4

"Did You Come From India?"

(Tuesday, Hong Kong Adventist Hospital. Fred’s story)

I was lying in a quiet, dimly-lit room. There were Chinese people wearing white clothes and masks standing around me. I saw lots of medical equipment. There were tubes and wires going in and out of me in various directions. The people were friendly.

One white-clad lady leaned over into my face and half-yelled, "Mr. Gale, do you know where you are?"

"No," I mumbled, having some trouble moving my mouth.

"You’re in Hong Kong!" she yelled again.

"OK," I thought, "That explains the Chinese faces and the tall white buildings outside the window."

"You had a brain infection. Very serious!" The nurse went on.

"Oh," was about all I could manage, but my battle-scarred brain was slowly beginning to crank. Like a ship making its way out of a fog bank I was putting the pieces together.

Another white-clad lady appeared over me and announced that she was here and Pastor Wong had come with her. Yes, that looked like Pastor Wong waving to me from the window. But who was this lady? She wasn’t Chinese. Her hair was tied back in a long dark plait, and her skin appeared dark as well in the dim light. She resembled an Indian nurse who had introduced herself earlier.

My brain, recovering from five days of hand-to-hand combat with enemy microbes, tried to formulate some questions.

"Did you come from India?" I asked.

"No," she answered, seeming confused.

I tried another one: "Where did you meet Pastor Wong?"

She asked me, "Do you know who I am?"

I pondered it, and ventured, "You look familiar."

Still not sure what to think, she announced, "I’m Suzanne."

Now things were falling into place. Not expecting to encounter my spouse in a dimly lit hospital room half-way across the world, it never occurred to me that I was talking to my wife.

"You’re Suzanne?" was about all I could manage.

But I was on my way back.

**

By Monday, Suzanne could see some improvement in Fred’s condition. When she entered the ICU, Louis, a young nurse put his arm around her shoulders and with touching kindness, told her, "Your husband is doing much better today."

Fred could barely give one-word responses, but at least they were words. When Suzanne told him people were praying for him, he said, "Good." He still could not stay awake more than a few minutes, but the doctor was encouraging.

"If you had asked me on Saturday, I would have given a pessimistic prognosis," the doctor confided. "But now I’m very optimistic."

Another nurse came in and told Suzanne, "He’s doing much better. On Saturday, he could have gone either way, but on Sunday he really turned around."

What a coincidence. That was just when the church back home began to pray for him.

By Tuesday, it looked like Fred would make it. The infection had been killed off by five days of heavy antibiotics. But there was still the possibility of permanent damage, and he had a long way to go before he would be ready to travel home. He was, of course, very weak. The left side of his face was paralyzed. His left eye wouldn’t close and he had difficulty eating and drinking since the left side of his mouth didn’t work. Suzanne had to feed him because his hands and lower arms were swollen and painful. Pastor Wong noted his resemblance to Popeye, the cartoon character, with his swollen arms and one eye that wouldn’t close. In addition, Fred’s knee was swollen and stiff, frozen at an obtuse angle, so that he could neither straighten it out nor bend it.

Back home, the church continued to pray. On Tuesday night, 30 people gathered for prayer. They called Suzanne in Hong Kong and listened via speakerphone as she reported on Fred’s situation and prayer needs. Throughout that week, as prayer needs were relayed home, they were disseminated through the church’s email network. The following weekend, the annual church retreat had been scheduled. And the planned theme of the retreat just happened to be prayer.