Miraculous Medicine

I believe in miraculous medicine.

When I go to work, I walk through

the glass doors of the ICU.

I tune out dings and beeps

and alarms that induce delirium.

I walk into rooms with people plugged

into life support / dialysis / ventilators.

I reassure myself that’s a reasonable way

to live / rehabilitate / stave off Death.

“Helping People” and “Saving Lives.”

I open another patient chart.

78-year-old Japanese-speaking female,

pulseless electrical activity

Clinically dead for 6 minutes

then revived with machines.

Now the breathing tube,

and the feeding tube,

and the heart pump have all

come out, and it’s time to restore

“Quality of Life.” “Good Luck,”

says her nurse, then mouths “Crazy.”

When I enter the room, she is chained

to the bed. I introduce myself and ask

the standard question, “Do you know

where we are today?” She looks me dead

in the eyes and says, “Hell.” I swallow.

But of course, she’s delirious, heavily

accented English and refusing an interpreter.

I explain, “We are in a hospital. Your heart stopped.”

She squints, Tugs on her wrist restraints

and says, “I was with my God. They kidnapped me here.”

I breathe in. I undo the restraints. I teach her to stand again.

She grabs me by the neck when I pivot her into a chair.

When I leave her, strapped up and re-plugged, I ask,

“Do you need anything?” She’s quiet, but firm.

“To be back with my God.”

In my note, I hover over the words

not-oriented and delirious. But

here’s the trouble: is she?

And more trouble: I believe her story.

At five-years-old I was converted into

an Evangelical Christian during a trip to Grandma’s.

My mother, NOT THRILLED, started taking me

to a Unitarian Universalist church (a hippie social club,

according to Grandma) to tone down my evangelizing

and soothe my fears about my family burning in Hell.

It worked, sort of. Slowly, so slowly, I stopped asking

Which one of you is lying about God! and uneasily accepted

two-truths: two contradictory things can be true.

God can be and not be, depending on the angle.

And the only Real Fact is how much I can never know.

Then I found Science. And even better, Medicine.

Where the method is golden and everything is backed-up.

No space for divine mystery or unanswerable questions when

Eeverything is under investigation and human LIFE is on the line.

My grandmother, ever more fanatic in her faith,

was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for severe bipolar disorder.

The scorecard was clear: God as delusion. Science as fact.

Here’s the trouble: inexplicable things kept

happening around me. And more trouble:

I still believed in God, or Universal Good,

or space for the unknowable sacred. 

I met my soulmate (a practical impossibility).

He’s a scientist and a Catholic.

He reminded me of two-truths.

And that sometimes not having a clue

is the most honest you can be.

My 78-year-old Japanese-speaking angel

was diagnosed with ICU delirium and sent

to a nursing home. During our last session

we walked to her favorite window to watch the sky.

“You’ve made great progress in therapy,” I say.

She doesn’t blink. “Human beings are very adaptable.”

I squint, processing.  “It’s amazing, ” she says, 

“This whole other place exists. But we go through hardship. We survive.”

I go to work every day in someone else’s Hell.

But I still believe in miraculous medicine.

I believe in Helping People and preserving

Human Life and improving Quality of Life.

Though some days even those beliefs require

the most diligent practice of faith I’ve ever known.