Faith

In the hospital I am currently working in, I do only night shifts. From 6pm to 10am, I'm all alone and on my own. While mostly I get hardly ten patients a day...some nights its like a flood. Like 'the centre for the worst cases' just closed and all their patients transferred.
Last night was like the former. Peaceful. Nice opd cases. No patients after 1. Like the calm before the storm.
At 7 am, I was woken up. 'Madam orru jaundice patient'...
17 yr old girl... hepatitis B... in severe encephalopathy bordering on coma... however hemodynamically stable... For personal and personnel safety, we usually don't take seropositive cases. So I set out to convince the parents for referral to higher centre. Because of my age and gender,they didn't take me seriously. They decided to wait for their pastor.
In the next half hour I saw a hypoglycemic encephalopathy and scorpion bite in quick succession.
I got back to check on her. Cold extremities... no pulse.... unresponsive... bp dropping... Immediately I began cardiopulmonary resuscitation. I ventilated her and called my boss. That's when they became serious. By this time the pupils were fixed and dilated. We were one step away from declaring death.
What happened next I will never forget...
All the relatives and the pastor gathered round. These poor illiterate labourers held hands and just cried to their god. With tears they prayed over a dead body. And they believed... believed that she would get up and walk... And yet they said 'your will be done'...
It was heart wrenching. Moving. There was no anger or denial. Just total surrender.
I wish I could say there was a happy ending. They went home with a corpse.
But in victory.