Nearer

"So draw me nearer Lord

 Never let me go 

Closer to your heart 

Draw me nearer Lord"

-Meredith Andrews

Our midwife handed me a packet of papers to sign as I rounded in our nursery.  I knew what they were … I have signed so many.  Black-and-white reminders of tragedies recently played out in flesh and blood.  I set them to the side while I finished my work, planning to attend them later.

 

 
Before I could, I was summoned to delivery bed three where a first-time mother struggled to deliver her baby girl.  The nurses could no longer find heart tones with the hand-held Doppler and mom was getting tired - her pushes shortening and her face showing obvious exhaustion.

I applied a vacuum extractor to the baby’s head and told her, “Mama - mi pulim i no inap.  Yu pus i no inap.  Yumi wok-bung, em bai inap.”  On the next contraction a limp baby delivered into the bed with deeply stained amniotic fluid.  But she had a heartbeat.  We cleaned her airway and I set to work giving artificial breaths with a bag.  The mask was too big for this unexpectedly premature infant, but I started to see some movements in the chest.  All the while I awaited the telltale cry of new life … but it wouldn’t come.  I stared into that face, challenged in maintaining a good position of the over-large mask.  It stared back with a stunned and pale look.  I wondered to myself if this image would be a haunting reminder when I was forced to collects its black-and-white specter in a few days or if it might be a moment that I reflected on with privilege as a new life gained traction in our world.

After what felt like hours but was likely a few minutes, that little blank-faced baby started to gain color and grimace.  A few more breaths and the chest moved in and out on its own.  A weak cry finally escaped and I set the bag aside, still praying that I would see that face on rounds in the morning … “Just let this baby see a turn of the earth …”

 

 

I resumed caring for the patients in the ward and picked up the chart of a woman whose baby bilum rested next to her.  She looked like she was ready to leave, even though she had just had a cesarean delivery 3 days ago.  I inquired about her pain, her eating and walking.  “Na bebi i stap?”  A thin mist layered her eyes as she indicated the bag, “Em dai asde na mipela bai planim tude “.  Her deceased little one lay next to us, wrapped and shrouded - perhaps to conceal from the public motor vehicle driver that she was bringing a dead body in the car - to which there is a costly stigma attached.  “Mi sorri tru“. Had I paid more attention to those papers in the morning I would have known.  The chaplains visited them and prayed.  Next patient.

A few days ago I was really struggling with the experiences of my patients.  I actually kept a running list of those that I had to tell were dying.  In eight years I had never done that before and I don’t know why I did at the time, but I brought it home, recalled their faces through prayers, and felt better.  

The next day in clinic I watched the back of one of my HIV patients.  He had contracted the virus at birth 11 years ago and he left my room having just been told alongside his grandmother that the virus had weakened his heart and that he likely wouldn’t see his next birthday.  I felt a surge of helplessness. I want to be honest with my patients. I want them to understand what the road ahead looks like - and where it ends (in this world).  I give so much bad news. I wondered if what I do made any difference.

As the names on my list stacked up and the myriad ailments reminded me of my inabilities, I actually began to dread each pleasant smile entering my clinic door.

But there was one I could not avoid.

I wrote about my experience at Sengapi, one of our rural health centers, at the end of last year.  One of our nursing officers there was expecting a baby at the time. About a month after our team left, I received a phone call from her husband.  His crackled voice and our short conversation told me Melissa needed to be at Kudjip.  She had developed pronounced swelling and headaches in her eighth month of pregnancy.  She managed to get a medical evacuation flight out  but Issac couldn’t join her because Covid restrictions meant that only patients were allowed to travel on evacuation flights now - no guardians.  When she got to Kudjip she seemed alright, but quickly worsened over the next few days.  We needed to deliver her baby early.  Her husband tried to make it, but the rivers were flooded and he couldn’t cross them.  Her surgery went well and a vigorous baby girl went back to the ward while we finished.  When I went to check on her, a hooded figure was already next to her baby cot holding her hand.  There was Isaac.  A new father beaming down on his little girl.  MAF had managed an early flight and brought him in the morning hours while we were operating.  

 
Melissa and her baby had a few ups-and-downs for a couple weeks.  But over time and with prayer they did well.

I have never been able to untangle the great mystery of Gods grace.  I have seen and felt that it is infinite and that He spreads it far and wide.  Yet somehow none is wasted.  As though our world's separation from his perfect and peaceful presence means that a profound Grace, even limitless, is simply sufficient.  Abundant and extravagant but not wasteful.  When I watch my patient leave the room with an hourglass hanging over their days I wonder how I can see the next one in any way that shares that Grace.  Yet somehow it works.  Hearts are changed and touched - mine most of all.  Not because I have solutions.  Not because I am a miracle worker but often because I am not.  

In the next few days, our new mother and her baby girl stayed in the hospital.  The nurses dutifully checked on both of them - making sure they were doing well and that this new life was gaining the foothold it would need.  As I put my signature on their papers to leave, I reflected on the great redemption of those moments I spent looking into that apparently lifeless face.  It would be tempting to pat myself on the back.  We did well, it is true.  But we were just vessels of a greater intention.  A Grace given that I could not create or bestow - merely share.

 

"In your nearness I take shelter.

Where you are is where I'm home.

 I have need of only one thing - 

To be here before your throne"

 

As I enter our nursery I am reminded of God's presence.  All entrants must remove their shoes and wash their hands, like approaching a temple.  I go back and forth performing my doctor duties as mothers watch anxiously.  The room has a sacred quality for me because it is a place in which the most vulnerable are tended.  It draws me nearer to Him even when the end result may be a tragic reminder that His redemption is not yet full in our world.

And although I may struggle to see or feel it at times, at others all it takes is a small spark in a dark place to change the entire landscape. 

Perhaps that Grace can bring out bright blooms - even in a garden still fighting the weeds.