Previous Challenge Entry
Topic: Reward (09/27/04)
TITLE: The do-gooder's reward By Henry Swart 10/01/04 |
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT SEND ARTICLE TO A FRIEND |
Frankly, that was exactly what I expected her to do – leave, like all those who had come before her. They came with smiling faces, satisfied their do-gooding little hearts by showing as much mercy as they could muster, and then tucked tail and left, usually overwhelmed by our pain and the bitterness it inspires.
When I saw her standing in the doorway for the first time I was hardly impressed. I gave her a week, maybe two, before she deserted us. A pretty little face like that, with no hardness in it yet, would not be able to gaze upon the harsh pain of this place for long. From the very start, I treated her the way a do-gooder who would soon abandon us deserved; I treated her with the contempt someone that happy deserved. All of us did. I guess it was just our way of trying to get back at a world that had treated us so harshly. It was as though we were trying to hasten her departure and, in so doing, justify our initial perception that she wouldn’t last.
But she did last. To our surprise she outlasted our bitter insults, our snide remarks, and our burning hatred. She outlasted our stinking bedpans, our oozing wounds, and our thankless arrogance. She outlasted the death that hung like a shroud over our dark rooms. She outlasted the bad and brought some good into our lives. It was as though this place where we awaited death could not get a hold on her, as though she were somehow immune to it.
What struck me most was that she was not afraid – not of us, nor this place, nor the death that hunted us like a pack of hungry wolves. Her lack of size had led me to believe she was weak and her beauty had led me to believe she was vulnerable and would be easily intimidated; I had been misled, in fact. I realize that now after five years of watching her care for the sick, heal the broken-hearted and, yes, set the captives free.
I’d been one of those captives; not to my sick body, though it did trap me in my bed, but rather to the bitter rage and despair in my sick soul. I had become so cynical that I’d thought all goodness was hypocrisy, that there was only badness in this world. But she had proven me wrong and forced me to, grudgingly, find some hope in the same place she did – in God, the very One I had blamed for all my troubles. After all, if He had sent me an angel, He couldn’t be that bad.
I credit myself with resisting her love, and His, for almost four years, but one can resist love only so long. Finally I had broken before the sheer persistence of it and something strange had happened – the fear, which had been the gatekeeper to my prison, had left, allowing me to walk free.
The other day, while she took my blood pressure, I said, “The hospital should pay you for what you do, Tessa, it’s not right that you don’t get paid.”
“Oh, I do get paid, Jimmy,” she replied. “My reward is to see God change you.”
“Yeah, but that’s not enough,” I replied, “you should receive some money too. You single-handedly turned this whole place around. I’ll speak to Sister Jones tomorrow, see what I can organize for you.”
“No, don’t do that,” she insisted, “I don’t want that kind of reward.”
“Why not?” I enquired. “God knows, you deserve it!”
She smiled thoughtfully, as if choosing her words. “If they reward me, it’ll be according to what they can afford, but if God rewards me, it’ll be according to what He can afford. Call me greedy if you like, but I’m gonna wait to receive my reward in heaven.”