Able and Faithful

Able and Faithful
(Written by Joy A. Adewumi)

I paced the hospital lobby as mum was rushed into the emergency ward. She just suffered a cardiac arrest and as I paced my whole body trembled. My knees were about to buckle and I knew only adrenaline was keeping me vertical. It was an obvious situation but at the same time I was finding it hard to accept.

How many times had I heard of it? Someone going into cardiac arrest. A friend's parent, a lecturer, a senior colleague, but somehow seeing my mum wheeled away gave me a rude awakening! It was my mum! Yet it felt surreal.

I wanted to grasp at something. Anything. My head was spinning and my eyes burned. I didn't want to cry. Crying would only make it real and though I had seen it and heard the doctor give a diagnosis, I didn't want to believe it yet.

Would she make it? She hadn't always been the healthiest of people? Would her heart survive it? What if she didn't make it? What would I do?

Stop! Stop! Amaka, don't go there.
She would be fine. She had to be fine.

I chanted to myself as my knees finally gave in and I found a seat to collapse on.

It's been what? Five, ten minutes? What's keeping the doctor? Was it supposed to take that long?

I couldn't stay seated though, because soon I was on my feet again, pacing the length of the hospital lobby and checking the corridor through which the gurney disappeared every few seconds.

Everything imaginable passed through my mind and when I couldn't take it anymore, the tears spilled and with a broken voice, I begged God to keep my mum alive. She was all I had and I am all she has, and life would be downside up if anything were to happen to her. In fact the mere thought of that made me want to go mad.

Minutes turned into almost an hour and then finally the doctor walked out.

She looked like she was in her thirties and she was spotting a baby bump, maybe her second trimester and her tired smile cracked a fissure through the shrouding darkness in heart letting the tiniest beam of light spill through. I felt like someone had just let down a drop of  water on my lips after a full day's walk through Sahara and I grasped at the tiny straw of hope.

'Hey hon! I'm Doctor Mo, and I'm happy to inform you that your mum is fine.'

'Oh my word! Thank God! Thank you Doc!' I screamed pumping one fist in the air and wiping tears off with the other.

'Can I-'

'For now.' The doctor interrupted my question.

'For now, what?' I asked not liking how her smile gradually dimmed. I knew already I wouldn't like what was coming and as much as I wanted to block my ears, I just had to listen.

I was right. It wasn't great news.

'She's fine for now. She needs a heart bypass surgery as soon as possible though. You'll need to sign permission papers and...' The doctor's voice trailed off in my ears as my head began spinning again, this time with a weird hotness too. My knees buckled and next I knew, I was on the floor. The doctor bent over me but I was more out of it than in.

I had hoped it wouldn't come to this.

Mum would need surgery. Why? Why was this happening to me? Why couldn't everything be just fine and dandy?

I didn't know how long I was out of it but by the time I came to, I was seated on one of the hospital waiting chairs and Doctor Mo was walking towards me. She had two bottles of Pepsi in her hands and I half-expected her to pass by me, but she sat beside me and handed me a bottle.

I looked at her in surprise and accepted the it with a light 'Thanks' when she motioned for me to have it.

'Are you okay?' She asked as she uncapped her drink and gulped down a mouthful.

I shook my head in the negative. There was no use forming.

'I'm sorry about your mum. You can see her now by the way. Before that though, I really think you should sign the permission papers as soon as possible. I checked her records, she's been with the hospital for years and she has comfortable insurance. So all you need do is sign your consent and we can operate her as early as next week. The earlier honey, the better.'

Doctor Mo's soft soothing voice was my undoing as the tears I fought to keep at bay came streaming down my face. Surprisingly a gentle hand came around my slender back and patted my shoulder and that made me miss my mum.

I couldn't do this! She was alive and I was such a mess, what would happen if I lost her?

'I'm so scared.' I croaked out.

'I don't want to lose her. What if she doesn't make it through surgery? What if I decide to delay surgery and I still lose her? Either way if I lose her, I would blame myself for the decision I made all my life. I don't know what to do? I am afraid. It's just she and I.'

Doctor Mo squeezed my shoulder lovingly and said,

'The surgery is not complicated and recently, more than 95 percent of people who undergo coronary bypass surgery do not experience any serious complications, and the risk of death immediately after the procedure is only about 1–2 percent.

'I know your fear and I know that you can't help but concentrate on the 2 percent, but I want you to know that as a physician, I'd do my utmost best to take care of your mum, but at the end, whether she falls under the 98 or the 2 is up to God. We care, He cures. So I'll implore you to beseech Him.'

'I'm trying.' How was I able to open up so easily to the doctor? But then, if not her, then who? It wasn't like I had a bunch of friends and family gathered around me at that moment. It was either I simply take advantage of her comfort and spill my fears or bottle it up and maybe make a wrong decision, plus she had a special aura about her. She was so easy to talk to.

'I'm really trying but it's hard.' I replied.

'Hard to do what? Hard to talk to God or hard to trust He'll come through for you?' Doctor Mo asked and I wondered what the answer was. She didn't wait for me to reply though as she continued.

'Sweets, I've been a practicing physician for over a decade and I must tell you I've seen miracles. Miracles that would buckle the knees of any atheist. I didn't understand experientially the greatness of God till I became a doctor.

'Do you even know who this God is? Can you fathom His greatness? From creation of heaven and earth to the forming of man, His works are just mind blowing.

'When I open up a fellow human and see organs alive and working, connected and interdependent, I marvel at the one who organised them?

'When I sight the heart and see it's rhythmic beating, my spirit leaves me.

'To think so much can be so wrong before the person is opened up and by the time we are cleaning up there is so much hope in our hearts.

'To think we could take a beating heart from one person to another person and have the recipient live for years with someone else's heart still makes the blood rush to my head, but hey! That's God!

'What about days when all hope is lost and the EKG machine has been beeping a straight line of death for the past minute and all of a sudden as I'm about to announce the time of death, that straight line forms crests and troughs again?

'What of scenarios where a vegetable wakes up after two full years, just as the decision to unplug is made?

'What about those times when we make our diagnosis that spell doom and God shows up to make us understand He's still God and can make and unmake, anytime and in any situation- like a cancer patient going into remission without any form of therapy or treatment?

'Sweetheart, take it from someone who knows science and the natural boundaries of the human body. God is able. His omnipotence is mind-blowing and all you need do is ask! It's an open cheque! Just ask with faith. And you know how to keep the faith?'

As Doctor Mo spoke, my tears flowed harder but it was for a myriad of reasons now. Gaining prominence among them though was the hope that was springing up in me.

'How?' I asked Doctor Mo.

'Remember His past faithfulness. If you cannot for some reason recollect any, remember all I just said. Hon, God is able and He's faithful.'

The next day, mum had her surgery, and one year down the line as we both sat in Doctor Mo's office, watching expectantly at her poker face waiting for results of mum's health check up, I refused to let the suspense get to me. I refused to let fear creep in.

I chose to remember God's faithfulness. He saved and kept my mum before and I already handed her and every other detail of my life to Him. I knew I could trust Him.

He is God and He is able and faithful.

*********************

"Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,

"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.

"Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;

"Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?

"When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it."

Job 38:1,4,6,8,9 (KJV)

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