The Orderly

He worked as a security guard at the hospital during the week. And on the weekends, he washed dishes in the hospital cafeteria.  The small checks added together to pay the hospital what the insurance wouldn’t cover.  He’d do anything to pay for his wife’s chemo.  Love would make you do crazy things like that.

He was 78 years old,  but he didn’t look a day over 65. It was probably his smile. But it was most likely his love for the lady in the bed.  He sat next to her whenever he wasn’t working just so he could hold her hand. Love would make you do crazy things like that, too.

They had met when he stepped off the train from Korea.  She was a nurse. He was a soldier. She was impressed by his stripes and medals.  He thought her white uniform made her look like an angel. They were married not long after that in a small, white country chapel.  For fifty-five years, they had tested “for better or worse.”  He looked her all tangled up in tubes and sighed. This was definitely “worse.”  His angel was in pain.

She was so strong.  The mother of three boys, she had taught those boys wrong from right.  And did she teach them well. All three were successful men. They looked like their mom and thankfully, he laughed, had her discipline, too.  The three boys had taken turns with their dad sitting with their mom.  They put a new meaning to “intensive care.”

A head nurse came in and put a blanket around the husband’s shoulders.  She  looked sadly at the bundle of bones and tubes lying next to him.  She had once worked for the frail lady in the bed.  So many nurses had.  Even legends get sick.  But it was still so hard to believe that cancer would have the nerve to attack someone so strong.  She quietly snuck out without disturbing the him again.  He was praying. And so was she.

God had to know he needed her.  But just in case He didn’t know, he thought he’d tell Him again. And again. And again.

As their bodies grew more frail, their souls grew closer.  He thought of her first. She thought of him first. They never had to be selfish because they always knew the other would be there.  That was very powerful.  Love had been their fountain of youth.

The cancer has started as a speck on an x-ray.  The speck had grown and spread, like Kudzu in the Yazoo City hills. She had fought so bravely.  But her fight was starting to fade.

He prayed again.

An orderly interrupted. “Hi.  Mind if I come in?”

The husband looked at the young face.  Something seemed very familiar about him.  He nodded and said, “C’mon in, young man.”

The orderly pulled up a chair and sat next to the husband.  The room was dark, yet the he sensed a light coming from somewhere.  The orderly held the man’s hand and then his wife’s.  Warmth flowed between the three of them.

The next day her doctor came in with a fresh set of x-ray’s:  The inoperable tumor was shrinking.  The doctor couldn’t explain it. The radiologist was completely at a loss. The oncologist had never seen anything like it.  The nurses called it an answer prayers.  The husband didn’t care.  He had been given a little more time with the love of his life.

The husband stopped by the nurses station to say hello. He asked the Head Nurse about the young orderly.  She looked at him and said,”Sorry, we don’t have anyone matching his description working here.”

As he held wife’s hand that night, he looked down at her sleeping face and figured it all out.  Even angels occasionally help out one of their own.  Love makes them do crazy things like that.