One Answered Prayer

One Answered Prayer

Many of the times I’ve prayed, the results took the form of indirect help, half answers that might have been coincidence. But one time, I can absolutely say my prayer was answered.

It was Wednesday, June 24th, two days after Valerie’s stroke. She had stabilized through the day, but it had been a rough day. The doctors came to her family and I, talking about the possibility of the swelling in her skull getting worse. One of the doctors had shown me and Mike, her ex-husband, the MRI of her brain. The damage that had been done, there was little chance of her recovering movement or speech. What would life be like for someone used to talking to dozens of people a day if they couldn’t speak at all? Mike and I both sighed, knowing that Valerie would be in a Hell of her own if she made it out of this. 

Her family included me in the discussions, for which I’m eternally grateful. They could have told me to get lost; I was 53, a boyfriend, no legal standing, but they had met me, had gotten to know me some, accepted that Valerie loved me, so they let me stay. We all agreed not to do the surgery to remove part of her skull to relieve the pressure. That surgery might keep her alive, but that wouldn’t be a life Valerie would want. 

During one stretch of the afternoon, I had been in Valerie’s room. When I came out, her brother told me he had been telling Sarah, Valerie’s daughter, about the loans and credit cards that needed to be paid off, that she needed to sell Valerie’s Toyota to pay off the credit union, all of the ugly grown up adult things that should wait. Sarah had run off.

I didn’t call him an idiot, but felt like I should have. I knew the drill for this stuff, knew the things that were waiting to be settled, forms to wait for, where to mail the certified copies. A 53 year old man can handle that. A 20 year old girl, not so much.

I went looking for Sarah. I walked to the Surgery waiting area, asked the person if they had seen a young girl with long brown hair. The woman said they had seen her come in, go toward the rear of the waiting area.

Sarah was sitting in a chair. I sat next to her, told her that I should be the one handling all of this, that if it had been a year from now, it would have been me. I asked her how many times had she heard her mom on the phone with Roger, tell him “that’s stupid, shut up!” I told her that he meant well, but in these situations, people’s minds go haywire with random ideas, coming up with things that need to be done, searching to do something, anything to do in the middle of the eye of the storm. I told Sarah that there are today’s issues, then there are next week issues, then next month issues. The most important issue for us now was her mom. Those other things needed to wait. 

Sarah settled down. I felt so sad for her at that moment. The hospital nursing staff had laid out the pecking order for all of us. Valerie was ‘single,’ so neither I nor Mike, her ex-husband and children’s father, had any say. Next after a legal spouse was an adult child- Sarah was 20, her brother Sal only 17. Sarah was the only one who mattered in the eyes of the law. I lost my dad when I was 23, but that had been over two and a half years, with his cancer remission to prepare us for his eventual end. Not two days. That’s why Roger dumped all of the debt talk on Sarah; she was the one on the hook in his mind. 

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The rest of her family and her former in-laws started to filter out shortly after 5 pm. Visiting hours were over at 6 pm in the hospital, which was lucky for us. A week before, Mercy wasn’t allowing any visitors at all because of the local COVID-19 infection rate. But the community infections had stabilized, and we had the chance to be there with her. Many others in dire health hadn’t had that chance, had died alone while family waited outside.

I sat on the left side of the bed. Valerie was left handed, and the stroke had been on the left side of the brain, leaving her right side almost motionless. I was holding her left hand while her mom and step father, her brother, and the children left. It was just us two.

It started slowly, so slowly I thought it was just the twitch that she had been doing earlier. But her thumb began sliding lightly along the top of my finger. There wasn’t much pressure from her grip, sweeping a path of an inch, back and forth. I thought of saying something to one of the nurses, but I was afraid to get an answer like “it’s just a twitch.” I wanted to hope. Hope for her to recover, hope to discover that God put me here to care for her, carry on life with her. Hope for a chance to redeem myself, all the things I didn’t do for Emily.

Six o’clock came, and Valerie’s nurse reassured me that everything was stable, that visiting hours started at 8:00 am the next morning, we’ll see you then.

Earlier in the day, I had told her ex Mike that Valerie had called the cops on some of the neighbors in her complex on Sunday night. A group of black guys had been up on the deck, smoking weed, shooting off fireworks and shooting up, shooting up and tossing needles off the second floor deck. Valerie called me, huddling with two other single women in another apartment, scared to death. They had called the complex manager. Voice mail. Crickets. Valerie was the one to call the cops. Police drove by, and the party scattered for a few minutes, then reassembled in the playground area and continued until 1 am.

I told Mike I thought we should get her car out of there, that it wasn’t maybe the safest place. I’d park it in my driveway, off the street. He agreed, so Pete and I drove to get it at 8:30 pm. 

I was driving on the interstate when the call came from Mercy. They wanted her brother’s phone number. I handed my phone to Pete while talking to the speakerphone, telling him to look up Roger Von Mahen. Once we gave them the number, they told me they had called her daughter Sarah; Valerie’s heart rate was increasing, her blood pressure slipping. They were going to take her to have a CAT scan to see if the swelling was increasing. They said I needed to get there. Now.

We pulled into Valerie’s parking lot, and I drove her RAV4 to Mercy, following the same path the ambulance had taken two nights before, this time going a mile farther to Mercy. Des Moines at 10pm on a Wednesday night was usually a calm, deserted place.

But this wasn’t a usual time. There were protests about the police killing of George Floyd , a black man in Minneapolis. There were protests, looting, burning of police cars, some within a mile of Valerie’s apartment. Des Moines, like most of the country, was primed, waiting for a spark to start racial violence. That was why nobody wanted to stop the party the Sunday before- both sides were locked and loaded, wanting to release their frustrations with violence.

I could see the lights of two squad cars from the freeway exit. I drove into the hospital zone of outpatient clinics and passed four police SUVs at one corner, four more at the next corner. There were four more at the ER entrance, with a crowd of teens and twenty somethings milling around, some African American, some white. What the hell was going on? 

I parked clear of the crowd and walked towards the doors, trying to distance myself from them. Your fight isn’t my fight, please, I’ve got no quarrel with you, I was thinking. I saw Mike’s brother and his wife Karla sitting about 50 feet from the entrance, which had a dozen DMPD and Mercy security officers blocking the agitated crowd from entering.

 Karla came up and said Mike, Sarah and Sal had gotten in before this bunch got here. There had been a shooting, and all these kids were assembled, wanting in. The hospital was on security lockdown, not letting anyone in or out. 

Then my phone rang. Roger was calling. He was at a hotel in West Des Moines, and had decided not to come. He had taken a sleeping pill after he got to his room and wasn’t able to drive. Sarah had called a cab or Uber for him, but he thought he was too out of it to come.

After that call ended, I wanted to scream, “Who does that! Who thinks of sleep when you’ve got someone in ICU? I had gone 40 straight hours on adrenaline, caffeine, nicotine and protein bars! You’re not supposed to sleep through this!”

I walked to a bench about 20 feet from Steve and Karla while the angst filled youth were still being blocked, the way in closed. I sat down, and with my head in my hands I cried. Valerie had told me several times she feared dying alone, so I knew that wouldn’t happen. If I hadn’t decided to go check on her Monday night, she might have. I had kept that from happening, her children were there for her end. 

But here I was, alone. Another woman I loved about to die, not four hours away, but 400 feet away, but inside. And I was still powerless to do anything about it. 

So I prayed. I asked God, Jesus, the Holy Ghost, MaryBlessedEverVirgin, all the angels and saints, just please let me in. Let me be there, please, I begged.

A few minutes later, someone called Karla, told her to have us go to the door. The young ones must have gotten word that their victim was ok, the crowd had started to dissipate. The staff inside took our temps according to COVID precautions and let us back in.

When we got to the ICU, they had just gotten hold of Megan, Valerie’s mom. They were on their way from Pella, close to an hour away. They had put Valerie on a ventilator because her breathing was getting weak. The staff said they could take the tube out once everyone got there. The end wouldn’t take long once they took it out. 

Megan and her husband Steve got to the room around midnight. We stood around Valerie until the nurses asked us to step out while they took the breathing tube out and made her “comfortable.”

We all filed back in after they prepared her. I let the rest of them go ahead of me, so the way the bed was situated, I was on her right side. I took her right hand in mine. 

Six hours had taken a toll. Valerie’s breathing was shallow, raspy. All of the monitors had been disconnected, no wires anymore tying her down. I held that right hand as the breathing grew fainter and fainter. At 1:00am, a pair of the nurses came in. One held her stethoscope to Valerie’s chest, said she didn’t hear a heartbeat. The other nurse took her turn, but said she could still hear it beating. They silently slipped out, leaving us and Valerie. 

The pair came back at 1:15. This time they agreed. I had felt the hand growing colder. It was over. God found a way for me to be there. 

Prayers are answered. I just wish it didn’t have to be that one.