Chapter Two Travel With Jesus
My eyes were blinked by bright light, and outside the window were the clear blue sky and a tall building. I saw many people standing in my room, some of whom I knew, and some I did not, each of them seemed to be eager to tell me a story. In the most front were my daughter and an elegant tall white lady.
Right after I opened my eyes, the white lady said to me:
“You have had incubation tube for 11 days, so we need to put a trach for you as soon as possible. Do you agree or not?”
“A doctor”, I recalled the doctors who cut my muscles into slices, and was not able to tell a dream from reality. I looked at her very angry, whispered without any hesitation:
“No”.
Obviously she was disappointed, she turned back and walked out of the crowd. Before anybody had chance to talk to me, the lady came back:
“You may get infection in your lungs if you don’t allow us to take the incubation tube out, which may threaten your life. Think about it.”
“No” I whispered.
She looked at me, pity and confused, and then left.
“Mom, mom, you woke up finally! You are in OMH now, you were injured in a car accident 11 days ago on your way back to O city, and was brought back to H city by a rescue helicopter.” My daughter told me. “Police did not allow me to live by myself because I am under 18 years old. Mr. Kothe, my math teacher, and his wife Dr. Merfe took me to their family. I’ve been living with them.” My daughter pointed to a middle age couple behind her.
Mr. Kothe nodded his head with kind smile. He is about 45 years old, 1.7m tall, bold head, and his wife, Dr. Merfe, walked closer to hold my right hand:
“Don’t worry about Mary. She has been getting along pretty well with our two kids. They go to school together, and then Mr.Kothe brings Min here after school, and I take her home. By the way, I am a doctor in this hospital.”
“Thank you, thank you.” I whispered with grateful smile.
A Chinese gentle man walked up:“I am Peter, the vice president of Chinese Association in H city. We are very sorry about your accident, and we have a 10 people group to help you go through the difficulty. Those 10 people were picked from Chinese Association, Chinese Christian Church and Chinese Student Association in H city. We will raise some money for you…”
“Hi, how have you been? ” Seeing several familiar ladies whom I had not met for years, I was excited immediately.
Obviously they did not hear me. YF grabbed my hands, more excited than me:” You survived, survived the accident! The second day we came to see you, your head swelled so big, and we could not tell it was you…” She made gestures around her head while she was talking. “Your right leg was totally crashed, and the doctor decided to cut it off at the beginning…”
Lokou could not wait for her to finish, and talked to me like a communist social worker: ” Many people care about. Look, the balloon and little bear were from your boss and coworkers. These flowers were from Chinese student association, and this card is from your advisor. Those days we have been praying for you, and we believe God will take care of you…”.
I tried to communicate with my visitors, but very soon I realized that the only whisper they could understand me was “Thank you”. I gave up effort, and listened to them. Anyway, everybody was fighting to tell me something, I could not win the competition.
After sending my visitors off, I started to think of my problems. How did I run into a car accident? Why was it in H city? When did I come to H city? Most important: how long is it going to take me to recover? Can I keep my job? How long will Mr. Kothe and his wife take care of my daughter? Where can she live after she moves out of Mr.Kothe’s family? I was thinking and thinking, could not figure out reasonable answers for myself.
Floor doctor came to my room for her routine inspection in a morning.
“My hands, my hands”. I whispered with my highest volume.
“You will not be able to move your hands and arms any more due to your spinal cord injury. You were injured at C2, C4 and C5, and C2 was totally broken and the center of C2 was seriously damaged. Dr. Lee already replaced it with a metal plate. ” She replied.
“But how can I do my work without hands and arms? How can I drive?” I shot her with my questions, forgetting that she may not be able to read my lips. To my surprise, she did understand me.
“You cannot use regular computer, however, you can use a special computer. You can use your voice instead of hands.” I looked at her, didn’t know what to say, what life is going to be without arms and hands?
The thing which annoyed me most was the pain, the killing pain, from every part of my body, legs, arms, head and chest. My nurses were the people I wanted most, “ pain” I whispered to them when they came to my room, or to any visitors so that they could ask my nurse for pain medicines for me.
One day a nurse complained to my friend who asked for pain medicine for me, “I already gave her the maximum dosage pain medicines, but she still asks for more. I don’t know what I can do”. Every morning after I woke up, I could not wait for the night to come, so that my nurse would give me big dosage pain medicines and sleeping medicine, and I could go to dream, most of my dreams were nightmares, though. A nurse, Kristein, did not take care of me for several days, and she did not look at my new medicine order, I believe. She still gave me old medicines at around 9pm and left, did not come to my room until the next morning before she left her shift. I could not fall asleep, and was tortured by pain all the night. I felt my skin was being peeled off from arms and hands, body was twisted, was pulled apart. But I did not have voice, and was not able to move any part of my body to use a caller. I prayed God all the night, asking him to send my nurse to me, and I counted numbers thousands after thousands, from night to morning. After she knew I did not sleep all the night, she was so sorry and gave some sleeping medicines and pain medicines, I fell asleep immediately, so deep, without any nightmare, like a block of wood. Oh, It was a really nice sleep.
During the period after I woke up from accident, the pain was so terrible and never stopped, that I wished I was killed in the car accident. If I were killed in the accident, I would be in peace for good. Now I do not have strength to kill myself.
But who is going to take care of my daughter then? My poor daughter experienced so much hardness and poverty with me when I was pursuing degrees. I recalled the few months after I graduated and before I got a job offer, we had financial problem, to save money, my daughter only ate a little bit food, she was so small and skinny, looked like 5 years younger. She loves swimming and music so much, but I did not have money and time to take her to the clubs. Now I have a job and already saved some money, and she is old enough to drive, and I was going to buy her a car. I was injured in a car accident, I cannot do anything for her, and I will be her burden from now on. I felt guilty as a mom, and tears kept on coming out.
“Mom, why are you crying again? Don’t cry.” My daughter walked in, and wiped my tears with a tower.
“Are you happy in Mr. Kothe’s family?” I asked
“Yes. They have two kids, a 18-year old daughter, Jenifer, who is my classmate. She is going to Boston University this fall; a 15-year old boy, Tom, also in our High School. Tom was very interesting yesterday. When we went home, he was in the yard under a tree, holding a big trunk with mosses over his head, and his hair is long and his body is big like a wild man, he cut his panes into pieces. We thought it was a tree before he yielded to us.” Mary laughed as nothing had happened to us.
“Mom, I want to tell you one thing. Next week is our spring break, Mr. Kothe is going to take Jenifer and Tom out of town, so nobody is going to drive me here. I will not come to see you next week, is it OK?”
“No, I want to see you.” I cried again.
“Mom, don’t cry, I am going to talk with Dr. Mefe to see what we can do.”
She sat at my bed, told me about their Asian Cultural Club and Science Club, the activities she and her coworkers plan for the clubs, talked about her classes, competitions results.
“How many people do you have in the Science Club?” I asked.
“Over 20”.
“So few”.
“It is more than the numbers in most clubs in our school. Plus we have some limitations, only juniors or seniors are allowed to join our club.”
“How did you let people know that you started the Science Club?”
“I talked to our science teachers so that they gave me about 5 minutes at the beginning of their classes to talk about our club, the requirement to join our club and the meeting schedules, etc.”
I smiled at her with proud. “You are going to graduate this May. Do you think your successors will do a better job?”
“It is for sure for the Science Club, but I doubt for the Asian Cultural Club.”
“You already realize the problems with Science Club, why don’t do something to improve the situation?”
“The club was started a few days before your accident. I cannot invest much time to it. Every day after I finish my home work, I have to come here to be with you.”
I could not say anything, she is my closest one in the world. After the accident, I became so weak spiritually, and wanted to keep her with me as long as possible even if she took naps at my bed.
Dr.Merfe took Mary home at about 5 pm, and I was left by myself. The problems of my hands and arms came back to me, “YES, I AM GOING TO MOVE MY ARMS AND HANDS NO MATTER WHAT, and I am going to start to activate them today!” I said to myself. I focused all my strength to the first joint of the middle finger of my left hand, bend, bend, bend… Several hours passed, the hand was like a dead frog, and the middle finger seemed not to listen to me at all. However, I had some confidence in my heart: I am going to move my hands and arms. In the mean while, I prayed God to give me courage and power:
“ Jesus, my lord, my holy father, thanks a lot for helping my daughter and me through so many difficulties. Thank you for saving me from the car accident. You are the MOST powerful and MOST holy one. Please stay with me, please give me power to move my hands, please give me peace and release my pain.”
In the quite and dark .night, the response of God came to me with strong voice as a hammer punches on a drum:
“My child, don’t be afraid, I am with you .”
The picture of the holy father, great father, full of love, full of power, appeared in my mind. We were at the foot of a huge dark mountain, he was seating on a rock, and I was kneeing at his foot as a child. He picked up my hand from the ground, and told me: “There was a long way in front of us. Let’s go.”
“Yes, daddy!” I said, knowing that my hands and arms were going to move, sooner or later.
