Five More Days

 

I will tell the story in time, but for now, this is all you need know: the transplant has been approved, and the 12-hour surgery takes place Monday.

It has been a whirlwind of activity since I first became connected with this family in January. I have hoped; I have laughed; I have feared; I have fought passionately on their behalf—sometimes against foreseen foes, and sometimes to defend them against those who should have been on their side but had deferred to fear, cynicism, or utilitarianism. I have been totally in my element at times and completely clueless as to what to do at other times. I have learned a lot of Spanish, including the phrase “señales de humo,” which is how Hector jokes we will communicate when we meet each other face to face. Hopefully that will be more effective than language has been. Our miscommunications are comical in retrospect but were certainly less than humorous at the time.

My heart overflows and my spirit swells with joy, for God has been faithful. Hector, Tere, and Abner are all safe and enjoying the sights of New Haven, CT, in the company of a church family that has been nothing short of a Godsend, wrapped protectively in a blanket of prayers pouring in from all over the world. I have learned so much from them. I have learned what it is to be joyful in hope. I was reminded what it is to fight in the face of impossibility. I have wrestled at length with the admonition that perfect love drives out fear, and indeed I have been convicted to adopt that statement into my day-to-day actions.

And today, I wept for them. I mean, there have been moments of tears—generally out of frustration or the fear that my inadequacey would result in failure of the whole mission—but I never truly wept. Today I did. I crumpled on the floor and sobbed for 45 minutes, and tears of joy and relief and thankfulness and praise spilled together onto the furry green rug on my floor that so desperately needs vaccuumed.

Against all odds. Despite all doubts. In light of a father’s persistent hope.

And so I sit here with a bowl of ramen, my fingers stuttering hesitantly over the keyboard, aching with the inability to express in words the emotion erupting from my soul. I savor the chance to fight on behalf of the least of these, and I cannot help but glance at the pictures hanging on my wall of all of the little ones I have loved who did not get the second chance Abner is getting and whisper a prayer of thanks, for they are the ones through whom I was taught to love this way, and thus how to fight this way.

And so all things work together for good in the end, and I rejoice in the gift of one child’s second chance.

Five more days.

Child of Light

To whom it may concern:


My name is Meg McKechnie. I am a senior nursing student at Belmont University in Nashville, TN.  I am writing on behalf of friends of mine who are citizens and residents of El Salvador, Héctor Abdulio Moreno Martínez and Mirna Teresa Linares de Moreno, in regards to their son, Abner Isaac Moreno Linares, born 01/04/2012. The family speaks only Spanish. Abner has a history of cholangitis and biliary atresia. His doctors in El Salvador say he is in need of a liver transplant in order to survive, which cannot be provided in country.

I have contact information for Abner's family, PCP, and the children's hospital in El Salvador, as well as his medical records (in Spanish), photographs, and videos of the child showing his decline in the past few months. His parents sent it to me with permission to give it to anyone who might be able to help.

Héctor qualifies as a donor for Abner. At this point, I believe the family’s only hope is to procure an emergency visa for both father and son to travel to the States for treatment. I am tirelessly working to coordinate that end of the situation. Four requirements must be met in order for the family to apply for the visa:

1. Official letter from U.S. hospital and doctors, accepting patient for treatment and providing estimated cost and length of medical treatment;

2. Evidence regarding ability to pay for the treatment;

3. Proof of social, economic and professional ties in El Salvador that will compel the applicant to return to his/her home country following completion of the medical treatment; and

4. A professional diagnosis of the illness and evidence that it cannot be treated in El Salvador.    

Requirements 3 and 4 are easily attainable. Requirements 1 and 2 are much more difficult.

Our experience thus far has been an inability and unwillingness of US hospitals to accept Abner and Héctor as patients until funding has been established. We are working to expand the already significant network of families and churches across the United States willing to invest in the cost of long-term post-transplant drugs. However, the family is poor and simply cannot pay for the transplant themselves. Their only hope is for a hospital or organization to donate the cost of the procedure and immediate follow-up care.

If you had any idea how many times I have sent that letter-- or some permutation thereof, with differing endings depending on what I was begging that particular person or organization for-- in the last three days...


A friend sent me a text late Thursday night asking if I was awake. I laughed a little... I was at practicum, which for me is night shift at Vandy's pediatric hematology and oncology unit, so yes, I was awake and would be until well after the sun rose the next morning. She told me about Abner and asked for my help.

We talked and schemed and prayed-- oh, how we have prayed!-- and at some point both of us probably promised God that this kid could have pieces of our livers if that was what he needed. And all the while we have been so acutely aware of the ocean of obstacles between this child and a chance at life. His parents are poor. And they live in the third world. There is no way they can do this by themselves. 



So I did a few hundred Google searches and spammed half of the northern hemisphere with emails, begging for help. I found a lawyer in Texas who coordinated a liver transplant for a little boy out of El Salvador just a few years ago, and he connected me with an organization in El Salvador that might be able to help coordinate the bureaucracy on that end. I stalked Abner's daddy's facebook and wept as I read his status saying that he is confident God will make a way for his son, while in the same breath saying that no matter what happens, he will give all glory and praise to Him-- and asking his facebook friends to pray that he will have the strength to continue in his faith "no matter what happens," because God will still be God (and all of this weeks ago, before anything was in motion on this continent). Then I felt the weight of a father's hope last night as I personally chatted with this man, and he thanked me for being a part of God's answer.



I have laughed; I have danced; I have cried; I have called friends on the other side of the continent so that I could laugh and dance and cry with company. My heart lingers somewhere between the anguish of impossibility and the hope of eternity. On one hand, to call my resources insufficient would be the greatest understatement of all time. In the United States, the transplant could cost as much as half a million dollars. But then, there are some hospitals with international charity surgery departments, and there might be hope there. We also have not ruled out the option of considering a different country where the surgery might be cheaper. Any way you dice it, we have found that we will either need $75k to cover the cost of initiating treatment and the downpayment for the surgery in the US (while we find organizations to cover the rest), or that same $75 to have the transplant done in another capable country (which while cheaper, is scary, because many of these places have much lower survival rates, and the idea is to save this baby...). So I haven't given up.

Because I know that this has been done before, and even if it had not, I know that God is big enough.

So I keep emailing, and keep asking, and keep calling, and keep knocking, in hopes that persistence might yield an open door.


Here's how you can help.

We need a hospital that can do the transplant pro-bono, OR an organization that can cover the cost along with a hospital willing to do the procedure.

 We need a pharmaceutical company willing to donate the cost of the medications that Abner will need for the rest of his life.

 We need prayer. Oh, do we need prayer.

We need people to know, and we need people to care. Maybe you don't know anyone with connections at a hospital, but perhaps someone you know happens to know someone with a compassionate heart and the right connections. So I need you to share this story. Email it. Post it on facebook. Send it to your pastor. I need you to care about Abner as if he were your own child, because someone else once asked, "Who is my neighbor?" and I do believe Christ's response, after sharing a story of a man who went out of his way and sacrificed of himself to help another in need, was "Go and do likewise." I need you to ask yourself how far you would go to fight for one of your own, and then I need you to do that. Abner needs you to do that.

Because right now, the army fighting for him consists of a ragtag group of college kids at Belmont, and ladies and gentlemen, I hereby declare that we cannot do this by ourselves.

There is a video of Abner taken recently that shows the urgency of his situation. It is not easy to watch; you should probably not let children view it. His protruding liver and major abdominal vessels are clearly visible; he has massive edema in his abdomen and scrotum, but his limbs are wasting because of the malnutrition that results from liver failure.

If you would like updates on Abner and his situation, just let me know, and I'll make sure you get them. You can always contact me here by commenting on this blog. Or you can email me at meghan.mckechnie@pop.belmont.edu

The name "Abner" means  "the Father is a light." Amen and amen.

 

Please... do not forget him...

Much love.


Meg




*****UPDATE, 2/6/13*****
We have started a fundraiser to pay for Abner's transplant. We need to raise the money for his transplant, and quickly! Donate here:

http://www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/Help-Save-Abner-s-Life/41362

Children of God

“You know,” said David, “every time I see a kid carrying around a plastic bottle, I wonder who gave it to them.”

And we both laughed as flashbacks of grubby little hands snatching at our soda bottles on the dusty winding paths through the marketplace danced fleetingly through our minds.

We were at a very different kind of market now. The little Indian girl with the Mtn. Dew bottle carried on closely behind her mother, and I breathed in deeply the aroma of curry and tzatziki and Cajun that wafted from the various restaurants at the food court at Nashville’s Farmer’s Market. I watched her with joy as she gleefully waved around that silly bottle, shaking it at the ceiling lights and putting it against her eyes to tint her whole world lime green. Never mind that her mother was carrying a pack with toys sticking out of it. The child was completely content and enthralled with that bottle.

But then, I was not surprised. Across the world a lot of fun can be had with a plastic bottle. The kids in Kazembe make trains, or cars, or dolls, or any other manner of entertainment out of them. They use them for games, and sometimes they just hoard them. The caps off of glass bottles are prized almost as highly, and David used to get a great deal of amusement out of flipping them to unsuspecting Iwes as we ambled along the road.

One day during the Mutomboko ceremony we were hanging out under a tree by the palace next to the booth where press passes and touristy t-shirts were sold. I don’t really remember now how the whole thing got started or who initiated the first flick (probably David, since his pockets were usually full of bottle caps), but suddenly David and I were sitting on the ground surrounded by a couple dozen dirty kids. We flipped the cap back and forth a few times, then innocently flipped it to a kid on the inside of the circle. He was so surprised that he didn’t even catch it.

He caught it the second time, though. And then the next kid caught it. And then the next one. And thus the most uncomplicated game of catch ever conceived came into being, and we sat there in the dirt as happy as could be, flipping bottle caps back and forth with a bunch of kids we had never met.

The palace official did not approve of our antics.

“You! You my friends, we are happy to have you here as guests! But send these children away from here.”

Now as a sidenote, it would be an understatement to say that I have a temper. It would also be an understatement to say that said temper has a tendency to flair when innocents—particularly children—are mistreated or devalued.

So I very calmly stood up, held my hands out so my dear little urchins could cling on, then resolutely began to walk away, saying, “Come on everyone, we’ll all go somewhere else.”

“Oh no!” the official hurriedly interjected. “You,” gesturing to those of us who are white, “You are welcome! Just get rid of the children.”

“If they are not welcome to sit under a tree, then neither are we,” I replied.

The official began to protest again, when suddenly Zeger stepped in.

“But my good sir,” our resident non-Christian pleaded smoothly, “are we not all children of God? We are no better than they, and so if we can be here, than surely they can be too.”

Well now he had him. All sacrifices to the ancestors aside, this man was not about to let some random white people think that he was not a “good Christian.”

“Oh yes!” he exclaimed. “My friend! In my spare time, I am an evangelist! Of course, yes, we are all children of God! The children may stay, yes…”

As the flustered official returned to his kiosk, David, Zeger, and I returned to our game. 

(Also, I would like to point out that I don't think this official was really the "bad guy"-- he was just doing his job; part of crowd control in the village is kid control.)

Eventually the next part of the ceremony started, and we got up, brushed ourselves off, gave the caps away, and followed the crowds.

We retold the story many times in the days to come and indeed have recounted it on numerous occasions since returning home. It remains one of my favorites, because it turns out that even musungus can play the Zambian political game-- and even the lowest in society can often be protected from being devalued or shunted aside, if only someone with a voice will ally himself with them.

Even me

Les Misérables.

A thief pays the price. His scarred wrists proclaim his past, and the mantra of the righteous rings eternally: Once a thief, always a thief. Once a thief, never trustworthy again. Once a wretch, forever irredeemable.

And with that echoing in his mind, the felon makes the jailkeeper a prophet. He steals again. And as he does, we wonder if the prophecy is not true.  Once a wretch, forever irredeemable. The man of God had offered him shelter, food, safety, love… He had extended generosity. Generosity means little, though, in the eyes of one who believes what this man had been told…

Once a wretch, forever irredeemable.

And so the man called wretched behaved as his title would lead one to expect, and he stole. Again. From one who had given him so much. Many would have declared his fate sealed. Many would have condemned him here. Indeed, the Law did.  But the man of God did not.

The silver? Yes it is mine, he said.. But I have given it to him. The silver he has is his to keep, he said. Oh but wait. He has forgotten the best of all—take these silver candlesticks as well, he said. And pray child, use this silver to become an honest man.

It is not generosity or kindness alone that softened a stony heart. It was mercy. Forgiveness. And then generosity.  It was the cloak offered up once the tunic was forcefully taken. It was the man of God who would rather be without any earthly thing than pass up a chance to speak the Gospel into a man’s life—a man who would rather be wronged than be repaid—a man so concerned about the welfare of another human being that his own rights never even entered into consideration.

That man of God, I think, is the true hero of the story.

But the man of the Law still believed the prophecy.
Once a wretch, always irredeemable.

And so he pursued the wretch, seeking to punish and purify and uphold that which he believed to be holy and true. Such was his right. His responsibility, even.  His duty.

And it consumed him. His bitterness, his inability to believe in the redemption of man, his absolute conviction that the wretch was forever a thief… For passion can be misplaced, and his pulled him down to his end.

The greater message, I think, is that poverty is not all about materialism. We think it is. We act as though to toss a pair of used shoes or some hand-me-down clothes at some poor dirty street kid is significantly alleviating the problem, as if the only thing the wretch needed was food and a place to sleep. Materially, yes. That was all he needed. But man is not merely physical, and neither are his needs. Even the wretch—even the thief—is more.

Yet why did I allow that man
To touch my soul and teach me love?
He treated me like any other
He gave me his trust
He called me brother
My life he claims for God above
Can such things be?
For I had come to hate the world
This world that always hated me

Take an eye for an eye!
Turn your heart into stone!
This is all I have lived for!
This is all I have known!

He told me that I have a soul,
How does he know?
What spirit comes to move my life?
Is there another way to go?

Redemption and her story came not through retribution and restitution, but through a willingness to be wronged and abused, if only for the chance that the thief might come to believe in the existence of his own soul.

And yet, it is just a story.

I have often wondered where the balance is between mercy and justice… forgiveness and accountability… the extension of grace and the enabling of poor behavior. I still don’t have the answer. But if I must be one or the other—the man of the Law or the man of God—I know which side I hope to fall on. For he believed that redemption could find any man, and he was willing to sell his own comfort to give that man a chance.

Even the wretch.

Even the thief.

Even me.

At the Feet of Glory

Tommy is one of my favorite people on the planet. He has this wonderful, dry, Polish sense of humor that hides deep in the gleam in his eye. I met him the first time two summers ago; he and his wife Lydia (who, incidentally, is also one of my favorite people) live in Lusaka and are friends of Amy, so Timmy and I stayed with them before getting on the bus to Kazembe the next morning.

This summer, he was watching over the orphanage the first few days that we were there while Amy and Tom were away. Tommy seems to have a sense of adventure that I really appreciated. A couple of days after we got there, he took us all to the waterfalls nearby—not the little ones we went to last year, but the massive, awe-inspiring, bring-you-to-your-knees waterfalls a bit further away.

And we took the 1st Graders with us.

Like I said. Tommy is adventurous.

It was a long, bumpy ride, and by the time we got there I was on the verge of motion sickness. We really were in the middle of nowhere-- even more so than where we were in the village. Before the car had even stopped, we could hear the dull roar of sheer power.

Words fall woefully short. I have never seen anything that compares. Pictures do not even begin to do this place justice. Even while we were there, I struggled to describe what I was seeing-- Majesty. Power. Awesome (in the truest sense of the word). Glory.

Kazembe was at the beginning of their dry season, and even the few tufts of vegetation still stubbornly refusing to turn brown were coated in a fine, dry, rust-colored dust. The world revolved in shades of faded brown and gray.

But here-- at Lumangwe-- the water cascaded over and through sheets of stone, compelling even the most inhospitable landscape to produce a lush paradise. It's one of those places that Disney tells you is real, but your heart never quite believes that it is real for you... if that makes any sense...

We laughed; we played; we splashed. We crept down rocky steps hewn into the crags of the cliff to reach the bottom of the falls, and then we swam and climbed and jumped and wracked our all-too-limited vocabularies for words to describe it all. I think the entire force of the world was behind that water. Then we splashed around in wading pools at the top of the falls. Theresa claimed David as her own and followed him around like a little shadow. Queenie dominated a water war against the boys. That girl makes me proud.

Chola was so brave, and so awestruck. "Auntie Meghan...!" he exclaimed softly, his young voice carrying with it an air of belief and faith in Magic and Majesty that those of us who have let our souls grow up sometimes must grasp for. "Auntie Meghan...! God! God has made this!" Yes baby. He certainly did.

The kids knew it was real right away, you see.

It takes old souls just a little bit longer,

But after an hour or so of wandering around, eyes wide, drenched in the mist of a dozen waterfalls and squinting through the haze that rises from thunder, the icy, honey sweet water running in ribbons off of your face and dripping from hair and clothing, you find yourself somewhere between believing it is real and awestruck that such beauty exists this side of eternity.



I needed the reminder, I think. It had been a long five days of travel, punctuated by frustrating and exhausting overnights in hostels and hostels and cramped bus seats. I was so tired. We were all tired. I had slipped into that all-too-easy mistake of focusing on the physical and quantifying my success by what I could or could not accomplish over the next two and a half months. That can eat you alive. Believe it or not, my arms cannot hold all of the children of Africa, though I am sure they would try if it was asked of them. But if ever my goal becomes merely physical-- if ever my war becomes against death and poverty-- then I fear that I have already lost. I momentarily lost track of that. I lost track of Him.

Because standing there, bracing myself against the force of wind and billowing mist, suddenly acutely aware of my own fragility as my feet slipped a little on the algae-covered-dripping-wet slate I was perched upon, I welcomed my own insignificance.

It was so simple, and yet so complex-- but, as David says, somehow completely different than the complexity we wrap around ourselves.

And so I needed the reminder. 

I needed to feel powerless not because of overwhelming need around me, but because of standing in the presence of unfathomable power and indescribable beauty.





I needed to stand at the feet of Glory.

Fight

“He’s three years old. The mom is non-compliant. Keeps stuffing him full of chips and pretzels even though he’s on a sodium restricted diet. They don’t speak English; they’re from somewhere else.”

I know where they’re from… the chart clearly said. Didn’t you look at the chart?

“If his kid sister is in there, she speaks English and might translate for you. It’s hit or miss.”

…YOUAREUSINGACHILDTOTRANSLATEMEDICALINFORMATIONOHMYGOODNESSWHATISWRONGWITHYOU?

“I guess maybe you could try the translation line if you want to bother with it."

I am struggling to like you in this moment.

“He doesn’t like us very much. I think because we’re white. He’ll scream the whole time you’re in the room.”

Been there, done that. Challenge accepted.

I just got home from clinical. I am somewhere between heartbroken and livid. Details must be suppressed and changed to satisfy privacy laws and protect the precious family I was privileged to serve tonight.

They are refugees. Mom is a single parent with half a dozen children. Dad died. The littlest child is sick with a chronic congenital condition of the kidneys. They’ve been Stateside for 2 years.

I took report from the nurse, shook it off, and went to the room in the corner. Sure enough, as soon as I opened the door, the beautiful three-year-old boy on the bed began to whimper and withdraw. I immediately dropped to my knees to be on his level and began playing with my penlight. Within about 30 seconds, he stopped crying and reached out to take the light from me. He shined it on the sheets. And on his hand. And on my hand. And then he chased me around the room with the light, trying to keep it pointed on me as I dodged out of the way. Then he hid it behind his back so I would look for it. I peeked around to find it, and when I did, he laughed. This wonderful, beautiful, gem of a child laughed, from deep down in his soul, and his coal black little eyes disappeared into his scrunched up face.

Then he banged the light on the bed and broke it, but I really didn’t care. That laugh was worth millions more than some silly penlight.

He listened to my heart with the stethoscope and gaped up at me in wide-eyed wonder, both hands pressed solidly over his ears, as if the earpieces of the stethoscope would suddenly leap out and run way if not secured. Miraculously, the stethoscope was not scary anymore, and now he let me listen to his chest without screaming bloody murder. He pinched my finger, and then I pinched his to check his capillary refill. His 10-year-old sister helped me by letting me take her blood pressure. Then she took my blood pressure. Finally, she pushed the buttons on the machine to take his blood pressure. And his reaction? A smile. A toothy, slightly drooly smile.

The little girl would not make eye contact with me. “What’s your name?” She told me. I couldn’t pronounce it, but my attempt earned me a crooked grin. “Do you like to draw?” No. I draw ugly. “Do you like any board games?” No. “What do you like to do?” I don’t know.

Sigh.

With that first set of vitals over, I used the translation hotline to try and find someone who spoke their dialect. No luck. I am now frustrated beyond belief, because I know there is a pretty decent population of these people in the city, and I absolutely cannot believe that a major Nashville hospital has not laid out a means for translating vital treatment information. This child’s kidney function is severely compromised. He has massive generalized edema that could quickly lead to pulmonary edema. The low salt diet helps prevent that. He’s been here three days. How is it that in three days, no one has communicated the importance of restricting sodium to this family? Because within 5 minutes of interacting, I can tell it’s not noncompliance. It’s knowledge deficit and utter bewilderment. They have no idea. This should not take three days. And it shouldn’t be a nursing student who finally steps up and does it.

Nonetheless, it appears that I too must use a child to translate.

I have some charting to do now, so I have to leave the room. I wave to the little boy. He waves “bye-bye” and blows me a kiss. His mother smiles for the first time.

The next time I go in, I notice his lunch is still sitting on the counter. He wouldn’t touch it. I’m frustrated. I speak with the sister again.

Do you like this food? “No.” What do you eat for breakfast usually? “We don’t have food for breakfast.” What about lunch? “Rice and fish.” And dinner? “Rice and fish.”

I order more food for him. Rice and fish this time. He eats some, then falls asleep. I am not surprised. He’s been crying and screaming all day. His sister is eyeing the tray, but her mother says something in their language, puts the lids back on, and shuffles away tiredly. She looks exhausted, and worried. The girl looks at me. “If we eat the food, will you make us pay for it?” No honey. Please, eat the food.

She excitedly speaks to her mother, and the two of them pounce on the tray and nearly inhale the leftovers. It hits me that the mother probably has not been eating much if at all since the child was admitted. It’s been three days.

The hospital has a partnership with a catering company that donates one meal a day to families that can’t pay for it. We work it out so they can get a tray for dinner. The little girl lights up. I bring a board game, a stack of paper, and some markers into the room and ask if she happens to have changed her mind about games and drawing. What do you know?! She has. She begins plastering the room with portraits of flowers and butterflies and families playing together. We start playing a board game on the floor, but the little boy gets upset that he can’t play, so we move it outside to a bench in the hallway. She talks the whole time we’re playing—about fifth grade, and how math is her favorite subject, and how boring the hospital can be. But then she mentions how I let her hit the buttons on the machines as long as I’m standing right there with her, and she says she thinks she wants to be a doctor someday. I tell her to hold onto that dream, and fight for it, because so many people will tell her she can’t.

One of the things I’m supposed to chart is the family’s religious practice. Statistically speaking, I know they are probably one of two religions common to their background. I ask her where they go to church. “Oh, it’s an English church.” Do you know it’s name? Is it this religion? Or this one? “Nope. It’s just an English church.” Alright then.

She wins by a landslide. I might have let her. Then we clean it all up and take it back to the room. I show her how swollen her brother is and explain that salt makes it worse. We go to the nutrition room, and she helps me pick out which foods he can eat. Then she “shows” me which ones he cannot eat, and we review that several times. She’s going to be a good little doctor. Finally, she translates all of this for her mother, who becomes upset that he cannot have chips and pretzels—not because she wants to feed it to him, but because she did feed it to him earlier and didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to. She asks if he will get sicker now. I tell her I’m going to take really good care of him to keep that from happening. And my heart breaks, because if he does get worse, she will blame herself. And this was NOT. HER. FAULT.

He’s still asleep, and has been since 6pm. Mom says he will sleep through the night and wake up really early in the morning, before dawn. I bring some breakfast cereal and milk into the room for them so that she won’t have to wake the girl up to act as translator if he wakes up hungry. The little girl sits and talks with me while we draw together, and she teaches me how to say all of the colors in her language. She says she is surprised how quickly I learn it. Now it’s my turn to smile.

All the student nurses go downstairs for dinner. I grab my bag. A friend of mine spent a summer working with the very people group that this family is a part of, and he brought this bag back for me. I hadn’t even thought of it. The mother drops what she is holding, exclaims something that I can’t understand, and smiles as tears run down her face. My heart is full.

I check in on them just as my shift is ending to say goodbye, but they’re all asleep. Mom is curled protectively around her son in the bed. He is still fast asleep, one arm flung listlessly out over the bedrail. His sister is asleep on the couch, buried under blankets that rise and fall slightly with her even, peaceful breaths.  My eyes fall one last time on the little boy

I don’t wake them up. I hope they know that I care, and more importantly, I hope and pray with all that I have in me that someone steps up to care a little extra for this family when I’m gone. I hope that someone fights for him.

I’m still praying as I pull the door closed and walk away. I have never, in four years of nursing school, been this attached to a patient. Everyone always tells you not to get attached. But you know what happens then?

You forget to fight.

I will not do that.

Because sometimes, no one else will.

May God forever send me to those precious children that no one else will fight for.

Just a Call Away

We called BaPeter today. My heart leapt when I heard his voice. “Ah! BaPeter!” David said. “Um… Ea mukwai?” he answered. “This is David! In America!” Then Peter let loose a string of Bemblish very difficult to follow that I think basically meant, “It’s nice to hear from you.” We listened in joy and breathed deep, for the air in the room was suddenly a little bit Narnian.

The next intelligible words out of his mouth were, “He is fine! Miracle, he is doing fine!” And again my soul rejoiced, because every once in a while, it’s nice to win one. “Wonderful, great!” David exclaimed. “And how are the other boys?!” He meant Peter’s other kids, but Peter thought he was referring to “our” boys—the kids who lined the streets to play with us every night, who showed up at the gate at dawn the day we were to leave to make sure they wouldn't miss us. “Oh! They are missing you. They have still not received the balls!” I winced a little. We had promised them a soccer ball when we left, because the one we played with all summer belongs to the orphanage. We could not find one in the village or in the capitol. Zeger’s dad looked for one too, to no avail. We had intended to send one earlier, but it took a surprisingly long amount of time to find a soccer ball, figure out how to ship it the cheapest, then find other light-weight items to stuff the corner of the box with. Unfortunately, the nature of poverty culture anywhere in the world is such that one must be careful of the value of such items. The more prized the contents of the box, the less likely that said box will make it to its intended recipient. That situation is a bajillion times more complicated since the recipients are children. All excuses aside, I am frustrated that we have not yet kept that promise.

By the time we left Zambia, I was relatively certain I had phone numbers for half of the country. Apparently they are mostly for the half that I really don’t care if I contact or not. It finally dawned on us that we could just ask someone for Peter’s number, since he works at the orphanage.  I’m glad we did, even if the phone calls do cost a fortune.  There’s just no cheap reliable way to keep in contact with them all. The three we normally communicate to the crowd through are all apparently phoneless at the moment. Two of our little partners in crime took that title a bit too literally and got themselves in some serious trouble after we left. We've been worried sick about them, and updates have been limited for a variety of reasons.

We talked with BaPeter for just a few moments then had to bid him farewell. David and I both laughed light-heartedly and kept hugging each other, just for something to hug. His eyes danced with memories of friends as I darted around the room gathering my things so I wouldn’t be late to lab.

It was a less-than-two-minute phone conversation, but when we are here, so far away both in terms of distance and in length of time before we can return, those two minutes were more precious than the purest gold.