patient stories

Remember Yeme? I figure it's time for an update.

She's had more surgery, and the tumor above her eye is gone, the scar already fading quietly into her skin, barely noticeable between her plaits. She's blossomed in the almost-three months she's been on the ward. The walls in her corner of B Ward are covered with drawings and crafts and language charts, spelled out phonetically so we can communicate with her in her own language. (She just laughs when we try, but we're all getting a kick out of it, so no one really minds.) She's learning English, too, picking up one word at a time by mimicking our voices with uncanny accuracy.

It's almost time for her to go home. In the eighty or so days she's been with us, we have had no communication with her family. They haven't tried to call or write or use any other means to find out how she's doing. It's like they don't care, which could be closer to the truth than I want to think.

But she doesn't need us anymore. We've loved on her as much as we can, and her wounds have all healed. As hard as it is for us, the truth is that as soon as we can get her a flight, she'll be winging her way back to Guinea. Back to her village. Back to the people who abandoned her at our gates.

Hopefully, back to love.

We have something here on the ship called the Adopt-A-Patient Program. For those who work on the ship but don't have anything to do with the hospital, it provides them with an opportunity to come to the wards and spend time with our lovely patients. Crew members sign up and get the name of someone having surgery. They visit that person as often as they'd like while they're stuck in the windowless tin box we call our hospital. Some crew members visit once, some end up coming every day for weeks on end. Dorothy is one of the latter.

She's a teacher at the Academy, our on board school for children of the families who live and work here. When she picked up the slip of paper with Mickey's name on it, she had no way of knowing that Mickey would end up being one of our long-term patients. (Forty-nine days at last count.) He's a little man who had plastic surgery to release burn scars on his hand. The first time his bandage was changed, everything looked so good we considered sending him home. The next time we changed it, we were afraid he would lose a digit; infection had spread and threatened the skin grafts between his fingers.

Mickey started out shy. He was tiny, with little stick-thin arms and legs and he screamed every time a white person came near him. Dorothy never seemed to mind. She doggedly visited him, day after day, until finally her persistence paid off. I was working the other day when she called. Is it okay if I come see Mickey boy now? Or course it was okay. It's always okay for someone to come to the wards and tire out the children who seem to be feeding off an energy source I'm sure the US government would love to tap into.

When Dorothy's face showed around the door, Mickey gave a shriek of glee and toddled at top speed across the ward to fling himself into her arms. He's not shy anymore. In fact, he pretty much runs the place, getting pulled around the halls, perched like a sultan atop a pillow in a laundry basket, by willing servants.

One of the other nurses working that night noticed that Dorothy was wearing her white Mercy Ships shirt. In fact, Dorothy wears that shirt every single time she comes to visit Mickey. The nurse, curious as to why her apparel was so limited, asked her about it. Dorothy's simple answer stunned me.

I figure the Liberians don't have a lot of different clothes. And you nurses always wear the same uniforms. It doesn't seem right for me to come down here and flaunt my wardrobe. So I just put on this shirt.

That's the closest thing to Christ I've heard in a while.

I'm trying to resign myself to the fact that I'll never be able to properly explain this place to anyone who's never experienced it.

I was working on B Ward yesterday evening. There aren't so many babies anymore, but those who are there have been there for what feels like forever. Something like a month and a half. They think they run the place, and the noise level was significantly intense for most of the shift.

During a quiet moment close to the end of the evening, an anesthetist came in to speak to one of the patients about her operation in the morning. This particular lady speaks no English and, as it turns out, was holding a small grudge against us for jabbing her with needles to start her IV. Thankfully, my patient in the next bed, a sweet, smiling woman about my age whose face and arms and torso are covered in tumors, could communicate with the surly Oma. The only one she couldn't understand was the anesthetist.

So I stood at the foot of her mattress as the doctor sat on the end of his patient's bed. He asked a question, which I relayed in Liberian to my patient, who then asked her neighbor in their tribal language, Mano. The answer would return through the same channels. The interview took a surprisingly short amount of time, given the convoluted methods we were using. When prompted at the end, the old lady had only one question, and it wasn't for the anesthetist.

She scowled at me as my giggling interpreter/patient translated. She want to know why you people juke her (stick her with needles). She say that thing on her hand is not good. I scowled back at the Oma until we both started laughing and explained through my trusty translator that the thing on her hand was good and that if she took it out, I would come juke her again, any time of the day or night.

At which point she mumbled something and disappeared under her covers. My patient turned to me, grinning broadly, happy to be providing clarification. She said 'good night'. And she will keep the thing on the hand.


It must take incredible courage to come into this ship for surgery. To be surrounded by white people who don't speak your language and who do things to you that make no sense, whether you like it or not. My friend, Amy, took another patient for a dressing change yesterday. When they came back, he was proud to share the new knowledge she had just imparted to him while juggling the gauze and tape.

I learn about my heart. And I learn about my lunges. And I learn ... Here his memory got fuzzy, until prompted by a laughing Amy. You should only have one wife. Two women is too many problems.

When he says he learned about his heart or his lunges (lungs), he's not talking about cellular physiology. Today, Jacob learned that he has something called a heart that pumps his blood and two things called lungs that help him breathe. He didn't even know. Most of them don't.

And yet they gather together their pain and their fear and they walk up the gangway anyway, lured by the promise that maybe, just maybe, they'll get to leave whole again. How can I go back to North America and explain what it feels like to look into a patient's eyes and see that? How can I share my experiences here in a way that will make sense to the people closest to me? How can I make them understand what I've been doing when my own life sometimes feels so foreign to me?

I think I'm going to need a translator.

Musa has been on D Ward for about a week now. He's a quiet man. He spends most of his time in bed, occasionally chatting with neighbors or paying half-hearted attention to the movies we play on the TVs twice a day. He always takes the opportunity in the afternoons to go outside for some fresh air. With patients in the ICU and old ladies absconding in the night, there's enough going on around him that he manages to fade, becoming a part of the background of the ward rather one of its stars.

As I sat at the desk a couple evenings ago (not yesterday; yesterday I was too busy trying to keep the door locked and herding my lady back into her bed and cleaning up vomit and consoling yet another crying baby to pay much attention to the background), I had a quiet moment to watch Musa. He was in his bed, as usual. In front of his face, he held the mirror we give to all of our patients who have wounds they will need to care for at home.

As I watched him for what seemed like forever, he gazed at his reflection in the tiny glass. Every few seconds he would reach up with his other hand to gently touch his lip. He practiced smiling. He practiced pursing his lips, his kisses made slightly unweildy by the bandage under his nose. Mostly, though, he just looked. He couldn't take his eyes off himself.

I sat there at the desk amidst the cacophony of crying babies and laughing mamas, and I watched Musa watch himself. My roommate, who was sitting there with me, noticed my fascination. She looked too, and her eyes grew soft. How old is he? I checked my list, and my heart caught in my chest. Forty-five.

Forty-five. He's lived almost half a century with his face split wide open, shunned and ridiculed from all sides. He's avoided contact with strangers, people who would turn away from his face in horror. He's never known what it means to be normal. And now he's whole, and he can't stop looking.

I can't blame him.


addendum: This is Musa the next day, after the bandage came off his lip. He's still staring, and I still love it.

Saying no never gets any easier. The plastic surgeon has boarded a plane for his home in South Africa, and Abraham's arm is no better. When I opened up his chart at the beginning of my shift, I found a handwritten referral letter for the MSF pediatric hospital in town. He'll leave in the morning.

We're not going to have another plastic surgeon here during this outreach. The ship is going to be in Benin next year, Guinea the year after that, and then we don't know. But probably not Liberia. So Abraham will probably never get his surgery. There's a good chance he'll prove to be a prophet (albeit one with a twisted hand) since he told me last night, after tomorrow, you will not see me again.

I tucked him into bed with a heavy heart. It's not fair that a little five-year old boy should be tearing through life with one hand just because he lives in the bush and got in the way of a snake while he was playing football with his cousins. I hate that we're sending him home with open sores on his arm. It doesn't make any sense that, no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't fight off the infection and we can't do his surgery.

And still he laughs and kisses me and makes silly faces and seems to have no idea that he's crippled. Which is why saying no feels so wrong.

Reason Number 4,571 that I Love My Job:

As I walked onto B Ward this evening, admittedly less than excited to be starting my second of four long night shifts in a row, my little friend Abraham caught sight of me. He jumped up from his place on the floor, thought briefly about putting on his slippers, decided against it and danced across the room into my arms, blowing kisses the whole way. Emmanuel, Mercy's proud big brother, was close on his heels and little Mickey, a small one who used to be screaming afraid of white people, toddled along behind. Within fifteen seconds of stepping foot onto the ward, I was on the floor with little brown boys draped across every part of me they could attach themselves to. Probably the best way I can think of to start a shift.


I'm sitting here in the darkened ward, the generators once more beating out their insistent pulse, and I'm so happy. I can hear little Mercy crying like a small kitten in the corner, quieting as her mother reaches for her. I had to settle an argument between Mercy's mama and Mickey's grandma earlier in my shift. They called me over to their corner, and I took Mercy in my hands, curly-haired and feather-light. It turned out they were in disagreement over how long I'd been in Liberia. Mercy's mama figured I'd been here before, but Mickey's grandma stauchly proclaimed that this was my first visit. I have been here since February. I were not here las' year. Mickey's grandma looked triumphant. That how I tol' you. She jus' speaking Liberian. Yongo a clever girl!

Abdullah, the man in the next bed over, decided it was time he got involved. What mean Yongo? he wanted to know. Mickey's grandma explained to him that it was my Kpelle name. Abdullah looked confused for a moment, scratched his head through the bandages wrapped around it, and wanted to know why that white girl needed a Kpelle name anyway. The answer came swiftly.

Because her heart Liberian.

And somehow, after that, the nights don't seem so long after all.

This is Abraham. He gives me more smooches than I've ever dreamed of.

His wrist was bitten by a snake a while ago and healed in a frozen mass of scar tissue. We had him with us at the beginning of the outreach; he was one of my balloon party friends. And now he's back, because he has infected ulcers on that arm that just wouldn't heal.

He endures two dressing changes every day. Ten minutes of his arm being soaked in vinegar while he winces and yelps and then comes back to the ward proclaiming cheerfully, They finish changing bandage. My hand bettah nah. I wan' stickah. I wan' go outside. I love you very much, Good Charge Nurse.

He never stops loving.


The plastic surgeon will be here for two more weeks. We have fourteen days to get rid of his infection (an infection that has lived on his arm for months) or else the doctor won't be able to do the surgery to release his wrist back into a normal position.

And whether or not he ever gets that surgery, we'll keep changing his bandages, and he'll keep slipping his twisted hand into mine as he throws his good arm around my head to pull my face close for yet another kiss.

And we'll both keep loving.

I'm starting to wonder how anyone can live their lives without getting ridiculously excited by the fact that God is in control.

Today was my day off this week, so I decided with a group of friends to head into Monrovia for lunch. As we passed through town on the way home, my friend Tim and I jumped out of the car on Broad Street, bent on trying to find Cathi and Matthew. I knew what hotel they were at, but we weren't quite sure where that was; we set off on our adventure through streets teeming with people and taxis.

After a short trek up the hill led us to the abandoned Hotel Ducor and a dead end, we realized that we were probably lost. But Liberia is a friendly place, so if you're ever at Hotel Ducor, ask for Joe. He's the commander up there, and he'll be happy to show you around. Or, if you're stuck in our boat (the boat of the directionally challenged), he'll be happy to recruit a nearby friend who knows which winding path to take down the other side of the hill, between concrete and tin houses and over piles of garbage until you're safely deposited on the right road.

We made it to the hotel and called Cathi's room. She came downstairs to meet us in the lobby, Matthew asleep in his little quilt, arms folded contentedly across his small chest. She explained that she hadn't come back to the ship yesterday (as was planned, for a checkup with our doctors) because she'd gotten a major electric shock as she first moved into her room. She touched the corner of the blanket Matthew was wrapped in, a blanket quilted by loving hands somewhere else in the world, donated to Mercy Ships and given to him when he came in out of the rain on Tuesday. The blanket you gave him saved his life. I got shocked, but I wasn't touching his skin. I think it's what saved him.

We discussed plans as Matthew gurgled and coughed and smiled in his sleep. Because they were already in the process of adopting, she has all the paperwork she needs to get him home except for a visa. This could take a while, so we exchanged numbers and I'll speak to Dr. Gary about repairing his cleft lip if they're still in Liberia when he's old enough for the surgery. Tim stood next to me, a wide grin across his face as we chatted, reaching out occasionally to touch Matthew's silky hair. It was easy to forget that I met these people just days ago.

And here's where God showed up yet again. It was five thirty, rush hour in Monrovia, and we were getting ready to hand Matthew back and try to catch a taxi home to the ship. No easy task on a good day downtown, finding a car during the busiest time of the day is an endeavor that can have you waiting hours. I looked out the glass doors into the courtyard of the hotel to see a tiny blond girl playing with a puppy. She looks familiar, I thought to myself, a split second before realizing that she was accompanied by her mother, Katharina, and that they were standing next to their Mercy Ships car.

In any other situation, I might have been tempted to call it a coincidence. You happened to be at this hotel, and they happened to need a bathroom and you got a free ride home. So what? But when you factor in the baby with my brother's name in my arms, his weary mother sitting on the couch and a big white ship who just might be able to help after all docked across the harbor, things just don't add up properly.

We sat in the back of the car, bouncing home over the rutted roads. Tim caught my eye, and his grin spread even wider as we repeated one of our favourite Liberian refrains to each other.

God is good?
All the time.
All the time?
Good is good.

If you had met Yeme on the day she arrived to the ship, you would probably have been horrified. Even by Mercy Ships' standards, her problem was a grave one. The back of one of her legs was a tumor from hip to ankle, a massive, smelly growth that made up almost a fifth of her body weight. Above one of her eyes grows another tumor, deforming her eye socket and warping the line of her cheek. You would have stared.

It wouldn't have made any difference to Yeme, though, because she wouldn't have met your eyes. She didn't meet anyone's eyes when she came. Her family sent her here from Guinea to be fixed. Dropped her off at the gate where she stayed for hours until someone noticed her and brought her inside to a cold world where no one speaks her language. I have a hard time not getting angry at her family for abandoning her like they did, but I guess I can see why they were desperate.

She's been here a couple weeks now, and Yeme is so different from that downcast, frightened child who had to be coaxed through our doors. The tumor on her leg has been almost completely removed. She's waiting for more surgeries to graft skin over her wounds and take out the growth above her eye. She smiles. She laughs. She colours and makes beaded bracelets like it's her job. She is beautiful. She always has been.

Eric, one of our translators, prayed for the patients during handover this morning.

Make them, oh God, who they are.

That's it, isn't it? That's what we're trying to do here. Trying to peel back the layers of disease and deformity that enshroud these victims of a fallen world. Revealing the truth: that these are glorious creatures, formed in the image of a beautiful God. I will never stop being grateful to that God that He allows us to be the hands and hearts that are part of making these people who they are.

My Granny just wrote me an e-mail and asked for an update on Baby Greg. It's funny, really- I've lost sight of the fact that there are people in the world who don't eat, sleep and breathe this situation. People who have to wait and read a blog entry before they know what's going on. I've become so entangled in his small life that I don't know that I'm ever off duty anymore. It's draining, and I know I've said this before, but I'm tired. I watch my fellow nurses getting days off and playing with their patients and having fun at work, and I'm wishing myself back to the days when my biggest worry was whether or not my little ortho patient was going to wipe out on her crutches.

Baby Greg has been up and down the past few days. He rarely has two good shifts in a row, but he's starting to gain weight and his breathing is markedly improved when he's able to tolerate being off the CPAP. (A photo of which I have included just so my esteemed PICU colleagues can laugh at my creation; it might not be pretty, but it gives him PEEP!) His g-tube isn't leaking like it used to, and we're working on getting him a different one from the States. He needed a transfusion yesterday; the charge nurse jumped at the chance, left the ward to donate and then came back to finish her work just feet away from where Greg was receiving her blood. The ship has taken Baby Greg under their collective wing, praying for him non-stop, twenty-four hours a day. All these little details and myriad more swirl and mix and have become second nature to me; reciting them comes as easy as breathing.

Phil came to visit the ward last night and hung out with Baby Greg for a little while. I was talking about it all with him over cinnamon toast at some point during the shift (which has stretched on so long I've absolutely lost all concept of time). Ever pragmatic, he just patted me on the back and told me not to worry. I can see why you're attached to him. It makes sense when he looks at you like he does. But just keep serving. You'll find your inspiration again.

Right now, I have to smile. Because it just happened. He's had a good night, honestly. He's slept comfortably most of the time, only thrown up once and never had the panicked look of a baby who can't get enough air. (That look breaks my heart every single time he brings it out.) About an hour ago, he decided to wake up and be angry. I changed him and patted his back and snuggled him on his side and did all the things he usually likes. No dice. So I climbed into his bed and pulled him into my arms. Whereupon he put on little hand on my chest and immediately fell asleep. And I was left there in the dark, my heart a puddle in my chest.

I'm in Africa in the first place because God told me to pour out my soul. To kick over my heart and let everything spill out. I remember talking about this with my youth group girls last year. We all came to the conclusion that we should go to bed every night absolutely empty, completely poured out on the world and relying on God to fill us up again for the next day. I'm wondering whether or not this is the first time I've really managed to do it.

Baby Greg smiled at me this morning.

It was at the end of a long night shift, the last three hours of which I had spent with him nestled in my arms, trying to get him to sleep. He, as usual, was fighting. It's what he does best, really, with a strength that belies the twiglike construction of his frame. He'd managed to pop himself off the CPAP mask four or five times in rapid succession, and so I decided that he could have a break. I released his face, stuck some oxygen in his nose and settled in to pat his bony little back. He figured it was a good enough deal, and decided to stop flailing around.

At shift change, when all the new nurses were trickling in, sleepy-eyed, I was sitting on the end of his bed, replacing his soother when he dropped it and suctioning out his throat when he choked. He was propped up on a throne of blankets and pillows, the smallest sultan ever to lord it over B Ward. The charge nurse came over to see how he was, and I displayed him proudly, sucking away on his soother like a champ. Not crying, not squeaking, not flailing. Just being a baby. A quiet, wide-eyed baby.

I keep getting the feeling that he's going to smile at me, I said to her, rolling my eyes to acknowledge just how ludicrous I found my own statement. She smiled wryly back at me, agreeing without words that I was asking too much. I turned back to look at him, just to revel in his peaceful wakefulness and the softness of his hair and the tiny grace of his fingers. Hi, small boy.

He looked up at me as the soother dropped out of his mouth. And his face broke into a real, honest-to-goodness baby grin. The ear to ear, tongue half sticking out with the effort, eyes crinkled almost shut kind of grin. And then it was over, and I sat there, tears in my eyes, my heart shouting a thousand praises to a God who really does give more than I can ask or think.

Baby Greg smiled. This too is what a miracle looks like.

It's hard to know what to write about Baby Greg sometimes. Hard to know how to sort though the good and the bad and the just-plain-confusing and distill this whole situation into just a few words. When the truth is that I spend most of my moments thinking thousands of words about all this, and I could write forever, trying to explain my feelings and experiences and emotions. And still I don't think I'd be able to properly convey to you how it felt to walk onto the ward this morning for ward church and see Baby Greg. And have his nurse tell me that yesterday he was able to drink from a bottle. (Not much, and he still choked a bit, but he did it on his own.) And this morning he was able to come off his breathing support for over an hour. (Granted, he still sounded a little like a sick duck, but he was doing it without the mask completely covering his little face.) And he's able to be awake and looking around and not crying. (Not for more than a few minutes, but it's the first time in weeks he's had that kind of peace.)

To sit here and actually be able to honestly type Baby Greg is doing better seems like some sort of weird dream. I know he's on a long road, one on which he's only taken a couple of very small steps, but right now he's going forwards instead of backwards. I say I have faith, and I say I believe that God can work miracles. Why is it that I'm so shocked when He shows up and does what I ask?

I was talking with Marion and a couple of the translators yesterday while I visited a sleeping Baby Greg. Marion was asking me some questions about Greg's condition and I was answering as honestly as I knew how. Hope is sometimes a dangerous thing; believing that her baby can get better is important, but not being prepared for the opposite outcome would be absolutely devastating. At some point, my words failed me; there was nothing more to say, so I repeated the mantra we've practically been chanting over the last days. God can make a way.

Cynthia, one of the translators who was sitting with us around Greg's bed, put her hand on my back as I sat there on the floor. No, Sis Alice. He has already made a way.

And it's true. Because miracles aren't always Lazarus emerging from a tomb or thousands of fish jumping into a boat. Miracles can be smaller than that. They can be a baby drinking a thimbleful of milk or a mother laughing for the first time in days. God has already made a way for Baby Greg. And all I can do is let my heart sing the praises He's been waiting to hear as I keep praying and waiting for Him to continue making His way.

I've never been much one for postural prayer. I don't always bow my head when I talk to my God, and I sure as heck don't find myself on my knees very often. Today was different; I spent yet another twelve hours at Baby Greg's side.

He didn't have a very good day. Once lunchtime had come and gone, Greg decided that he hated everything about life and would just cry for the rest of the afternoon. This meant CPAP that didn't work properly and a heartrate that had me wondering just how much longer he could keep it up. Beds in our wards are low to the ground, and I've never really been short, so by about one o'clock, my back was screaming and my legs were ready to give out. And still Baby Greg cried and thrashed and fought.

So I knelt next to his bed, leaned over his little body and started to pray. I patted his chest, the span of my hand measuring exactly space between his skinny shoulders, and I cried out to God for peace. Peace for Baby Greg so that he could just find sleep. Peace for his mama, facing the loss of yet another child. Peace for us nurses, shattered yet again by a baby who might not make it. In the midst of it all, Greg managed to work his arms free from the blanket swaddling him. As I knelt there, my eyes shut tight, I felt two feathery hands curl around my fingers. I looked down into the wide open eyes of every baby I have ever cared for, and he was pleading with me, like they all do, to just make it stop.

This is not what I thought I was getting myself into when I came here. Truth be told, I was maybe ready for a small break from the intensity of the PICU. Some time away from telling parents horrible news about their children. Hope and healing. Instead here I am, stuck in yet another situation where hope seems the very thing we can't grasp.

We took Marion, Greg's mama, into another room to talk with her about Greg's condition. We sat with her and explained that it's not her fault and it's not our fault and it's not anyone's fault. But things aren't good. And she sat with that stone face that so many mamas wear to mask the hurt. And I felt my life repeating, a record skipping over and over, and I wanted to scream.

And then something happened that I've never experienced before in a family meeting. One of our disciplers, a woman named Lucy, got down on her knees in front of Marion's chair. She took Marion's hands in her own and began to sing quietly.

Able.
Able.
I know He is able.
I know my God is able,
to carry me through.

We joined in, voices quavering and small, and Lucy prayed as tears slid down our cheeks. She prayed strong prayers to a God she was fully convinced was just waiting to work miracles. And then it was finished and we went back to the ward and Marion took Greg in her arms and nothing had changed and I'm left wondering where my miracle is.

Because I know God is listening. I spent hours today at that bedside, my hands covering Greg's body, like so many mamas, thinking somehow my hands could be enough to protect this little one who isn't even my own. I knelt there and prayed over and over the words from a song I once sang in a candlelit church in Germany. Oh Lord, hear my prayer. Oh Lord, hear my prayer. When I cry, answer me. Oh Lord, hear my prayer. Oh Lord, hear my prayer. Come and listen to me. And I knew He was listening. I knew His heart was breaking along with mine. And I know that He can do the miracle we're all asking for.



I'm just trying to come to terms with what it will mean if He doesn't.

Darkness surrounds the ship. I sit here in the dim light of B Ward, ensconced in the throbbing hum of the generators. Every so often, I can hear one of my patients turn over in bed, but for the most part, they are still. Nights can be long here. When all my patients are either weeks out from surgery or small enough to be comforted easily by a close-lying mother, I'm left with not much to do but think. Tonight, Bendu is on my mind.

I was talking with a coworker yesterday as we realized all over again how dangerous it is to grow up in poverty. For those of us blessed enough to have been born into Western society, we take for granted clean, running water and electricity. We know that turning on a tap provides us with drinkable water, and we know that plugging a lamp into an outlet produces light.

This isn't true for the developing world. I have no statistics to share about the number of homes with electricity here in Liberia, but it's safe to assume that the percentage is dismally small. Bendu is one of the many women who live by the light of the sun and kerosene lamps. One night, a few months ago, she got into bed with a book. What happened next is a mystery, but as close as we can figure, she had a seizure and knocked over her lamp. Her face and arm were horribly burned, and she came to us with open wounds and eyes that were rapidly losing sight. These days, Bendu is not easy to look at. Her face and head and arm are swathed in thick gauze. Her nose has been twisted out of shape. Where the dressings slip, the raw, angry-looking skin shows through. One of the other children on the ward started crying when she came near him the other night.

Bendu is one of the most beautiful women I have ever met. Over the weekend, she was my patient, and I was the one to change her bandages. It's a long and arduous process, so to distract her from the pain, I started asking her about her family. She told me about her brothers and sisters. She shared that she just finished high school and was getting ready to go to college when she got burned. I will be an accountant, she told me, through teeth clenched in pain. Will be, Bendu? I asked her, testing her resolve. She nodded, determination written all over the parts of her face I could see through the gauze and tape. This is why I must get better. I must go to college like my friends. I turned away, fighting with myself to hold back tears, but the moment was over as soon as it had begun. True to form, Bendu was on to the next thing. Do I have eyelashes? she asked me, grabbing her mirror and taking a long look. I think I might need them someday.

That's Bendu all over. She refuses to believe that her injury is going to stop her. She wanders around the ward, visiting other patients and playing with the kids and learning how to knit with fingers already stiff from scars. Tonight, when I came on duty, one of the first things I did was fire up my computer and have a dance party with her and the mother of one of my little boys. We shuffled around an empty corner of the ward, laughing and shaking and showing each other our moves.

She's twenty-four years old. My age. And I can't help but try and put myself into her slippers. I sit here and I imagine what she must be going through, and I don't think I could do it. I don't think I could keep smiling if I had to tip my head at a specific crazy angle just to be able to see past the bandages. I don't think I could chat about my family while my wounds were being soaked in bleach. I don't think I could laugh if any movement meant pain.

I remember the prayer I breathed over and over during screening day in February. That God would help me to see the people there as both loved and lovely. Sitting here with Bendu asleep a few beds away, it's so sweet to realize how often that prayer has been answered. Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes, I hear Him say. These are my beloveds, and they are so precious to me. Loved and lovely.

I am in love. Again.

This time she’s two months old and weighs just over seven pounds. Her name is Jitta, the British pronunciation of which, coupled with a popular song, has prompted us to affectionately christen her Jitta-Bug. (True to my PICU track record, her bedspace is now covered in boxes and signs and little notes, all signed with a small orange butterfly.) She shared the same birth defect as my little growly-bear, Sadiatu, only Jitta’s was a little more involved. Not only was there a hole there, but Jitta’s little frontal lobe was poking out through it. Seeing as how the frontal lobe is responsible for higher thought and personality and lots of important things like that, this made us all a little worried.

You see, Jitta-Bug is a long shot. Spending all day in the operating room is tough enough, even if you’re not a tiny baby. And this tiny baby was born with a brain that isn’t quite right, and chances are, even with the surgery, she’s not going to be normal. (That is, provided she doesn’t succumb to infection, always a huge risk with this operation, and one we’re scared to death of. You should have seen the people-free zone being enforced around her bed at ward church this morning.) Surprisingly, when all this was explained to her mother, using her sister as a translator (it’s always helpful when cousins come in for surgery at the same time), she just laughed. You see, in Jitta’s village, her mother and brother and half her family are already considered ‘slow.’ They didn’t think it was such a big deal after all.

This doesn’t change the fact that my small Jitta-Bug needed a miracle. There wasn’t any way you could look at her situation and feel confident of a good outcome; she was coming into this particular race too far behind to have any real hope of catching up. So we did what seemed totally appropriate; we started praying for miracles. We laid our hands on her, dwarfing her miniature body, and we stormed heaven with our cries.

Jitta had her surgery on Thursday. I only had three other patients, so I spent my day popping in and out of OR 4, watching in awe as the dream team (Dr. Gary and Dr. Mark) delicately peeled back Jitta’s scalp, removed the front plate of her skull and oh-so-slowly pulled her brain back where it belonged. I’ve never seen anything like it.

When I heard she was out of the operating room and in recovery, I went down to check on her. Walking into the room, I was greeted with a wall of blue-clad backs, a fortress of concerned nurses and anesthetists. From behind the barrier, I heard the sweetest sound: an angry baby, crying for her mother. At the foot of the stretcher, Dr. Gary was sitting, a bemused smile on his face. Long day? I asked him, and he just grinned. This baby shouldn’t have been awake. She shouldn’t have been fighting with the nurses or screaming her little head off. By all accounts, she shouldn’t have even made it.

But she’s tucked in next to her mother in the corner of B Ward right now, head swathed in bandages so thick she looks like a q-tip. I’d be lying if I said the road ahead of her isn’t a long one, but as of this moment she’s eating and crying and pooping and tearing her bandages off and making little squeaky baby noises and snuggling into the crook of my arm when I hold her. Which is often.

We asked for a miracle, and I think we’d be foolish not to recognize that one has been given to us.