Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Doctor/Nurse (11/02/06)
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TITLE: Visitor in the Night | Previous Challenge Entry
By Angeline oppenheimer
11/09/06 -
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Pain shook his body like a tidal wave, waves after waves of shooting pain flooding his frayed nerves. Rashid can only remember a huge ton of container rolling over his right foot. When he woke, he was strapped to a hospital bed, drips draping his body and his foot…he dared not even look. He knew nothing was terribly wrong.
As he looked around the fluorescent-lit room, he remembered slivers of conversation before pain claimed him.
“His foot looks like cubed steak. The x-ray shows that his bones are all crushed beyond hope. Looks like we need to take the foot off to prevent infection.”, Doctor Moldova was speaking softly, gravely to the nurse.
The bit of knowledge came back like a flaming arrow, sending fear even beyond the pain he was feeling now. Not my foot, Rashid thought, “How am I ever going to walk like a normal person again? Who is going to help Mrs. Pink shovel her driveway or carry the groceries in for Roger?”
Rashid had moved to America from Iran in his early twenties. As a kid, he had spoiled enough family gatherings with his “ants-in-the pants” antics, much to his grandmother’s chagrin. However, there was one picture in the Koran that his grandmother discovered and used over and over again to calm him down whenever he was on his hyper-romp. A picture of a gentle-bearded man, surrounded by children. A prophet, his grandmother told him. Just a prophet, his grandmother cautioned again. In America, his American friends told him that was Jesus but as a good Muslim, he would pray to Allah five times a day, as all good Muslims do.
As Rashid pondered his future without a foot, he grew bitter with anger. Where was his god? In utter frustration, he took his dinner tray and smashed it against the wall, barely missing the other patient. He started ranting in Farsi with intermittent groans. As the darkness gathered tightly around the Chicago skyline, he drifted into a restless sleep, exhausted by his own outburst and excruciating pain.
In the darkness, a picture against the wall glowed with great intensity, waking him up.
He looked familiar, yet the brightness prevented Rashid from any form of certainty. Rashid felt drawn to the picture and then the brightness came to his bed.
“Why are you crying, my son?” the brightness asked. Rashid shook with fear yet there was a calmness about this voice.
“My foot. I’m about to lose it and it means so much to me that I can run and walk and help my neighbors do chores.”
The Brightness took his foot into his own hands and strangely enough, there was no pain to his touch.
“Don’t worry, my son. I’ll take care of it.” Even though Rashid still can’t discriminate the face, the familiarity snapped right in his memory. The gentle-bearded man.
And just like that, the brightness disappeared. Rasher’s tears flowed like a river of joy, encompassing him like a bean bag that lulled him to a deep sleep.
“I can’t believe this. Someone must have come in last night and did a heck of a job on Rashid’s foot,” Dr Moldova said as he turned Rashid’s foot this way and that. A perfect size ten.
“The Great Physician did and I even got to chat with him. Do you believe it?” Rashid’s eyes were swollen from crying.
Dr Moldova can’t figure what happened, so he ordered an X-ray and it showed bones as good as the other foot. “Miracles, eh?” he shook his head in unbelief.
Rashid went back to his room and asked the nurse if there was a picture of Jesus on the wall facing him. “No, there never was and never will…this is a state hospital.” The nurse told him.
Walking out of the hospital, Rashid gave his heart to the Physician. He wanted his heart to be as whole as his newly healed foot.
Based on a true incident.
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Great story, well done.