loved and forgiven

Shortly before I left work to go on maternity leave, I cared for a patient who had been the victim of a horrible accident. He was about my age, and one night, in a not-so-safe part of town, another person decided to run over my patient - repeatedly - with his car. It left him with brain injuries and swelling so severe that even some of our most calloused, experienced staff were open-mouthed at the CT scans of his head. He actually came into the hospital somewhat conscious and alert, nodding his head to questions, but within the night, the bleeding and swelling in his brain turned him completely unresponsive, and he never again acknowledged anyone's presence, not even his mother's.

He came to our unit a very, very broken man. A part of his skull needed to be removed because of the massive swelling, and the left side of his head bulged under the skin. We cared for him, treated his fevers, his erratic heart rate, bathed him, turned him so that he wouldn't get bedsores, fed him through a tube, and monitored his oxygen levels as a respirator kept his lungs going. The chances of recovery were nil. Doctors broke the news to his mother, first gently, then bluntly, as she refused to believe her son was really gone even though his heart was still beating. A hospital ethics committee wanted to end life support, and his mother adamantly refused. He was still there when I left for maternity leave, and the last news I'd heard was that he was moved to a nursing home. I thought perhaps he'd made some miraculous improvement, though I knew the quality of life after such an accident was bound to be poor.

Today, I read that he passed away this past Wednesday. He was 34 years old.

I'd seen a lot of patients like him in the year I worked in my burn/trauma unit. Their injuries are severe, their prognoses grim, but they start to blur together after a while. Maybe it's the brain's way of protecting you from the reality of so many hurt people, I don't know. But I don't remember all of them. You give the best nursing care you are capable of, and then you try to leave their stories and faces at the hospital and go home to be with your family.

This patient, however, is one I will never forget.

He was a career criminal, purportedly one of the biggest drug dealers in my city. He had a rap sheet a mile long, I was told - possession of narcotics, robbery, assault, etc. He was outside a nightclub when someone, clearly set to kill him, ran over him repeatedly with his car. Police had to use their own vehicles to barricade this guy from continuing to run my patient over, and the scene was reportedly so "unstable" (dangerous, I presume) that it took paramedics a full hour just to reach my patient. When news of his injuries broke and the newspaper published the story online, comments came flying in from all over, some mentioning the bravery of the officer who risked his own life to stop the other guy's car, but most saying that our city and the world in general would be better places because this guy was critically injured, off the streets, and would hopefully die. They used words like "scum" and "trash" and a few others that are too offensive for me to mention. People seemed pretty content that justice had been served to this guy, who, as one person wrote online, "got what was coming to him."

What people didn't see, or at least care to remember, was that my patient, however heinous the crimes he committed, was someone's son and father.

His room was full of bright posters and funny little crayon drawings from his son. A picture of a bright-faced little boy in a baseball uniform hung under the dry-erase board. Get-well cards and balloons were stashed in a corner of his room to make way for all the medical equipment to keep his body alive.

His mother came to visit her son every single day. She was a kind lady, strong and fairly stoic about the whole situation, given the gravity of her son's condition, though her eyes told me she was feeling every bit of pain that comes with seeing your son lying gravely ill in a hospital. She worked at the hospital in a different unit, and when she was at his side, she always helped the staff to care for him. She spoke to him, talked to him about his son, told him how much she loved him, asked him to move something - anything - or at least turn his glassy-eyed, blank gaze to her in recognition, which he never did.

This past weekend, she had to bury her son. No parent should ever have to go through such hell, burying their child. And though he may have been what many would call a bad person, a criminal, a detriment to society, he was still, after all, her son. Loved. Forgiven.

And I am reminded again and again, when I think of him, that no matter what I do or what other people think of me, or how many times I screw up, even when I screw up in huge, messy ways, that I, too, am always loved. Forgiven. Not just by my very awesome parents, but even more by my Papa in heaven. He comes to visit me every day, too, waiting for me to look His way and talk to Him.