We had some excitement this weekend. Saturday, around one, I got a call that my dear friend and former neighbor, Kathryn, was in the ER at the local hospital. I grabbed my daughter-in-law, a nurse, ran upstairs and threw on decent clothes so the staff wouldn’t think I was some bum and headed over to the hospital.
She was in one of the big rooms, lying there in the center on a gurney and hooked up to monitors. She would not mind my saying she was there because she had just slumped to the floor while pushing Emory’s wheelchair down to lunch. Somehow, the wheelchair then fell on top of her. I guess it was a fairly chaotic few minutes at the nursing home while the staff came running.
It was quiet there in the ER room, though. I was on one side and Alison was on the other, watching the cardiac monitor, which was, frankly, somewhat chaotic itself. She said, “Maybe someone should call the minister.” Alison asked her if she was frightened and she calmly replied, “No, what will be, will be. I’m just sorry this happened on Easter weekend.”
Then the beats evened out, grew regular and steady. We went upstairs to a room where she was again hooked into telemetry. We thought she’d be staying at least a day or two. But she bounced back and on Easter afternoon, I took her back to the nursing home and Emory, who had been pacing the hall in his wheelchair. He said, “We’ve got to stick together and not get separated again.”
We took back with us more than she had brought in the ambulance. She had a new knitted lap robe and a shawl, made by the Parkview Noble Hospital Needle Workers. On the tag, as you can see, it says “made for you with loving hands and caring hearts.” I remember a church in Gano, Ohio and a stained glass window that read “willing workers”; I once wrote an article about it. “Wiling workers” is a phrase that has stuck with me, making me feel the touch of the best in people.
I took these pictures with my cell phone and in this one, you can see the colors of the yarn, the card and the hospital bedrail. I had intended to crop the picture to show just the colors, but then decided that the bedrail emphasized the kind purpose of the needle workers efforts.
