Hospital Chaplain
In 1984, while serving my first year as an adjunct chaplain at a local hospital, I met a patient who helped broaden my concept of pastoral care. Indeed, as a first year student/Chaplain, this patient taught me more than the classroom could have ever taught me. He taught me the meaning of life and the value of brotherhood and I had no expectations at all when I was first introduced to him.
I was working the Saturday rotation. My duty required me to be in the hospital for twenty-four hours and to minister to the spiritual needs of the patients and their families. When I was on duty, I was the on-call Chaplain for any emergency that occurred during my period of duty. Nurses and doctors would have me paged to come to the area of need. When on duty, I wore the traditional white jacket with the word Chaplain embroidered above the left breast pocket. I also wore a necktie and my hospital identification badge provided me with access to critical care areas. I was easily recognizable.
On this particular Saturday, I received a call to go to the emergency room. Messages were usually delivered by the hospital operators and did not include any information other than to instruct me as to where I was needed. Since I was needed in the Emergency Room, I assumed the worst. As I journeyed to the ER, I silently prayed that God would use my voice to His purpose. When I arrived at the nurses’ station, I asked about their need for me.
We have a man who was brought in drunk. He has a blood alcohol level of .32% which is very high. The police brought him in and said they had found him sitting in the middle of a quiet street. He isn’t injured but we can’t let him leave until we can determine his blood alcohol level is going down instead of climbing. We can’t put him a treatment room because we have other patients and the only place we can put him is in the waiting room. Our problem with him is he is bothering the people in the waiting room, the nurse said as if at her wits end. He is asking for money and just being a drunk.
“Does he have family?” I asked.
“He has a niece named Kathy,” the nurse replied. “We have tried to call her but we’ve gotten no answer,” she said in explanation.
“How will I know him?” I asked.
“He is in a wheel chair and only has one leg,” the nurse replied as she turned to attend to the needs of the other patients.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked the nurse who had already turned away.
“Whatever you want to, just keep him out of our hair and away from the other people in the waiting room! We have a lot of other patients who need physical help and there is no one else we can call,” she said disgustedly.
While a hospital chaplain is on duty for the patients, we are also on duty to help the staff as they deal with difficult issues of death and dying. I was a little confused by the request to sit with a bothersome drunk. I was mentally prepared to deal with a life and death situation and here I was asked to sit with a drunken one legged man. I wondered what I would do and what I could do. I felt very unprepared for the work ahead and a little frustrated that I was being asked to do this.
The man was easy to spot. He was in a wheel chair and his intoxication was obvious. He was even leaning outward in his wheel chair to speak with the person nearest to him. “God help me,” I prayed as I moved to talk to him.
“Are you John?” I asked the man sitting in a wheel chair. Even at first glance, it was obvious; this man was feeling no pain as the odor of alcohol engulfed the area around him.
“Do you know me?” the man replied skeptically as he looked up at me with eyes that seemed to search my soul.
“Have you heard from Kathy? How is she doing?” I asked, not answering his question but trying to demonstrate I knew not only his name but other things about him as well. I will admit, I was having a little fun with John. It was my justification for being asked to attend to a drunk.
“You do know me!” he exclaimed loudly. You do know me!” he said again with a look on his face that showed happiness mixed with surprise.
“How do you know me? He asked.
“Do you see what is written on my coat?” I said as I pointed to the word Chaplain.
“You’re the Chaplain,” he replied.
“That’s right John, I am the Chaplain and you may not know this but Chaplains are usually good people who care about other people,” I said in partial explanation for my presence.
I knew I would never be able to talk to John while he was in the waiting room. There were too many people in the waiting room to have a decent conversation and I believed conversation was necessary for anything I might decide to do with him. John was also using more volume than necessary which was one of the reasons for my being called for assistance. At least I now understood the reason for my presence was to reduce the stress between John, those in the waiting room and the staff. I also knew I was going to be with John for at least a couple of hours and I wanted to find a place where we could both be more comfortable. I chose the doctors lounge which was around the corner yet still near to the emergency room.
“Yes, I am the Chaplain and I like to walk around the hospital talking to people I meet. I would like to talk to you if you don’t mind,” I said with as much interest as I could put into it. “Do you mind if I roll you to another location where we can talk?” I asked.
“No, I don’t mind at all,” replied John who now had someone to talk to and perhaps someone who would help him find enough money for cab fare back home.
The doctor’s lounge was a small room with a couch and a television. Sometimes the doctors used the room to take a short nap when the work load was light and sometimes they used the room to break difficult news to family members. I knew this room would be close to the staff but far enough away from the waiting room to make everyone happy. I informed the nursing staff of our new location and received a curt smile for my thoughtfulness.
“John, how long have you been drunk?” I asked after getting him settled in the lounge.
“Well, I guess about three years,” he replied without waiting for a better answer to come to his mind.
“That’s a long time,” I said while thinking it must have been a much longer time than that.
John had the appearance of a man who lived in the bottle; who did not work for a living but rather spent his time in the throes of drunkenness. I had seen his kind many times before. Unshaven, unclean and uncaring, John was an outcast in society. That is why no one wanted to talk to him in the waiting room and that was why the nursing staff just wanted to be rid of him. I had made my own quick assessment but I was to also soon to learn, my judgment was in error.
“I am going to quit drinking,” said John. “I have some wine at home and when I get home, I am going to pour it all out,” he said as if he thought that would make me happy and he could avoid my sermon to him.
Actually I knew he was not ready to make such a commitment. His statement too was typical of things a typical drunk might say. He was probably praying that I wasn’t going to preach to him like some preachers do and condemn him for his actions. While John presented a very typical view of a classical drunk, there was something different about him that intrigued me. I wanted to know more.
“How did you lose that leg?” I asked rather brazenly.
This time John looked into my eyes and was silent. Tears quickly began to run wildly down his cheeks and dropped onto his shoes with a splatter. His head dropped and his body shook as his tears continued to fall. I felt uncomfortable and regretted asking such a painful question.
It happened in Nam. We were sweeping through a vile and I saw there was this little baby lying on the ground crying. Man, I have always hated to see a baby cry so I picked it up hoping to make it stop crying. Man, the baby was booby trapped! Those fooking Gooks killed that baby! I don’t know what kind of people would do something like that just to kill an American? The booby trap took my leg and nearly got the other one too! I keep seeing that baby lying on the ground. That baby is in all of my dreams and I hate sleeping because that baby is always there! I wish Doc had just left me there to die.
I didn’t know what I had expected from his answer but I was not expecting this. I suppose I expected him to say he lost his leg in a logging accident or a car wreck or some other tragic event. Upon hearing these words, I looked at John more closely. He appeared to be about the same age as I was and yet his life had taken a different route than mine.
Suddenly I found myself with John as he participated in the sweep of that village. I could see the child in his mind because I too had seen so many desperate children during my tour in Vietnam as a Marine. Since my return from Vietnam, I had worked feverishly to forget the trauma of war. I had buried the harshness of war and hoped never to confront the images of war again. Yes, I had buried the faces of the children I had seen as well.
The children I had seen were hungry and desperate. Their lives had been torn as their country had been torn by a savage war. Many children bore the scars of desperate battles in which their safety was a last concern. I recalled one little girl I held on my lap and who was an orphan. She had endured the pain of having a leg shortened by a fragment from a grenade. I had never in my life seen the destruction of a child but in Vietnam, it seemed commonplace.
John was not the derelict drunk I had initially envisioned but rather a soldier who had lost his innocence in the jungles of Vietnam. Though we had never met before that night, John and I were brothers. Vietnam veterans typically refer to others who fought in Vietnam as brothers because regardless of the branch of service, we endured some of the same hardships. That war, more than anything else in our lives, defined us as men and as warriors at a time when many actively chose to leave the country instead of serving. I held onto John as the pain racked his body and now it was our tears which flowed freely.
“John, I served in Vietnam too. I was in the Marine Corps and I understand what you are saying. I have seen the children of that war and I have grieved over the horrific price they paid in that war. I know no one else understands what it was like for us. They can’t imagine the destruction we saw or the terror we felt. The only people who understand what it was like are the ones who served there. This makes us brothers John, and I want you to know I am proud to call you brother.”
John and I had answered our country's call to military service. We had been young men when we learned the fine art of killing the enemy but we were never taught how to handle a small child who was being used as a booby trap. I was ashamed of all who had met John and had turned their backs on him. I was ashamed of myself and my quick judgment that labeled John as a common drunk.
John and I talked for a couple of hours and developed a bond. We talked about the good times we had both experienced in the military and of places we had been. We talked about our personal fears of coming home and how we tried to find our way in a civilization that had now seen war. Though John was Army and I was a Marine, our experiences were similar. In the couple of hours we spent together, I found a new friend; a brother. During the time we talked, I felt we both managed to find a little depth to our souls and a small bit of peace.
The hospital maintained a small fund that was to be used by the Chaplain when he deemed it necessary. John would have his ride home in a cab and it would be paid for by our fund. It was fun rolling John through the waiting room and past the ones who had been bothered by him. I was prepared to help John get into the cab yet he was insistent that he could do it all himself. Once seated, he gave me a salute which I gladly returned in honor of our brotherhood. I gave the driver the money required and warmly hugged the man whom I considered a hero. I wished him well and again I welcomed him home.
Two months passed and one night while making my rounds in the ER, I saw the same nurse that was there the night John was brought in. This night was different and the case load was much lighter. She smiled as she saw me approach. She remembered me. I suppose she remembered because John’s case was a different situation from the normal emergency needs and it lasted for several hours.
“I haven’t seen you around here lately but I guess you heard,” she said.
“Heard what?” I asked with interest.
“That fellow, the one they brought in drunk that night and you talked with him for so long, well he died a couple of weeks ago,” she replied. “They brought him back in here but he was already gone,” she said.
I was shocked and surprised. Yes, I remembered John and the night we had become brothers. I had hoped, no I had prayed that John would find another way to deal with his pain and that he would leave the alcohol behind. I was immediately saddened by this news. I wondered if there was more I could or should have done.
“His name was John,” I said while looking intently into her eyes. You probably didn’t know it, but he was a hero with all kinds of medals, including the Purple Heart, awarded for service in Vietnam. I will miss him,” I said softly as I turned away.
I didn’t cry then but later when I was alone, I let loose with tears equal to the tears I had shed for the many friends that did not come back. I prayed that God would be generous to this soldier who had endured so much and at such a cost. I prayed that God would forgive me for my failure to see a hero who needed peace.
CP July 2008
