abraham

Today was not exactly my shining moment as a nurse. I'm stuck somewhere around thirty percent of my normal energy level, and couldn't muster up much in the way of enthusiasm for my job. Getting called at five after seven and realizing that I was still in bed when I should have been dressed and on the ward didn't help much either.

Despite the general apathy I was feeling, I was treated to what I figure is one of the best things about this job; I realized today that one of my patients had come alive again.

When I first met Abraham, he was a silent, withdrawn little boy. He refused to make eye contact, refused to leave his mother's side, refused to interact. When he came to the wards, it was the same. A small frightened boy, living entirely inside himself.

As the days passed after his surgery, Abraham began to make noise. I wrote about him last Sunday, how I finally heard him squeak like an anemic monkey. It wasn't much, but I would have taken anything at that point.

When I got my assignment today, I was excited to see that, for the first time, he was actually my own patient. I figured I'd be super-nurse and get him to talk and laugh. Turns out I was way behind the times, because as soon as I finished getting report, I felt the weight of him hanging off my leg. I looked down into his irrefutably smiling eyes and said good morning. He shrieked something unintelligible back to me and ran off in search of legos. All day long, we chatted (never understanding a word of what the other one said) and built lego cities and did puzzles and had tickle fights.

Abraham, like so many before him, has been reborn. Out of the burned shell of a boy, scared and scarred, has emerged life and joy and exuberance. It's the first time I've ever recognized it so clearly, and I'm hoping it won't be the last. Because it's one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

Remember Abraham? My love from screening? In case you don't feel like poking around in the back pages of this blog, he was the three-year old who stole my heart back in February when we had our big screening day at the stadium. He came in this past week and had surgery on Thursday. For such a small boy, he had some major work done. His entire left hand, twisted into a ball by scars, was released and patched using skin from his thigh. His eyelid was reconstructed. The corners of his lips were widened. But when I went to see him after his operation, he wasn't crying. He wasn't fighting. He was just lying in his bed, curled up next to his mama, mute. And that's not normal for a three-year old. For the next couple days, I went to see him often and always got the same report. He's so good! He doesn't cry at all. Being a pediatric nurse, I was concerned. It's not right for such a small boy to be so quiet after having so much done.

But maybe that was just it. Maybe too much has been done. Maybe too much has happened to him in his short life. Maybe he's got nothing left. After all, falling into the fire as a baby and knowing nothing from life but pain and scars and surgeries isn't something that's calculated to make you into a social butterfly. I chalked it up to fear, but was still pretty worried about him.

I was working in A Ward this morning, a jumble of plastics and orthopedics patients. We had eight beds along one side empty, so we got to host church. On the floor in the middle of the room we spread out a blanket and piled on the B Ward kids. There are five or six of them, little dynamos of perpetual motion, unphased by huge bandages covering skin grafts and scar releases. I parked myself on the corner of the blanket and was pleasantly surprised when Abraham's mother dropped him off next to me. People kept on packing in until it was standing room only in the hallway. As the ward filled up, Abraham's uncovered eye rolled wildly around. He started looking more and more frightened, so I made my move. I gathered him onto my lap, his stiff little body unyielding against my arms. We sat that way for most of the singing time, until we started with a slow song about the great things God has done. I was sitting there, worshipping God, when I felt a weight in one of my hands. Abraham had taken his bandaged little fingers and rested them calmly in my own outstretched palm. And it wasn't long until I felt a small hand grab onto my other fingers. I looked down and there was Abraham, looking up at me, holding on for dear life. About thirty seconds later, my leg went completely numb, but I wouldn't have moved for anything. As the service went on, he relaxed until he was folded into me, his back matching the curve of my arm, fingers still wrapped around mine. Silent.

Not so the other kiddos. As Drew preached, they got more and more antsy, but I had come prepared. Out of my pocket came the finger puppets. Little sea creatures and jungle animals, you can get a pack of ten for a couple bucks at Ikea. To these kids, they're gold. Abraham got a monkey, and held up the finger on his unbandaged hand for me to help him out. The other kids amused themselves passing around my stethoscope, checking shark's heartbeat and octopus' breath sounds. (The physiology of that still escapes me.) They needed a good bit of silencing, since there's probably nothing more exciting than an elephant battling it out with a shark over stomping grounds on a big red blanket. Abraham, at first completely detached, slowly started turning towards the other kids until he was draped on his stomach over my leg, monkey inching hopefully towards seahorse. I looked away, trying to focus on the message, when I heard the kids start up again with the animal noises. I bent my head to quiet them, when I realized there was no way I could. It was Abraham, scooting his puppet along after shark, making squeaky little monkey noises.

Church was sweet today.

After church was pretty sweet too. The nurse I was working with hadn't been feeling well since we started our shift, so we sent her home at lunchtime. (Home being up a flight of stairs and slightly to the right.) This left me in charge of all eight patients and two new admissions on A Ward. Normally this would have been impossible, but God was on my side. (By my side, actually, to quote one of my favourite Liberian songs.) Everyone was stable. No one was having pain. I got to sit and talk to my patients and show them pictures of my family. When asked if I had children, I mentioned my glaring lack of a husband. To which my patient (lovingly referred to as the Reverend since he actually is one of the pastors at President Sirleaf's church) replied I will pray for you to get a husband. I will pray a strong prayer. (Apparently not just any old prayer will do. I need the heavy-duty ones.) He should be Liberian. So I can come to the wedding. And eat cake. It's amazingly simple when it's laid out like that. Liberian men should be lining up at my door any minute now.

In the middle of all this, I heard a knock at the door. I opened it to be greeted with the toothy grins of my B Ward boys. They hurled balloons in my startled face, jumping up and down, shouting Balloon party! Balloon party! over and over and over again. Things quickly devolved into a game of hallway soccer, kids dwarfed by a big, yellow physio ball, and soon enough I had the blanket spread out on the floor again and my friends were building a city with the help of one of my new admissions.



Any other time in my life, I would have told you that having ten patients plus four or five extra high-energy kiddos under my care would have been beyond me. But some days, God just gives extra grace. Today was one of those days. I wouldn't have traded it for the world.

I promised to wait until I had photos to share about screening with you, but I just finished looking through a friend's blog entry, and I have to write.

I had been nervous about yesterday, afraid that I would see things that would be too much for me to bear. Instead, I spent ten hours amidst a delicious cacophony of crayons and balloon animals. Children are children; some are just more broken than others.

... Cynthia, dressed to the nines in a miniature African dress, her twisted face bent low over her paper long after the others had begun to look up and share their wide, perfect smiles.

... The weight of Obadiah's twisted body, pressed against my heart like a prayer, his sweaty head tucked firmly under my chin as he struggled to hold his crayon.

... Abraham. Sweet, small Abraham. Too afraid to leave the line and play with the other kids. His features locked in a hardened mask with eyes that wept constant tears because he could no longer even blink. His scars extended over his head, down his arms and back. His left hand was a ball of scar tissue, his right twisted and small.

Kimberly wrote in her blog:

He didn't cry or complain. He was quite content playing with his blue balloon that one of the staff had given him ... In addition to the balloon, a blue shiny star was firmly attached to the tip of his nose. This was really the only point on his face that still looked somewhat normal.

When I saw those words this morning, I lost it for the first time. Because I know where that star came from. I had gone over to him, armed with a balloon and some stickers, absolutely no idea how I could connect with a child who couldn't move his mouth to smile. As I sat on the ground next to him, offering my own smile in place of his, I felt a small body lean against my back. I turned to look into the perfect eyes of Eric, a little guy I'd been playing with before seeing Abraham. Eric wasn't a patient; he was waiting for his mother to go through the line, and his face was, by this time, covered in stickers. It was obvious that Eric was somewhat disconcerted by the distorted face in front of him. He stared unashamedly at Abraham before turning back to me. He touched his nose, adorned with a purple heart. Then mine, where I had a gold star, placed there by some other eager child. He pointed to Abraham and then chose a blue star for Abraham's nose. So we could all be the same.


Abraham doesn't have an appointment yet, but he will be seen by the plastic surgeons once they arrive. As I sit by the window and the ship buzzes with anticipation while we wait for Her Excellency President Sirleaf to arrive for her visit this afternoon, I'm acutely aware of where my own heart is. Not in politics or glamour or high-profile positions. My heart is in the dirt and in the streets and in the maimed hands of a boy named Abraham.

I can't wait to take care of him when he comes to the ship.