God has surely listened

Jacob Wain recounts a dramatically answered prayer

It’s 6:40 am, and I park outside the hospital. In my car, I pray for my protection, my patients, and the ward. During the handover, my allocated beds changed three times; strange.

After handover, I get my patient’s medications ready as normal. I give medication to one elderly lady in a side room who has been asking if she’ll be discharged this afternoon and if she can go out for a cigarette!

I carry on. I do another patient’s medication and then walk back to the nurses’ station. Passing the side room door, I glance in. There she is, in the corner, sitting perfectly still, staring at the door. I look carefully at her chest, waiting for her breath. She isn’t breathing. This is it!

Over three years of training, I have done many emergency training courses. But simulations are different; you stay calm, and you get your sentences out clearly. But in reality. I step outside the room, trying to string a sentence together to ask for help. All I can muster is to repeatedly shout my colleague’s name, and then we rush in. Checking that the patient is definitely for CPR, I pull the emergency bell and start chest compressions. Within minutes, doctors, senior nurses, and outreach are leading the resuscitation effort. We follow the defibrillator’s directions, and eventually, after four or five attempts, the patient has a steady pulse and breathes for herself. Yet, as the afternoon draws on, sadly her vital signs worsen. The doctors decide she is for palliation. With a heavy heart, I begin the end-of-life framework. We did the best we could.

The next day, I’m back again and working on the opposite side of the ward. In the afternoon, I brush past one of the doctors. He remarks how strange it is that the lady from the side room has been sat up in bed and talking with her family. Later, I bump into her family in the corridor, and they confirm that she’s been talking and even eating ice cream! I take them to one side and say I know they are not religious, but I am, and I prayed for her that morning; I believe that what happened was a miracle. They take it well and I’m relieved.

Psalm 66:19 says, ‘but God has surely listened and has heard my prayer.’ That morning, I prayed for protection for myself, my patients, and my ward. Before I even started, I was moved around three times, but I ended up exactly where God wanted me because, even though my call to God was simple and short, he surely listened and heard my prayer.

Jacob Wain is a newly qualified nurse and is a volunteer Associate for the CMF Nurses & Midwives team