The Good Neighbor

It happened again on Saturday night. A too-young man experienced cardiac arrest, leaving behind a too-young widow and children: 10, 8, and 5. There's a slide show of images that plays through my mind: the tremendous efforts of the emergency room team, the stoicism of the patient's German mother, the sincerity of the in-charge physician, and the despair of the wife. The slide show tends to stick, however, when it comes to the response of Sandy, the next-door neighbor.

My experience is that humans are programmed against willingly taking responsibility for their failings. The preschooler who says he did not get into the chocolate cake, despite the icing evidence around his lips. The motorist who says, "It was yellow, officer. It wasn't red." "It wasn't my fault; don't blame me." We just do not want things to be our fault. It's how we're made.

And yet, I've seen it time and time again in our emergency room. A sudden death and the family member will say, "She wasn't feeling right all afternoon. I should have brought her here sooner." "I should never have let him go upstairs." "I should have checked on him earlier." This uncharacteristic claim of responsibility on the part of the bereaved, I think, is some mixed-up attempt of the psyche to buy back time, to get a do-over, to change history. A form of bargaining, a way to postpone accepting the unwelcome reality.

When we walked into the conference room, the two neighbors were anxiously waiting for good news. But it wasn't to be. The nurse told them, gently but clearly, that the patient had died. One of the women had done CPR at the scene. Her immediate response to the unhappy news was, "I should have done more! I should have continued the chest compressions! I should have . . . ." Taking the responsibility for this death upon herself. The wise nurse very, very quickly put a stop to it. "There is nothing you could have done that would have changed the outcome."

Sandy struggled to accept this. Then her thoughts turned to the practical. She telephoned her husband who was with the children, children who matched her own in ages. A plan was devised that he would take all of the kids inside and put on a movie. And after the movie, the kids would all have a sleep-over. Just like they often did. They'd have one more night of their normal lives, and their mother would somehow find a way to tell them in the morning. Sandy was organized, caring, decisive. She had tried to save the man's life and now she was protecting his children. Could anyone have a better neighbor?

I left the two women in the conference room to return to the wife and mother, to tell them of the plan for the children. The wife was doing the typical cycling from excruciating sorrow to attention to detail. She'd phoned her own mother. Her mother-in-law had called the patient's brother who was on his way to the hospital, coming from about an hour away. The pastor would be arriving in a few minutes. It would be okay for the neighbors to go home; she had enough support.

When I returned to the conference room, the other neighbor was holding Sandy in her arms. The families were so close, the loss so devastating. The organized, efficient Sandy had vanished. "I should have started the CPR sooner! I didn't do the chest compressions right! I could have done more!"

"No," I told her in a voice stronger than I knew I had at that moment. "You did nothing wrong. You did everything right. The outcome wouldn't have changed. Sandy, you gave him a chance."

I wonder if she'll ever believe me.

Yesterday

Yesterday morning my friend of forty-plus years broke her blog silence with a lovely post about how she met her husband. It would have been their sixty-fifth wedding anniversary. She wrote about their courtship, his hopes for the future, and recaptured the feelings of a college girl, meeting a man and knowing her life was about to change. Near the end of her post, she wrote, "I don't intend to make this a story of our marriage, which was cut short by his death in a car accident when he was only thirty-eight. He was teaching at [the university] by that time and working on his doctoral dissertation We had three girls and a boy on the way when that happened. It was a terrible loss, of course. I had never thought that one could survive such a thing, but we did. He had given me that strength."

On and off throughout the day, I thought about my friend's post. At the time we met, she was a single mom with four pre-pubescent and pre-pre-pubescent kids. I was young, not-long-married, and full of my own hopes. I seldom thought of what her life had been before we met.

Her post stayed with me throughout the day. I thought of this young woman, alone with all of this responsibility. I wondered how she had been able to get out of bed each morning. "He had given me that strength."

In the afternoon, I went to work at the hospital. When my colleague gave me report of his day, after mentioning a need for an advance directive and a couple of minor traumas, he said, "We had a real tragedy here today. A young man, 32-years-old, collapsed at the gym with cardiac arrest. He leaves three young children."

My stomach tightened. Not because it reminded me of my old friend, but because somehow, instinctively, I knew who the man, the children, the wife were. My colleague didn't say any names, but I knew. I kept it to myself, I remained professional, and only after John had left and I was alone in the on-call room did I have the courage to unfold the hand-off sheet. The name there was the one I expected.

There's a young woman at our church who is involved and active among the younger set. She's stylish and attractive; no, she is just downright cute. She's so adorable that she was able to show up at worship without trying to cover the ingrowing hair that follows chemotherapy. For this woman has spent the past months recovering from breast cancer. At her age. Her children (5, 3, and 1 respectively) are beautiful and fashionably dressed. Her husband was equally handsome in his own way, and obviously adored her. A family for a magazine cover.

Two questions bombarded my brain. How had I known it was him? There must be thousands of 32-year-old men with three children. And how will she be able to get out of bed in the morning? I pray that He has given her that strength.

I went about my work. Fortunately, it was a stress-free shift. I spent an hour with a woman concerned about her sick mother's future. I discussed an advance directive with another woman. I delivered a Bible to a very nice man and prayed for his healing. A moment of panic when a pediatric trauma was called turned to gratitude that the trampolinist wasn't seriously hurt. And then it was time to go home to my husband, who I held a bit more tightly than usual.