was true, but it was not the only reason I needed to go. I headed to the courthouse, filed my papers. Made a quick call and a detour to Wright Park, where the alcoholic dope dealer slid into my passenger seat and told me to drive around the block. I make a left turn out of the park’s entrance, and Carlos asked me what I wanted. “Everything you have,” I told him. He gave me the drug dealer’s version of a small plate: some black tar heroin; a bit of meth in the corner of a baggie covered with green skulls; two Percocet; and two grams of coke. I handed him some cash and told him I had to go; my daughter is in the hospital. He nodded his head and said she’d be okay. 
   I started using coke about three years ago. My longtime girlfriend came and picked me up, and in her little blue Mercedes, she offered me a line. It wasn’t as crazy as you might think; I’ve known Stephanie, who my sister now calls Sniffany, since we were 18. We did some wild stuff together. But now we are middle aged, and we each have a teenage daughter. It wasn’t Sniffany’s fault I decided to make it a full-blown addiction. That was all me.
   As soon as Carlos slammed my door shut, I bent over and snorted at least a quarter gram of cocaine. Rubbing my nose, I took off for the hospital. I had been gone for two hours. Two hours. Anything can happen in two hours. When I arrived, my sisters were still sitting around my daughter, their niece. They were quietly chatting and laughing. I joined them, and explained that the restraining order had been filed and that I would need to go to court again in 10 days. I shared with them that this boy, my daughter’s boyfriend, tore down her self-esteem and used her for everything she had. He was cruel and vindictive. He made fun of her eating habits until she lost weight she didn’t need to lose, and then she lost more. Focused on her boyfriend’s asshole behavior, my sisters encouraged me to get medical power of attorney over my daughter, so I could make decisions on her behalf, including decisions about who can and cannot be in physical proximity to her.
   When nighttime came, my sisters left to drive home to their own children. I sat next to my daughter still, unsure of what I should do. My two boys were at home, and I needed to tend to them, to provide a meal and clean clothes, attention and care, comfort and security. It is an impossible decision: stay with my daughter, who is being kept alive by machines, or go home to my boys and take care of them, when their father has already created an untenable absence? I spoke to the nurse, told her I was afraid to leave because I didn’t want my daughter to wake up and be alone and scared. She promised she would be there no matter what, and encouraged me to go home and rest. Out in the parking lot, I snorted a quick line and drove the 15 minutes through South Hill nighttime traffic, home to Silver Creek.
   Once home, I gathered my boys and brought them into my room. I told them their sister was still not feeling well, but that she was getting excellent care. My oldest son, who had slept in his sister’s room until they were 8 and 9, wanted to know what the doctor said was wrong with her. I explained she had a heart attack but they don’t know why. I asked if they wanted to see her. They both said no. My youngest, who shares a birthday with his sister 11 years apart, asked if he was going to school the next day. Of course, I said. Business as usual.
   At four the next morning, it is the same: I use the bathroom, snort some coke, run a washcloth over my face and teeth. I pull on clothes somewhat resembling business casual and make a cup of coffee. While the coffee brews, I snort another line and try again to reach my husband. Straight to voice mail. Fucking asshole. Your daughter needs you. By 4:30 I’ve arrived at the hospital. The lights in the parking garage are dim and nearly worthless. I park next to the elevators and go up to the ICU. In my daughter’s room, the machines beep. On the whiteboard the attending physician’s name has changed, the date has turned over, and there is a note at the bottom that says no visitors. I glance to see her goal remains the same: wake up and breathe. 
   I am there for a heartbeat when the curtains open, and there is the chaplain. I wave her in, and she asks if she can sit next to me. She inquires about any changes, any progress in my daughter’s recovery. So far there is nothing: her body is still being warmed, a process that is taking much longer than doctors anticipated; she is still not breathing on her own; her vital signs are unsteady, she is losing weight. She is on a fentanyl drip. The chaplain remarks that watching my daughter suffer must be unbearable. It is a truth I can’t hold, so I say nothing, but I cry a little, restraining my emotions, afraid of what will come out if I allow myself to feel anything at all.
   After a bit I excuse myself and tell her I have to be at work by 6:30. She seems to understand my freakish need to disassociate, to pretend like this isn’t happening, and she offers to sit with my daughter for a while, and perhaps read more Psalms. I am grateful, and before I leave she prays with me. She asks God to provide me strength, and to prepare me for whatever is next. She thanks him for his healing touch and asks him to send ministering angels to my daughter’s bedside. Before I leave the ICU, I stop at the bathroom at the end of the hall and snort another line.
   It takes over an hour to get to work. I’m going to be late. In the stop and go traffic I make phone calls, one after another, to my husband who still won’t pick up. I sip coffee and take hits from the meth pipe sitting in the second cup holder. I don’t really like meth; it smells terrible, tastes like ass, and doesn’t get me high. But it does provide a way to keep myself busy, to keep from thinking, or feeling, or doing anything really at all. My windows are tinted and it’s still dark outside, so I don’t really worry about other drivers seeing me do this, or even about the random police officer, also making his or her way to the city to start their shift. I just want to pass the time.
   When I get to work, my supervisor hears the door chime and calls me straight to her office. She is the controller; I am an accounting administrator. She asks about my daughter, wants to know what to expect as far as my attendance. I tell her I’d like to work from 6:30 to noon, until I know more about my daughter’s condition and recovery. She agrees, and says she hopes my daughter will be all right. What she really means is, she hopes I’ll still get all my work done, so I say thank you and tell her not to worry. At my desk I answer emails, write lengthy account codes on invoices, enter data into the accounting software. I pull reports, manipulate them, and send them to senior executives. In between these tasks I step into the single bathroom, snort a line or two, peer closely into the mirror and remove any traces of white powder, check the stall for glassine baggies. I make frequent calls to the hospital, where no news is not good news.
   When 12:30 comes I hand a pile of invoices to the other accountant and head back to the ICU. When I arrive, my parents are there, sitting against the wall. They stand up to hug me, and I become a child again, looking for hope and promise from their stalwart guidance. 
My mom asks me if it is okay to pray for my daughter, their granddaughter. It is more than okay; it is all we have right now. We are believers in the power of prayer, and even though I can’t implore God myself, I cling to those who can. I never wanted to be one of those people who only went to church on Christmas Eve and Easter Sunday, and only prayed in a crisis. I believed in God for a long time, until I thought he stopped believing in me. The estrangement between me and God is one-sided, I know, but I can’t deal with that right now. 
   My mom and dad flank my daughter’s bed. They lay hands on her head, and her chest. With a grave and sincere voice, my dad thanks God for the opportunity to come before him, and requests The Great Physician come and bring Tracy into the fullness of healing. My mother joins in, her voice feminine and soft, and also authoritarian, and asks for supernatural wisdom for the doctors and specialists, that they would know how to treat her condition despite not knowing why it happened. She asks God to reveal the cause of Tracy’s heart attack, repair her failing organs, and to cover her with divine protection from any additional problems. Although I cannot add to the prayer myself, I agree by saying amen, and my mom reminds me that the Bible says when two or more are gathered in his name, God is there, in their midst. This brings me comfort, as I imagine God standing there with us, glorious and magnificent, a host of angels surrounding my daughter’s bed, singing praises to God for the healing about to occur.
   That afternoon, my brother calls. He wants to know why I’ve been blowing up my husband’s phone, and I tell him my daughter is in the hospital and my husband might want to come see her. He wants details; I give him nothing. Because I am separated from my husband, whom everybody thinks is capital A amazing, my brother has decided everything is my fault, and he likes to spend time listing all the ways I’ve fucked up my life, my husband’s life, and the lives of our children. I no longer engage with him on any level, so I hang up and put my phone on silent. 
   Five hours later, my husband shows up. He walks straight to Tracy, looks at her with her tubes and machines, looks at me and asks me, what happened? I told him she had a heart attack, and the doctors don’t know why. What do you mean, they don’t know why? But it is an accusation, as if, in his absence, I made this happen. I look at my parents; they are looking at my husband. I scoot closer to Tracy and pretend she and I are the only ones there.
   It is a scant 30 minutes that I can be in the room with my husband. It simply cannot hold both our daughter’s medical trauma and our failing marriage. My parents walk me to my car in the parking garage. You could be nicer to him, honey. It takes two. They stand there as I get in my car, so I roll down my window and wave, and say I am going home for a nap. Good, good, she’s taking care of herself—my dad to my mom. Instead I slug through the traffic that is five times what Meridian Boulevard was designed to handle, go into my house, shut and lock the door to my room, and snort several quick lines in the bathroom.
   At night my sister sends me a link to a Facebook post she has made on a national prayer page. There is a picture of my daughter, hair parted down the middle, long and feathered like a black Farrah Fawcett. Her eyes are lined with kohl; her lips tinged with baby pink lip gloss. PRAYER WARRIORS! It says. WE NEED ALL OF YOU! She tells my daughter’s story, and strangers from around the world comment with prayers to God of their own, for a young lady they’ve never met, but they respond to both her beauty and her tragedy. For some reason, trauma seems much worse when it’s inflicted on the beautiful. 
   The cyber prayers make me cry. I read them over and over, mouthing the words of the prayers of others. Somehow these far-flung strangers find language that escapes me, language that begs God to make my daughter whole again. Even the praying hands emojis bring me comfort, and I scroll through them gratefully, taking screen shots of the prayers that move me most, the ones I want to repeat like a mantra, until my daughter can wake up and breathe.
   At night my youngest son comes into my room. I install him again on his father’s side of the bed and close the door. I have placed a pillow and a blanket on the couch in the family room for my husband when he comes back. I no longer consider this his home. In the morning I go downstairs to brew my coffee. My husband is snoring on the couch, the sink is full of dirty dishes, and takeout containers from his favorite Mexican restaurant sit open and grotesque on the island. I snort a couple of lines and head to the hospital.
   There are no visitors when I arrive: not today, not yesterday, and not any of the seven days I have arrived before dawn. Four a.m. is still nighttime for most, but my body is conditioned to wake early. I grab my coffee and go up to the third floor, ICU, room 27. The night nurse comes in. She is average height, average weight, average looks. She cares for my daughter with the tenderness of a grandmother, although she can’t yet be 30. None of the staff here talk about Tracy’s future, about possibility, about hope, but this nurse cares for Tracy with a confidence that this coma is temporary, and we must not worry about what might happen. I hang onto that confidence, a temporary peace.
   I am waiting for the cardiologist to make his rounds when the attending physician peeks his head in. At his heels is the chaplain. This time she does not sit next to me; she stands nearby and faces the doctor. The doctor talks to me about Tracy’s condition. He is factual, but not without compassion. He says we need to think about extubating Tracy and putting in a tracheotomy instead. He says something about her lungs and infection and a bunch of other things I can no longer hear, because all I can think of is my baby with a hole in her neck.
   When the doctor leaves, the chaplain sits down. She reaches for my hand, and I begin to tell her how proud I was of Tracy when she got her first job. How she and I were sitting at the play area at McDonald’s, me studying for my psychology degree, and she watching her little brother play with a thousand other screaming toddlers, when they called her for an interview. How she was so excited she told them she was here, right then, in the play area, if they wanted to interview her immediately. They did, and they offered her the job on the spot. I told her I peeked in on Tracy on her first day, and took pictures of her smiling in her black McDonald’s uniform with embroidered golden arches. I explained to the chaplain that in high school Tracy was selected captain of the step team, and that I was in the first row at every performance, whooping and clapping for my child who somehow had rhythm I never had. I bragged that Tracy had been in DECA, took college prep classes, aced everything she tried. And then I told her that after high school, Tracy changed. She became an asshole. She was disrespectful and rude. She refused to clean up after herself or complete any chores. She consumed food or drinks that belonged to others and was unapologetic. She started smoking cigarettes and keeping beer in the fridge. In the evenings when I came home from work, she would be sitting on the porch in a white plastic chair, a beer at her feet, rolling a blunt, arguing with her boyfriend on the phone. She would look up and greet me, or she wouldn’t, and I would go into the house, survey the disaster, go into my room and shut the door.
   I explained to the chaplain that a few months ago, I kicked Tracy out of the house for outrageous disrespect. It brought some calm to the chaos, and I felt like I had more control. Recently, though, she became unwelcome where she had been staying, and she asked her father if she could come back home. I was at work when he agreed and she moved back in, although he no longer lived with me and I did not give my permission. He simply told me I could not turn my back on my daughter.
   The chaplain looked at me and said, you’re a good mom. 
   “I’m a lot of things,” I told her. “But I’m definitely not that.” She thinks I’m being too hard on myself, but I know my secrets, and I know how shameful they are. We sit without talking until it is time for me to head into the cold and dark, and make my way to the office.
   In my cubicle I take out my phone. There is a message from my dear friend Aaliyah, whom I met at a writers’ workshop a dozen years ago. Aaliyah is one of the most devout people I know. She pursues Allah with everything she is. She is also supremely funny. Aaliyah has seen Facebook posts about Tracy, and wants to know how I am. I tell her everything I know so far. She tells me she remembers Tracy in her evening Maghrib prayers. She tells me that she likes to get on the floor, and prostrate her forehead to the ground—only, only, only for God—and pour her heart out. I’ve been doing that for Tracy, and for you. Try it. It’s calming. Now I am sobbing at my desk, my back turned to cubicles around me, my face covering my hands. In my head I am assaulted by swirling images going too fast to identify. I begin to breathe quickly, in and out, in and out, in and out, but I’m not getting any oxygen. I stand up, and bend over. Sobbing, heaving, gasping for breath. I am barely aware of my co-worker, the whip smart twenty-something in a pink tutu and a white Hello Kitty shirt, looking at me with pity. She remained at her desk, and I managed to grab my phone, sneak into the conference room, and call the mental health crisis line.
   That afternoon at the hospital, Tracy’s goal remains the same: wake up and breathe. By now, eight days in, the doctors are using words like, “if,” and “extensive brain damage.” They tell me that by the time they got Tracy’s heart beating again, she had been without oxygen for 50 minutes. They suggest more than once she might need to re-learn basic skills, like walking and eating. If. 
   My sister, who is a home health care professional, is realistic: When Tracy is released from the hospital, she will probably go to a place where they can take care of her. You’re not going to be able to take care of her at home. She’ll need to be fed and bathed and toileted and transferred. You don’t know how to do any of that, and you’re going to need people who do.
   I refuse to accept anything but complete and total wholeness for my daughter. I outright reject my sister’s recommendation, and continued to seek a miracle. My friend John, a young law student in Uganda, whom I met while at a writers’ conference in Kampala, messaged me daily: Mum, to God be the Glory. I have called my pastor and we will go into prayer. All is well with her in the name of Jesus. I am now in a cab running to church to pray for her. The other ministers are on their way, too. Have some rest as I turn my face to God now. 
   I messaged my best friend from high school.  Adam, I said. If you are a praying person, please pray for my daughter. I told him the specifics: kidney failure, trauma to her lungs, the warming of my daughter’s body to prevent additional damage to her brain, heart function at 15%, liver damage. That the doctors keep telling me she might not wake up. The details were critical: we were taught as kids to be specific in our prayers, to ask for certain things directly and precisely. Adam was the one person in my life I didn’t hide things from. He knew I used drugs and he knew I had a lover. He never judged, he just offered ways to think about things, and asked me questions to get me to think about things, too. He lived several states away, but his messages to me were as grounding as if he were physically present.
   At Tracy’s bedside I read and re-read messages from these praying friends. John tells me he and other church leaders are heading to Seguku Prayer Mountain, where they will stay until we get a miracle. I briefly wonder about cell service in mountainous Uganda, but there’s no time to dwell on that. I have to focus on the miracle we are asking for: complete and total wholeness for Tracy. The chaplain believes in miracles, too. She talks about the miracles in the Bible we all know: Jesus turning water into wine; healing the leper; causing blind men to see; feeding five thousand people with five loaves and two fish. The Bible is full of them. I remembered I believed in miracles until one of my sisters was killed in a car accident. I thought I hadn’t prayed hard enough, or said the right words, or approached Him the right way, but God refused to raise her from the dead, like he did Lazarus. I could not make sense of why not. I was angry. I stopped believing in miracles, and I didn’t even know how to ask for the one I needed now.
   It is between the tenth night and the eleventh morning when a call comes through. It is the grandma nurse. Without preface, she announces that Tracy is awake, that she’s answering yes or no questions, that she wants to see me. I had taken four melatonin, two Benadryl, and a Trazodone in hopes that cocktail would counteract both the effects of the cocaine and the anxiety and stress related to Tracy’s hospitalization and my husband’s proximity. In a disorganized haze, I drive through the pre-dawn November fog, aware of my pink Costco pajamas and concentrating on the too-narrow lanes headed north. 
   A fifteen-minute trip takes nine, and I am parked and across the breezeway and in the elevator to the third floor and through the hydraulic doors of the ICU, through the sliding glass door of room 27, and Tracy is half sitting up and she looks at me and throws herself into my arms. She is crying. I am crying. The machines are beeping. I hold her to my chest as I did after she was yanked from a cut in my uterus. I whispered to her. A million I love yous. A trillion apologies. An infinite loop of thank yous to God, for harkening to the prayers of people who love Tracy and who love me. 
   The tube down her throat won’t allow her to talk. It will be days before she is extubated, weeks before she gets a defibrillator, months before she leaves rehab. The cardiologists, neurologists, speech pathologists, physical and occupational therapists work diligently for her recovery. There is no answer to the question, but the question remains. Tracy now celebrates her rebirthday, when, she says, she died, and came back like Jesus. She is flip because she has no recollection of the trauma she endured. But she is angry, too, because of the magnitude of what happened, and then what happened after that. 
   I don’t believe everything happens for a reason, or that life hands you a variation of the same situation until you get your shit together. I don’t believe if you’re sick it’s because you somehow invited that in: common cold or colon cancer, it’s all your fault. To me that’s an ugly and cruel way to look at our lives, and about prayer, and about God. I have no clarity about why this happened to Tracy, and why this isn’t the last time we will beg for a healing miracle on her behalf. I do know that sometimes life is unspeakably awful, and prayer is the least destructive way to get through it.

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