Chapter 13
Gloria Kim had been a nurse for several decades. Over the years, she had seen many strange things happen to good people, and she had cared for them during their recovery. For the last fifteen years, she had worked in the critical care unit at the children’s hospital. She had helped car wreck victims, children with cancer, and various other children suffering from maladies that threatened their existence.
Gloria had a way of knowing when a child drew close to death. When she converted to Christianity, she discovered God wanted her to know when He was ready to call for His littlest angels to come home. She would give those little ones the greatest and closest attention they would ever get in their final hours. She would be there to strengthen the families in their time of loss and pray the wee ones do not suffer any longer.
So, when she went to the chapel to pray for Tommy Morgan’s soul, Gloria Kim also prayed for the other children inside the critical care unit. She prayed for Bobby, whose crumpled body they pulled last night from the back of the totaled SUV. The ventilator pumped methodically to keep him alive. A chaplain helped the distraught family to come to grips with pulling the plug. After she prayed for that family, she turned her prayers to three other children fighting for their lives. One had leukemia. One burned beyond recognition. The last one, a crack baby, fought for each breath of life through a serious case of pneumonia.
Gloria Kim finished her prayer by asking again for God to look out for all of them, including Tommy. The sign of the Beast entwined within the rose tattoo on his buttock unnerved her. Her heart ached, but she did not think she could go back into his room again. She cursed the human monster that had hurt him.
The nurse sitting at the desk across from each of the children’s rooms tapped on the video monitors when Gloria returned to her station. “The feed from the rooms has been acting weird, so I called maintenance to come up and have a look. You okay now?”
“Yes, thank you.” Gloria frowned at the flickering screens. “I can’t understand why someone would brand a child like that.”
“That is not as bad as the other things they did to him.”
Gloria looked more closely at Tommy’s monitor. “What is he doing?”
The other nurse stood up and moved toward his room. “It looks like he might be seizing. I’ll check on him.”
Gloria advanced with the other nurse to the doorway to check in. She seemed relieved to realize that Tommy was not having a seizure. The other nurse had gone all the way into his room and held his hand to comfort him. The little boy appeared to be in the throes of some awful nightmare. Gloria could only guess he dreamed about his tormentors. She listened as he spoke in his sleep, calling out to someone named Susan, warning her about a fire. Abruptly he fell silent as if the terrible dream had left him.
Just as suddenly, the lights went out in the unit with a strange electrical crackle. Gloria gazed around the unit, startled to observe all the electrical equipment had shut down. The emergency generators immediately kicked in and the life support equipment whirred back to activity. Tommy had gone dead silent.
In the room next to Tommy’s, the high-pressure alarm on the respirator went off. Gloria acted quickly to begin saving Bobby’s life since there was no DNR status on the child yet. She pulled the code-blue button above Bobby’s bed and dropped the head down for the code team to perform CPR. As the announcement went over the hospital-wide intercom for a Code Blue in the Critical Care Unit Bed Two, the other nurse brought the pediatric crash cart and then waited for orders from Gloria.
Gloria thought this was Bobby’s last moment. She started the Dynamap for stat vitals and called out to Bobby even though she knew he could not respond. When she had bathed him earlier in the morning, he had been nothing more than a limp doll. Protocol required her to address him. She called his name again and started to feel for a pulse. When she looked up, a worried mother approached the door to the room.
Bobby started to convulse. Gloria still did not know his DNR status and asked for the defibrillator. When she pulled his gown down to expose his chest, she stopped and stared in disbelief. There should have been dark purple blotches all over his chest where he had received multiple contusions from tossing around like laundry in a drier in the back of the rolling SUV. She saw, instead, the smooth, pink skin of a healthy boy. She stared up at his face and watched an abrasion disappear before her eyes. She glanced at the other two women and realized she did not view hallucinations. They witnessed the miracle too.
Bobby still convulsed and Gloria quickly realized he gagged on the tube that ran down his throat to force air into his lungs. She called his name once more and his eyes fluttered open. She had to step back, almost stumbling over a wastebasket. The code team members arrived and were ready to take over. It seemed surreal to Gloria as she watched a miracle unfold and left her bewildered. Had it not happened three more times that afternoon, she would have spent the rest of her life second-guessing every assumption she reckoned about future patients.