We often go for nightly strides around the hospital premises. It was the beginning of the outbreak, a time when everybody has difficulty embracing the normalcy. We would see patients specific to the ward we knew would have limited to prohibited visitors. On few occasions, some of them, out of boredom, we concluded, would wipe their own window. Perhaps to kill time. Perhaps to hasten time. Perhaps, to disrupt time on a standstill. Little did I know that those scenarios were just preparations for the coming storm.
It was Sunday when we received our most awaited documents. On a Monday, Benedict was already in the Emergency Room. How time shifted from a calm sea to the raging waves, I can only clutch my hands in prayer.
The succeeding events wore me down. Being the Supervisor-On-Duty that day and attending to the love of your life, inserting his access, hearing the words I feared for the people I love. “He will be tested for COVID and admission is needed”.
I was brought back to those nights when both of us would think how it must be so difficult up there. Looking down here. It’s happening to us.
On his second day, my fear was fed when he called me and surely, I couldn’t swallow the lump on my throat. “Babe I’m positive”, his words cracking. It was a pivotal moment in our relationship. After all, we were in the middle of our wedding prep.
I couldn’t count the number of calls I didn’t answer correctly that day, decisions I have to make not only being the Head Nurse of one of the busiest Units of the hospital and relieving for the Supervisory post, and at the same time, caring for the person you least wanted to take care of as a nurse: my Benedict. I pushed his wheelchair silently. Deeply wounded. Him as my patient. I, his nurse.
I went home that day after God-knows-where I got the strength just to pull off my 12H shift, closed my door and for the first time, cried for the situation I never wished to a worst enemy to experience.
It’s easy to be grateful when things are easy, when circumstances fits to what we shaped them to be, when we get what we wanted and prayed for. When the sea is calm and the waves are tender, softly washing our feet clean for the remnants of the sands that were once playfully there. I wanted my tears to do the same. That night. When I don’t know how we will keep this ordeal from Benedict’s family. From my family. The people who loves us the most.
I wanted the night to be over so I can see the glimpse of him. When an infiltrated IV cannula is my chance of holding his hand against my gloved hands, wistfully longing that this is just all a dream and that I would wake up with an extra inch of enthusiasm because Benedict is there, reaching for my hands ungloved.
When difficult blood extraction becomes an opportunity for me to see the sight of him. Eyes weary from fatigue and heart drained. I can only depend on little pockets of mercies, wherever it is coming from.
Him trying to be strong because I’m around. I, trying to recollect whatever strength left because he is around.
I wanted the day to be over so I can see him from the window waving. Or just merely there. Standing. Just like what we see months back. It’s happening to us.
The only difference is that I’m staring to the window alone, and Benedict, now the patient.
This wasn’t our plan.
But this IS God’s.
The nights we would walk around and see those patients in the COVID wards were intended for us. God was preparing us in those nights for this bleak moment. It wasn’t the type we had foreseen, but exactly the type God knows we would endure together.
“My grace is sufficient enough for power is perfected in weakness”. This is my favorite Bible verse Benedict was trying to memorize in one of our evening devotionals.
The days were indeed long and the nights agonizing. How we survived, it’s only by God’s grace alone.
There’s no skipping ladder.
There’s no shortcut.
Carrying the Cross was never a straight path. But when He chose us to bear this cross, He designed it in a way it will be carried by two. By Benedict and I.
Last Saturday was St. Benedict’s day. On the sunny Sunday before the sun beats down, Benedict was discharged.
3 days after, before we celebrate the Feast of Mt. Carmel, he was tested negative for the virus.
God didn’t only heal Benedict physically.
God healed our impatience.
God healed our doubtful hearts.
God healed our ego and pride.
God healed our sense of control.
God healed our rigid timelines.
God healed our poor ability to surrender.
God healed our limited vision of God.
It was a tedious journey. But at the same time, it was Redemptive. Transformative.
Winging everything we’ve seen and felt, all the terrors and miracles, we are resolved that these, and more, are cathartic to the soul. He was locked up in the four corners of that room, but our lives were open:
For God to stage His ocean of mercy.
For God to perform the miracles if we allow Him to.
For God to use ordinary people for His purpose.
It was a languishing 17-day journey.
But we’re finally home.
God heals one day at a time.
