love

The last few days have been so intense. I find myself exhausted by about nine in the evening, worn out by the constant interactions, by my attempts to navigate myself through this world that's supposed to be mine. By finding my way again.

Some of it has been easy. More and more, I find that this blog is such a useful tool; because people have been reading my words all year, there's almost nothing they need to ask me. I've been able to pick up friendships where they left off, and when questions arise about Liberia, I can say Remember those entries about Baby Greg? Yeah, that was the hardest thing that happened this year. I drove home from my Granny's house the other night, the first time I'd been behind the wheel in eleven months, and it was surprisingly painless; it turns out that remembering how to drive is like riding a bike. You never really forget.

Some of it has been less straightforward. The noise and the cold and the constant stimulation are so foreign to me after a year on a ship in the third world. I'm getting carsick again, and I think it's because I strain to read all the billboards and street signs that whip past me at over a hundred kilometers an hour. I've already started to feel the strain of this culture, reminding me in subtle whispers that I look wrong. No matter how staunchly I remind myself that I am proud of my African shape, I've been feeling pudgy and oversized, and I can't convince myself otherwise.

The thing is, none of this confusion and uncertainty really has any kind of hold on me. Especially not after today.

This morning, I took a drive past icy lakes and up a snowy road. We stopped at the side of a river and made our way onto a bridge overlooking the water as it rushed down the chute that he had helped build to guide the logs downstream. The air smelled faintly of summer, somehow, recalling memories of long hours spent playing in the waterfalls near my grandpa's farm. He pulled four tie wraps out of his pocket, and he asked me the question I've been dying to hear.

So, you want to get married?

I said I thought we might as well, and then I chose green, like he knew I would. He threw the other three over the side of the bridge to be washed away in the freezing spate. He fastened the tie wrap around my finger, clipped the end with a pair of wire cutters he pulled out of his pocket, and then he took my hand in his. We stood there on that bridge with the cold all around us and the water rushing through my heart, and he prayed over our life together.

And then we went back, and I showed off my fancy ring to my beaming parents and he took an Exacto knife to it to smooth out the edges, and I have never known that it was possible to be quite this happy.

(For those of you who have never heard of this guy before, the oversight has been intentional. We both agreed that our relationship wasn't something that we wanted to chronicle on the internet, but I've gotten special permission to post about today, since there's no way I can keep this to myself.)

Phil is my best friend. He's been by my side through the hardest year of my life so far. He rubs my back when I cry and shakes his head when I'm hysterically laughing. When something funny happens, he's the first one I want to share the joke with. We can hang out for hours, not do anything, and love it. He believed me when I told him I didn't want an expensive engagement ring, and I know that means he trusts my word. When I'm sick, he cooks me Ramen noodles, and when we come inside he holds the door for me. He'll eat the mushrooms for me that I always feel the need to pick out of my food. He calls me out when I'm being lazy and challenges me in my walk with God. I never feel like I have to be anything but myself with him and yet, somehow at the same time, being with him makes me want to serve more and love more and be more.

It was Phil's sleeve I was hanging on to that first day in Tenerife, and it's that sleeve I get to hang on to for the rest of my life, no matter what comes our way.

Which, at the end of the day, is just about the best deal I can imagine.

Well, while we all sit around and wait for me to learn how to write code (which could potentially take the rest of my life, just to warn you) I think it's only fair to update you on the ever-dwindling patient situation on the wards. Ward, I should say, since we only have B Ward open at the moment. Actually, if we're going to split hairs, I should probably mention that only one side of B Ward is open, and half of that one side is already torn down and packed away.

We only have three patients left.

The most amazing part is to watch our prayers being answered right in front of our eyes. We started praying, and Louise's wounds dried up. She went home yesterday, healed. We started praying, and Sedeke's infection was also healed. He went home yesterday, too, clutching a new Bible that he refused to stop reading. We started praying, and we were able to arrange for Jacob to be transferred to a hospital up country, near where he and his mother live. He too left yesterday. We started praying, and Kwelywoh went back to the operating room one last time, just like he's been doing every few days for the last couple weeks. Only this time, Dr. Gary found the place where the brain fluid was leaking out. He patched it and ran a thin plastic catheter under Kwelywoh's skin from a spot between his eyes to drain into the space around his stomach. We're still waiting to see how Kwelywoh will adjust to the new pressures inside his head, but with all the other answered prayers we've just received, it's hard to think this one won't go our way too.

Eddie and Kwelywoh and Timothy. That's it. They're the last of an endless string of stories that stretches back over these past ten months, woven together like so many threads of this cloth. Hope and heartbreak and healing and pain. I can stand back, now, so close to the end, and see it all as one.

And moving in and out and through every story, I see love.

It seems that Harold has some kind of radar when it comes to my bad days. Last week, just when I needed a hug, Harold missed me enough to convince his mama to catch a car and come see me. Yesterday was another less-than-perfect day. Despite scenes like little Isaiah and his water-gulping frenzy, the shift wasn’t great. I seem to have caught the ship-wide case of bronchitis, and I spent much of the day doubled over, trying to cough my lungs out. (The hidden blessing in which is the fact that I think I’ll have a well-defined six pack if this keeps up for another day or two.) And just when I thought my body hurt enough, a combative patient wrapped himself around my neck and pulled just the right way, enough to cause an old back injury to flare up in a finger-numbing blaze of glory.

I was sitting at the computers feeling sorry for myself when a crew member appeared with a crumpled piece of paper in his hand. One of your patients is looking for you. Hawa? Hara? I’m not really sure. He held out the paper, and I recognized my name in Harold’s father’s handwriting. He had come back again, and his smile beamed up at me just as wide as I loped down the gangway. I greeted him and his mama and settled down to chat.

Not long into our visit, with Harold just barely starting to talk, she motioned to a black plastic bag that was resting next to my feet. We bring something for you. That plastic; it’s for you. I tried gently to protest, since the bag was bulging with gifts, but she cut me short. I beg you! We need to say thank you. An Harold choose the bananas his self.

I started to unpack the bag. The first thing I pulled out was a smaller plastic that held a whole bunch of bananas. Harold grinned at me, proud in his produce-picking skills. Next came three little bags of plantain chips. They’re crunchy and salty and just a little sweet and they’re easily my favourite snack here in Liberia. Whenever I leave the ship, I make sure I’ve got 5LD bills in my pockets, just in case I come across a little girl with a tray of treats balanced on her head.

The last gift was the biggest. I pulled out a handful of green cloth and unfolded a dress, complete with a smaller piece of fabric to be used as a head wrap. The dress is a standard Liberian garment; they look like muumuus and fit like potato sacks. And when they’re given to you as a gift, they’re generally big enough that all your roommates could take shelter under your cover in a hard rain. Harold’s family had clearly put thought into this bag of gifts, though. Harold pa get you a different one, but I never let him give it to you. I tol’ him no way, it the wrong size. It were too big for you, even though you got the Loma shape.

To say that I was touched by their generosity would be an understatement. As we get closer and closer to sailing, everyone around us has become increasingly demanding. They know that we’ll soon be gone, and so patients and friends and strangers on the street are taking their last opportunities to ask for the things they assume we can provide. It’s draining, and it gives us all an uncomfortable sense of being used. For Harold and his family to show me such love, asking nothing in return, was the most welcome breath of fresh air.

The rest of our visit passed in the usual style. Harold recited a couple Bible verses for me, along with with mama’s cell phone number. He was rather clearer on the phone number, but I give him style points for his classically Liberian rendition of James 4:8. Dress close to God so He can dress close to you. At one point, Harold’s mama got annoyed with him for his refusal to talk to me and addressed him sternly as Peace. When she saw my quizzical look, she laughed and explained. Peace his yard name. Harold jus’ the name he can carry to school. She went on to give me a lesson in Liberian naming. It turns out that everyone has a yard name, the name everyone knows them by. When it comes time for school, they are given another, more official name, the one that will appear on all their documents.

Josephine, Harold’s mama (whose real name is actually Siah), was pregnant with Harold/Peace in 2005, while the war was still raging in Liberia. She told me matter-of-factly about the rebels closing the port, barricading the roads and preventing supplies from coming through. By the time I were ready to get my baby, I were paying 100LD for one cup of rice. If I could even find the rice. It were not easy. The day the United Nations rolled into town, breaking the barricade and reopening the port, Josephine went into labor and delivered her child. That why he name Peace. Because that day the peace come.

Harold has certainly lived up to his yard name as he cements his place in my life, appearing just when I need love and encouragement and peace in my heart. Josephine said it best. She was talking about the perfection of all the gifts they had brought me (if you can call a potato sack perfect, which I most certainly did), but I think I'll pretend she was talking about everything. This boy, this year, this life of mine.

When God want to do something, He do it well. That's all.

My best friend here on the ship left today to go home for three weeks. While I can't begrudge anyone their time off, especially knowing how much I'm looking forward to my own in a few short weeks, I found myself feeling rather lost and forlorn this afternoon. I was sitting in bed reading a book when I got a call from the gangway. There's a patient here to see you. Since it's Sunday and I wasn't working and definitely not in a good mood, I thought about telling them to go away. I figured it was some random Liberian who got my name from a former patient and was here to tell me about their cousin's neighbor who has a tumor. Someone else I would have to say no to. The guard upstairs continued. His name is ... Harold. That was all I needed; I grabbed my slippers and headed for the dock.

Harold was one of my patients last week. He wasn't really sick; all the patients from here until the end of the outreach (I can say that now, since it's only three weeks away) are less complicated cases. Harold is a beautiful six-year old boy who recently started getting teased at school. His gums were swelling and sometimes they would bleed a little bit, so he would come home crying to his mama because the other kids laughed at him and wouldn't play with him. They were screened at a dental clinic and came to the ship for a simple surgery to correct the problem.

Harold was quiet the day he and his caregiver, his father, were admitted; I don't think he said a single word to me. Just beamed up at me with a huge, lopsided smile as I found balloons and coloring books and Jenga blocks for him to play with. It doesn't take much to cement a friendship with a six-year old, and by the time he went to the operating room the next day, we were good buddies. That served me well after his surgery, when I found it remarkably easy to convince him to take his medicines, finish his dinner and hold still while I took out his IV. Except for some confusion with a visitor card and a less-than-friendly encounter with his mother, Harold and his father were perfect patients. They went home the next day, and I couldn't imagine what they were doing on the dock.

When I appeared at the top of the gangway, little Harold caught sight of me and his face lit up like Christmas. I ran down the steps (carefully of course, in case the safety officer happens to be reading this) and he threw his arms around my waist. I sat down and gathered him into my lap, grateful for the hug I'd just been thinking I wanted. His mama sat by his side, beaming. We chatted about Harold and about how much she regretted being surly the other day. She shared with me that I have what's known as a Lomo Shape, after the Lomo tribe, renowned for, you guessed it, their wide hips and large bottoms. We even talked about the weather for the customary small while, and then I asked her why she had come. Her smile got even wider.

Ever since he come home, Harold been missing his White Aunty! He just telling us about the ship and he say he missing you and he wan' see you. So we catch car from Painseville and we tol' them your name at the gate and so they say we can come to see you. Harold just sat on my lap, his head nestled into the corner of my neck, not saying a word.

Painesville is a good forty-five minutes away from the ship, and you have to take two different taxis to get here. Factor in the time spent waiting at the side of the road and possible breakdowns, and it's a journey that can take up to three hours. Each way.

They had no agenda. They didn't ask me for money or food or a ticket to America. Harold's mama had been feeling guilty about being snappy with us, and so when Harold said he was missing me, she piled them both into a taxi and headed over to make it right. We talked for a long time about social dynamics in Liberia, how everyone's trying to get on top, and no one on top looks down to help those below them. When it came out that I'm not getting paid to work here, that I'm actually paying crew fees so that I can do this work, she almost fell off her chair. What she said will stay with me for a while.

You people are really different. I come to the ship and everybody smile at me. You abandon your homes. You abandon your families, and you come to us in Liberia. And I see the way you all can love. And that is how I know you are Christians. This is God's work here.

I choked back the tears that were threatening my composure and invited them to come inside for the evening church service that was about to start. Harold shook his head, still without saying a word; apparently the memory of surgery was too fresh. So, less than half an hour after they had arrived, Harold and his mama got up to leave, their mission to visit with me accomplished.

I walked with them to the gate, Harold's small hand firmly clutching mine. When I turned to leave, I knelt down to give him one last hug. His arms went around my neck, and his mouth found my ear to whisper the only words he would say during the entire visit.

I love you, Aunty.

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.

It's hard to know what to say when faced with the death of a baby. What can I possibly offer to a mother who has just lost her heart? What words can I say that will blunt the searing pain? And what comfort can I give when that mama is faced with the sight of her son's bed, occupied by another small, brown baby, one who is sitting up and smiling at the world around him?

Marion came to visit me today. She's something of a celebrity around here, and it took me almost fifteen minutes just to get her down the stairs to the hospital as almost everyone we passed stopped to say hello. As we walked down the hall towards B Ward, she was all smiles, laughing and greeting her friends, nurses, translators and disciplers. It was only when we were inside amidst the bustle of a full ward that the flood of memory overwhelmed her. I stood there with my arm around her tiny shoulders as tears coursed silently down her cheeks. She turned twenty-one yesterday. She's a child herself, and yet she stood there, mute and small, mourning the loss of her third baby.

We turned away and went upstairs to eat lunch. We sat at a table by the window as she pushed the rice around her plate and told us about a dream she'd had. In it, she was out walking. Or working. She wasn't quite sure. People came up to her one after another and told her what a fine baby she had. Asked her how he was. She repeated to them over and over that she didn't have a baby. That he had died.

No, they said, he's right there. He's right there on your back. That was a good dream, we agreed.


Bendu, the sassy-pants who was burned after she had a seizure and knocked over her kerosene lamp, was back for a dressing change in our outpatient clinic. She and Marion became close while Baby Greg was still with us, so when Bendu's appointment was finished I signed her back in as my visitor too. We passed the rest of the afternoon like any silly twenty-something year old friends. We wandered around the ship, ate grilled cheese at the cafe, tried to call friends in Canada and hung out in my room for a while, laughing and filming video messages on my camera.

Weeks ago, as we stood by Baby Greg's bedside, watching him fight to breathe, Bendu told me that she was very sad. I asked her why, and she went on to tell me that she was going to be alone for the rest of her life. She didn't meet my eyes as she gently touched the warped, pink skin of her cheek and forehead. Quiet tears filled her eyes and as she explained that no man would want to marry her, not given the way she looks. So I will be alone. That is what makes me very sad.

Marion is a woman living under the shadow of curse. The longer I spend here in West Africa, the more aware I become of the reality of spiritual warfare. It's easy to be in my comfortable room and scoff at the idea that words could have such an effect on someone's life. But then I leave this room and go out and sit with Marion in her house and I am utterly convinced that this battle is so much bigger and so much more intangible than I could have imagined.

Given all this, I was struck today at how normal the day was. I think I expect women who have lost babies and been terribly disfigured by burns to be somehow different. More sedate, more aware, in a way, of the cloud surrounding them. But apart from the small moments when they retreat into themselves, lost in worlds of pain I can only guess at, Marion and Bendu are you and I and any woman ever. They're maybe more broken, a little more shattered, but underneath the scars and shining through the tears, I can so clearly see their love.

I want to love like this.

I feel like I don't know anyone on the wards these days. The last of our long-term plastics patients have been packed up and sent home (just in time for Dr. Tertius to come back in a couple weeks), and Greg is with Jesus. The surgeon we have at the moment has been doing lots of hernias, who only stay overnight after their operations. Hardly time to forge deep, meaningful relationships.

Relationships like the one we have with Joanna and her daughter, Angela. Joanna is better known as The Queen of Mercy Ships. It's a well-earned title; she's been a patient every time the ship has docked in this port. During this outreach, she received a skin graft to cover a chronic ulcer on her leg. The graft failed and she spent long weeks enduring painful dressing changes and more surgeries. At some point in the process, her daughter, Angela, came to live with her. In an endearing role-reversal, Joanna (the caregiver) slept in the bed while Angela (not a patient, but definitely not old enough to be running any kind of show, despite her own best efforts to the contrary) camped out in her little cave underneath. My roommate, Jenny (who I'm eagerly looking forward to working with again next year in Benin, and I'll try to limit my use of parentheses from this point forward), left today, and Joanna and Angela, long since discharged and living at home, showed up to say goodbye. That's Liberia all over. It doesn't matter how far you have to come or how hard it's raining (forgive the parentheses yet again, but one of my favourite moments of the day was when Joanna looked around at us, huddled on the dock like drowned rats, and suggested we move under cover because this rain is getting too serious, a phrase which perhaps loses a little when taken out of Liberian English), relationships are hallowed.

Still, these stranger-patients manage to have an impact. I was at ward church this morning when a man stood up to give testimony. He was well-spoken, a college professor in fact, and he wanted to let us know that he was grateful. He plans to write a report on Mercy Ships and send it to Dr. Gary when he gets back from his vacation. In it, he's going to explain how he came to screening and was told that there was no doctor to do his surgery. How he went back home and laid the problem in God's hands, trusting that he would be taken care of. How a doctor then came and he was called back to the ship to receive his surgery. How the doctors and nurses work with joy in their eyes and love for their patients so evident in what they do. How he's traveled many places but never been treated as well as he's been treated in the one day he's been on the ship.

How Mercy Ships lifts burdens from bodies and from spirits.

This may have been just what I needed to hear. Because it comes hard on the heels of losing my little man, when all I can think is that we've failed. Failed Marion, failed her family, failed to make an impact. Failed.

I have to remember, though, that that man has been with us for just under two days. He's seen us love for less than forty-eight hours. We had Marion and Greg with us for over a month. A month of days filled with countless moments of care and compassion and pure, unfettered love. I can't help hoping that, once the raw edges of this terrible grief have been worn down some by the passage of time, Marion will be able to look back to this month and see Jesus. Not nurses and translators and crazy, hare-brained schemes to keep a little boy alive. Just Jesus. Arms stretched wide, love poured out like rain.

It is raining all around me.
I can feel it; it's a lot of rain.
I ask Jesus to send more rain.
Until we are filled,
Until we are filled
With a lot of rain.

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.

When I walk onto the wards at two in the afternoon and am handed an assignment sheet bearing only the names of Alfred and Emmanuel, it's safe to say that the shift is going to be quiet. Both have been here forever, both get their vital signs taken once a day and neither really has any medications or involved procedures to be done in the evenings. With the exception of a surprise admission (which turned out to be four for the price of one; family-style hospital trips are all the rage here) the shift rolled along very much as I expected. I hung out with my fellow nurse, Sarah. We made folders for photos. I chatted to the other patients and wandered around with a sleeping baby on my back. It was quiet.

After dinner, we had all had just about enough of the sleepy pace of things. We were, in a word, bored, and the hours until ten o'clock needed to be filled. Somehow.

It turns out that Austin, one of our longer-term patients, is a musician. His first admission was to reduce the size of his massively overgrown toes. Things were looking good, but going home in Liberia means going back to dirt and damp, and dressings just don't stay clean. Austin's foot got infected, and so this second admission was to amputate one of the toes. I was working on A Ward the day they told him his toe would have to be taken off, and he was devastated. Austin is a young guy, and he was pretty convinced he'd never walk again. It was a rough couple days after surgery for him, with pain and anxiety mixing to create the most heartbreaking fear.

But Austin has his spirit back now. And last night, he sang and rapped for me. He laughed his head off while I tried to sing one of his own compositions along with him. Baby Girl, you fine-o. Baby Girl, you fine-o. You walkin' like a stranger, you talkin' like an angel, you look like made from cream-o. I say you fine-o. Once we had gotten that song down pat, he asked me about what kind of music I like. I searched through my files on the work computer and came up with Audrey and Mike singing Hallelujah. He asked me if I had any more songs by 'that guy,' and so I ran down to my room to get my computer.

We ran through a couple Tenth Ave songs fairly quickly until landing on Times. It stopped him cold. He sat up, leaned forward and listened intently. I want for you to give me the words to this one, please. Since I hear God speaking to me every time I hear that song, I was only too happy to oblige. I grabbed a pen and paper and wrote furiously.

When I finished, I handed him the page, started the song again and went to check on my patients. From the other side of the ward, I heard him singing. Your love is over, it's underneath. It's inside, it's in between. Oh oh, oh oh, oh oh.

We played the song over and over until the battery died and my computer shut off. At which point he brought the paper over to his friend a few beds down, a kid who will find out today whether or not he has cancer. Heads bent close, they studied the words. Another patient, Friend, stopped by for a visit. Come see this song, man! Austin called. It's a fine gospel song. Brother Mike sing about love. So Friend got to hear about this overwhelming love too.

I don't know if Mike and the guys have any idea how powerful this song really is. Borkai and Friend and Austin. Cancer and burn scars and missing toes. In times of confusion and chaos and pain, God's love over and underneath it all.

Alfred is back.

He came in during the week for a routine post-operative appointment to get the dressing changed on his foot. There's no such thing as home health nursing here in Liberia, so when patients are discharged with complicated bandages, they come back to the ship a couple times a week (sometimes daily) to have our dedicated team do it for them. When Alfred came in, they noticed that something wasn't quite right about his foot. It wasn't healing like they wanted, so the decision was made to readmit him to the hospital. It turns out the decision was a good one; Alfred has osteomyelitis in that foot of his. So he's going to hang out with us for a while while he gets IV antibiotics and dressing changes and love.

I thought both of our faces were going to fall off from grinning when we saw each other the first day he was back in A Ward. We fell back into our pattern of Alfred trying to sweet-talk me and me trying to not get sweet-talked. He's even more comfortable here this time around (if such a thing is even possible). When they were trying to find him to slap a hospital bracelet on him, it took them about half an hour before he was discovered in the x-ray office, looking up photos of people with Proteus Syndrome on the internet. The boy is incorrigible. We spent all day today playing Rummikub and holding the debates for the presidency of Little America (aka the Africa Mercy) and discussing how Alfred is going to go to college in the UK and eventually be the one to find the cure for AIDS. (You heard it here first, kids. When this boy is famous one day, I'll be saying I knew him when!)

This weekend is a holiday weekend for the ship, which means no surgeries on Friday or Monday. That, in turn, means no admissions from Thursday to Sunday. Census has been dwindling and the hospital has been condensed into two wards. Everyone has been getting some time off, and we've all taken a collective deep breath and slowly exhaled as we've finally been able to relax. Since no one had to wake up for work on Friday morning, we all decided to watch a movie on Thursday night. Before heading to the lecture room (an impossibly noisy room with a projector that casts a yellow glow across the entire screen where we eagerly gather to watch movies, lying on the floor propped up against chairs turned on their sides) I stopped by A1 to see my man. His face lit up and he pushed himself into the corner of his bed, patting the now-empty spot and telling me to sit down small. He handed me a plastic bag. Choose any one, he told me, as I peered in to see a Fanta, an orange and an unidentified bag of what may have been Middle Eastern corn chips. Saying no to Alfred's food offerings is, I have come to learn, the height of insult, so I chose the orange. Good, he grinned at me. I already had one anyway.

It was then that he asked me to tell him my life story. You tell me yours, I will tell you mine, was the deal I was offered. I sat there, orange in hand, debating with myself. I started to say no, to ask him if I could come back another day for the sharing of histories. I had friends and laughter and a movie waiting. I was too tired to listen to his drawn-out Liberian English ramblings. I didn't feel like talking about my past. But something stopped me dead in my selfish tracks, so I leaned in close and got comfortable. Who's first?

I started. I told him about growing up in New Jersey, about my family and my summers at the farm. I told him about Johnny and how much I hated God for taking him from us. I told him about running and running and running until I finally turned around and realized I had gotten nowhere except deeper into God's own heart. I told him about praying for Africa and about my summer in Zambia. He laughed at my stories of youth group and he smiled proudly when I got to the part about coming to Liberia. So now I'm here. And we're friends. And that's all.

He asked me if I was finished, and then, as we passed that orange back and forth between us, he shared with me his life. I'm the first person he's ever told, and his story isn't mine to pass on to you. But I think my heart was broken, just there in the corner of A Ward, next to a small boy who has lived more in fourteen years than I ever hope to in the rest of my life.

It was after eleven before I left, but not before I made Alfred a promise. I told him I would pray for him every day, and I plan to. Can you pray too? Pray that healing will come to his body. We still don't know if he will be able to keep his foot, and for a basketball star like Alfred, losing a foot would be a tragedy. But mostly, just pray for his heart. Pray that he would somehow get a finger wedged into the idea of God's love. That he would rip even just a tiny hole in whatever's covering it for him and be blinded with the truth and beauty of it. Pray that he would learn what love is and that he would learn how to love. Because he's one of the most amazing people I've ever met, and his huge heart would be wasted on hate.