E R

 

 The emergency room of a hospital can be a scary and frustrating place…

You see worry, pain and frustration on each and every face…

And that is where I found myself…just the other day

as they ran some tests on a friend…(he’s fine by the way! :)

As we sat in the emergency room…like everyone, having to every God appealed….

we waited and waited and waited…hoping for good news to be revealed.

And there in that place of healing……surrounded by doctors, nurses and laboratories…

I had the chance to watch the people all around me…and listen to their stories.

I saw a person who was shot in the eye with a dart…a person with a bad cough….

a pregnant person who was scared…another person who cut half his finger off.

I saw a baby who’d swallowed some pills…with her Mom who was feeling the strain…

I saw many people, in all shapes and sizes…in various degrees of pain.

Everyone I saw there was upset…in different agitated states….

because when someone we love is in pain…it is difficult to watch…and wait… 

I saw nurses and technicians… 

no matter how inane the questions…no matter how absurd….

knowing these people were worried and vulnerable…offer an encouraging world.

I saw people sitting side by side reassuring each other…people they’ve never seen….

as the nurses helped to ease people’s minds and warm their hearts

by passing out blankets… like candy on Halloween.

What I haven’t mentioned were these people’s ages, their genders, or their race

I haven’t mentioned their sexual orientations..or the color of each face….

Because when we are united in the vulnerability of our stories…

our differences seems small…and we realize how in the end…we are humans one and all.

Perhaps if we all spent more time in an emergency room listening to each other’s stories…

we’d stop looking at a person’s color or gender…their sex…if they are young or if they’re old…

and we’d offer more reassuring words….

and pass out more blankets to each other when we’re cold.