Four heart attacks in less than a week had Mike thinking seriously about his
funeral service and Millie’s widowhood. The same dark thoughts troubled Millie
as she held Mikes hand in the dim quiet of the hospital ward knowing that she
must be braver than she felt. The last attack resulted in Mike struggling to
hold onto life as his ambulance raced down the hard shoulder of the M62 to
Leeds, blue lights flashing, the insistent siren demanding clearance, giving the
lie to the nurse who told Mike there was no emergency. Mike knew better, seeing,
as it were in vision, his funeral, and Millie weeping alone.
The heart surgeons at Leeds Infirmary hit Mike with clot busting chemicals and
took him down into the bowels of the hospital where they pull off their everyday
miracles. He saw his heart on the screen pounding reassuringly, saw the murky
puff of radio-opaque dye squirted into his arteries, then endured the surprise
of the hot flush start at his head, rolling down his body, and exit through the
soles of his feet.
As the surgical team talked amongst itself, a slender wire snaked its way
through the hole they had punched into his femoral artery and wriggled into his
heart, aiming for the stenotic section of cardiac artery plainly detailed by the
fluid. A miracle of micro engineering called a stent sat at the end of the
catheter and, when in position, the balloon inflated spreading the expanded
metal keeping the cholesterol plaque apart and restoring circulation to the
coronary arteries. A check by the eminent surgeons and a second stent was
shunted up behind the first to secure the site from closure, then, a night in
the Coronary Care Unit, and Mike was on his way to recovery and eventually a
more leisurely return trip by ambulance this time sans siren and lights to
Huddersfield Royal Infirmary.
Millie entered the room with apprehension. She did not know whether Mike was
going to make it or not and after so many years even the fleeting thought that
her best friend and husband might not survive pushed her heart up into her mouth
and causing her to tremble with fear. She scanned the glimness, finding Mike in
the futuristic gloom surrounded by tubes and machines that interpreted and
reported his condition, peeping and chirruping to the accompaniment of a
flashing demonstration by multitudes of micro-sized Christmas tree lights as
they did so.
The nurse technician scrutinised the screens and illuminated displays, his face
betraying his anxiety, as he perceived some behaviour in Mike’s heart that
should not be. Two nurses were holding Mike’s hands, one either side of the bed,
as Millie fearfully drew near. One reached for Millie’s hand, placing Mike’s
hand in it as her counterpart laid Mike’s hand on the bed and left.
At the very moment Mike and Millie touched hands, the scrutiniser gasped,
exclaiming that the screens and indicators had suddenly shifted to register all
his readings just as they should be.
"Let go of his hand and let me check it when you are not touching him!" He said,
his voice urgent.
Millie laid Mike’s hand on the bed and he checked the screens again. Mike’s
heart beat a little faster but apart from that all his signs remained steady and
first-rate. Millie took his hand again and his heart slowed to normal limits,
and everyone relaxed. There was some muttering and head scratching from the care
team at what had transpired.
The touch of a hand of his True Love had calmed his troubled heart. He had lain
passive and terrified among hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of equipment
designed and built by human genius. Nursing, medical and radiological experts
who had jointly spent more than two hundred years developing their skills and
cunning had treated him. He had received hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pounds
worth of wonder drugs to calm him, break up the clots that had caused the death
of parts of his heart muscle, medicines to stop the pain, calm his anxiety and
prevent the formation of new clots, and while all these had been essential in
bringing him back from the edge of the grave, it was a miracle that no
individual brilliance can reproduce, no drug can imitate, and no machine can
generate: a miracle only achievable by the touch of the hand of one who is truly
loved and who truly loves.
Emma Rae McKay wrote to her husband, David:
How much have I remembered you? As much as night and day! Not any thoughtful
moment have you Ever been away. From sunlight to moonlight, and From darkness to
the dawn, Your image and my love for you Have always lingered on. What more
could I have done, dear one, To show my feeling true? What more is there in
life, my love, That I can offer you?
Maybe there is nothing more that anyone could offer – except, perhaps, life
itself, through the touch of a healing hand when only True Love will make the
miracle. For the God of Miracles wrought the greatest miracle of all when He
sent His only Son so that we should not die, because He is the God of True Love.
Copyright © Ronnie Bray 22 December 2002
quill@libby.org
Ronnie Bray lives with his lovely wife, Gay in a cabin in the woods in Troy,
Montana, where they are active in the ministry of The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints. A few of Ronnie's many previously published stories in 2 The
Heart are: “Peace”; “White Robed Angel”; “Alfie Cleaving”; “The Visitor”; “Unto
the Least of These”; “None So Blind”;“It’s Squashy Time”. Read more of Ronnie's
stories at:
http://www.2theheart.com/author_ronnie_bray/
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