What God Can Do

What God Can Do

Dee Barroso

I have been in nursing 36 years and have seen many miracles.  One of them remains very vivid in my memory!   When talking with other nurses working that day, they always bring up this amazing event…

I was working in a Medical Intensive Care Unit.  We received an older lady named Shirley from a nursing home who was in respiratory distress and on a ventilator.  Shirley’s husband, though healthy, was unable to take care of his wife at home.  They were now living in a nursing home so they could be together.  While she was in the hospital, he came to visit everyday.  Sitting next to her, he would talk to her while holding her hand.  

One day Shirley started fighting the ventilator - trying to get out of bed!  Since she was fighting so hard, the doctor said, “Let’s remove the breathing tube and get her off the machine.”  Shortly after taking her off the ventilator, she started screaming!  I went in and asked her what was wrong.  She said she needed to go home and be with her husband!  I tried to calm her down and told her we needed to get her breathing better so that she could go home.  She calmed down and then started screaming again.  She repeatedly insisted that she had to go home and be with her husband!  I told her he would be there shortly, since visiting time was getting close.  Hearing that settled her down once more. 

Shortly after leaving her room, I heard Shirley scream again, "He's here! He's here!”  Going back into the room, I asked her what was wrong.   She exclaimed,  “My husband is here with me!” Shirley was in a rotating bed that had an air mattress and an arm pad.  She was patting the arm pad.  I told her that it was just the arm pad.  “No, it’s not!”  she responded emphatically.  “My husband is lying here next to me! He has come to say good-bye!  He is in the Coronary Care Unit next door.”  Strangely, she felt as though her husband was in both places.

I went out to the desk and called the CCU, "Hi, this is Dee in MICU.  I know this is going to sound crazy - but do you have Mr. Bailey there?”  The nurse told me to hold on and then put the nurse manager Carol on the phone, “Hi, Dee, how can I help you?”  I again said, “ I know this is going to sound crazy, but Mrs. Bailey is insisting that Mr. Bailey is over there and that he is here lying in bed next to with her telling her good-bye!”  Carol then replied, “A couple hours earlier Mr. Bailey was brought in, and he has just died!!”  I was flabbergasted!

When the hospital chaplin went into the room to tell Shirley that Mr. Bailey had passed, she was crying.  As soon as she heard the news of his passing, a smile appeared on her face. She told us he had already told her good bye, and that he would see her soon.  She was very quiet from that point forward.  

Shirley recovered enough to return to the nursing home.  However, she passed away a short time later.

God works in wonderful and mysterious ways to comfort us.