Lost in the hallways

I am lost in the maze of hallways. Trying to find my way to the NICU unit because I heard a Code Blue announced over the loud speaker, I am standing at a crossroads wondering which way to turn. A woman approaches and tells me that the unit is in the opposite direction.

Everything in the hospital is unfamiliar and I have just learned that NICU stands for Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit and that a Code Blue is respiratory failure. It is not imperative that I get there, as the call will go out to the chaplain who is carrying the trauma pager for the day. My instruction in that moment is to take the next hour and a half and visit the units that I have been assigned and ask the nurses whether anyone wants to be seen by a chaplain. Cold calling, my supervisor says. I have already been to two and no one is in need of a chaplain.

The woman, who turns out to be a nurse although she isn’t dressed in the customary dark blue scrubs, asks me about the music case that is on my shoulder. “Is that a harp?” she asks me.

We talk for a few moments about how her daughter played a large pedal harp for eight years and then lost interest. Then she tells me that she has a patient that might really enjoy a bit of music if I have the time.

The invitation feels like a Godsend.

Her patient is a 14-year-old girl who is receiving dialysis.

“She doesn’t look 14,” she tells me in preparation. We enter the unit and approach the bed of a girl who looks about eight. She introduces me and I take out my Reverie Harp.

I sing what is becoming a standard, “The sky is blue, the grass is green, and the light is yellow.” She joins in and after it is done, she suggests that the sun is yellow. We sing again, changing the words up, singing about the colors of fruit and end up naming items around the room. “The bag is blue, the trash is green, and the gown is yellow.” We are playing. I sing the first part of the sentence; she fills in the color at the end. She tells me that she is going to camp. She has gone for the last four years. The morning is spent in dialysis, the afternoon is filled with archery, and arts and crafts, all the usual camp stuff.

I hand her the harp and she strums it, plucking each string and then touching it again, deadening it. She compliments herself on her song. After a bit, it is time for me to go; there is a didactic scheduled with a local priest who will explain what the Catholic ministries do in terms of administering sacraments and how to get in touch with them. I make my goodbyes and as I am walking past the nursing station at the door the nurses thank me and tell that they have never seen the girl enjoy something as much or been so engaged. They invite me to come back.

“She’s here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon for three hours,” they say.

I ask my supervisor in our afternoon session, whether it is appropriate to develop regular patients. He assures me that it is fine. My group congratulates me on a successful encounter.

When I am leaving following afternoon report, I see a little girl in a wheelchair waiting by the front entrance. I had noticed her before, the small blue wheelchair catching my attention. As I walk by, I look at her and, to my delight, it is the same girl from dialysis. She introduces me to her mother and I sit and show her the instrument. The girl relates the story of the harp, “Her husband made it for her,” she tells me. The two of them discuss an uncle, now dead, who was a good woodworker. She seems 14 in that moment, and it is obvious that she has told her mother about our visit.

The encounter, all of the pieces of it, seems to contain a divine intention.

I cannot really imagine the life of that mother who needs to get her daughter to dialysis three times a week without the aid of a car. But I am becoming aware of the heroic lives that people lead, just below the surface.

I am also aware that when we find ourselves to be lost, we are often found.