expensive music

Expensive music always has a monster baseline, “Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom” that jumps your bones up and down. Pulsing just above the baseline is the clap line, “Clap, Clap…Clap, Clap, Clap…Clap…Clap, Clap, Clap…Clap, Clap…Clap…” off beat and chaotic in a way that frenzies up the juices of the soul and gets them jiving toward the heart. Finally, in this three-seated coaster of sound, the front seat is reserved for the voice line “Gracias por Dios, vive Jesus Cristo”, delivered poorly in tone but with the voice of a lioness rich in hope. Amplify this concoction of lines to the fifth power, and let your ears be punished for the sake of a musical cleansing.

Listening to this beautiful ear-beating did not cost me a dime, but nevertheless, it was costly. It was costly because of where it was being published; not at an outdoor stage or at one of Ecuador’s many Discotecas, but rather, from the inside of a rickety ambulance, tearing at 140mph through the western half of the country to its elevated/mountain dwelling capital city. And it was costly because it was sounding through the air behind the most expensive thing possible; a human life.

What was wrong with the girl? I couldn’t tell you. Its name was 20 letters long and not easy on the tongue. But I can tell you that it was a vampire, and its teeth put her into a critical state at 9pm on a humid Saturday night. And the hospital balked, put its hands up, and shrugged. Operating in a world of uneven vampire remedies, it did not have a shot, pill, drug, or machine that could cure the bite. So they did the next ‘logical’ thing. They wheeled her into an unfortunate mans hearse and sirened her off to Quito. To stroke the conscience, and comfort the family, they threw two doctors into the back of the van. Ben and me…

Let me explain what an Ambu is to a medical ignorant like myself. Basely, it is a piece of stretchy rubber that, when inflated, is about the size and shape of a rugby football (more round than an American football). On either side of the Ambu rests a small hole for a tube to be attached to. Hooked up to an oxygen tank it doubles as an angel and a demon. An angel, because when squeezed with force, fills the lungs with fresh, clean air, sustaining life. A demon, because when squeezed with force, fills the fingers with fresh callouses, the hand with clean muscle cramps, and the mind with shots of frustration.

And it was in this juxtaposition, between angels and demons, between hope and despair, sleep and alertness, that Ben and I found ourselves pumping prayers from our hearts to our forearms, through our fingers, and into the failing body of a mother of two…

More than once, as my body jolted back and forth, and my stomach ran in the gerbal cage, I looked at Ben with the knowledge of necessity. Ben needed to check her eyes, to check her pulse and feed her shots, to whisper confidence into her ear and hold her hand. I needed to squeeze the Ambu, to catch her saliva on my leg, to stroke her hair, to pray to God. Her mother needed her lioness voice, an offbeat clap, and soft eyes for which to see her daughter. And finally, our bus driver, in some backwards way needed to remind me of John Candy’s “Uncle Buck” and needed to drive like a drunk Ricky Bobby in “Talledega Nights”.

None of us, the five of us, had the luxury of choice. We, all of us, needed to perform, all the way to Quito…

So the Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock

and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly

and you will eat dust all the days of your life.” -Genesis 3:14

And there were snakes in Quito. Born to operate with coiled grips and sharp lickers, they dealt out injustice, one hospital at a time.

“No you may not bring her here” hissed the first.

“We just don’t have the right treatment” slipped the second.

“Can’t sleep here” gumped the third.

And from the king of the pack:

“Sorry, no treatment.”

“But this is the best hospital in Quito.”

“Well, we just don’t have room.”

“So which is it, you don’t have treatment or you don’t have room?”

“You don’t speak good Spanish, you need to go.”

And the venom stings worse, when applied to the veins of a crying mother. Worse, when pumped into a fading oxygen tank. Worse, when tapped into the skin of a dying patient 10 stretcher lengths from help and a renewed life. And then the music in our van stopped, and silence entered with a deep breath, a bitter sigh, and the realization of what must be done next…

Guayaquil. 6 hours. 6 hours!? 6 hours. Another drive, this time an oxymoron. Cutting into the shaft of daylight, the beauty of the creviced Andes stood next to the ugliness of the previous hours, the light of our world against the darkness inside the ambulance. Hope pushed up against despair. A decision from where I now sat, in the front seat, cheek pressed up against the dashboard. Remain in darkness, ugliness, and despair. Or reach for beauty, light, and hope?

For the young girl’s family the decision was easy. From the backseat, rising above the familiar sound of the Ambu, came a hearty laugh, and then another. And then another. And then a constant. Somehow, a dying girl was funny. But maybe not. Maybe in that moment, the girl wasn’t dying at all. Perhaps for them, dying wasn’t even a consideration, never even a possibility. Maybe this was what holiness is; catching the giggles in the midst of the absurd…

How many times can one stare imminent disaster in the face, and avoid it by the margin of a paperclip? This was the question yet again as we hit the heavily trafficked streets of Guayaquil, this time with a driver holding bloodshot eyes and fidgety hands. He was a man possessed by the wheel, driven by the adrenaline of maximum speed. But if there ever was a need for such addiction, it was now. Three hours earlier, the oxygen tank touched empty, and the only air our girl was receiving was the dry, dirty air from the inside of the van. Each breath was a crossed finger, a minor miracle.

And so it was with great charm and little tact that we slammed the brakes and busted her through the doors of Louis Espernaza Hospital in Guayaquil. And it was with great conviction and little argument that the doctors received her. And it was with great speed and anxiety that we pulled out of the parking lot before they changed their minds. And it was with great relief that we looked back and saw her fading from our reach…

With finality in our hearts at last, we moved back up the coast, toward our final destination. Stretched out in the previously occupied gurney, behind the sounds of chatter from the front, I began to scribble a soft poem. I found no luck in this poem, partly because of the endless bumps and swerves that were still fancying our aforementioned madman. Rather than continue to labor, I instead closed my parchment and began to hum a new tune. My mind found the right pitch, and I let it play me through the night…

“T’was grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”

No more than a man, no less than a God.

He wasn’t Jesus, and Jesus wasn’t him either. But perhaps he could have fooled you for a moment, a short moment only of course, because I know you are much too wise to mistake a Savior. But I should hope that in that fleeting second, the one when the overhead lamp caught his face just right, you would not have missed the make-up of his expression, and how the last 3 hours had painted on it a story that looked much like the latter days of another man, the aforementioned Christ.

The new setting that the man found himself in gave him obvious parallel to Jesus. You want to discover sinners, find the hurting, see the sick, abused, poor, and mistreated, show up at your local hospital. Better yet, show up at a hospital sandwiched between two very dark streets, and make sure the air is dry and the brows of the patients are wet. Make sure of this, for Jesus might not have liked moving air. Chills.

Back to our man. After enduring a few more than a few minutes of clenched eyes and wincing teeth, the man opened his face and found himself in such a hospital. Figuring that just showing up here didn’t exactly make him a Christ figure yet, he decided that he would play a hand at humility and be the last to be served. He didn’t exactly tell the doctors this, and ironically enough, he didn’t need to. They seemed to know that he didn’t want to be treated and cared for right away, that he was shooting for righteousness.

When the hospital staff finally came to, the man was faced with the proverbial question of Pilate, who behind his desk with a cigarette in his mouth asked our other man, “What is the truth?” To which there was no reply. In that stunning silence of the Christ, Pontius was perhaps terrified. In the stunning silence of the man (or perhaps it was the fact that his low mumbling voice was inaudible) the staff was annoyed.

When an answer to the question came to surface in the back corner of the ER, the most common reaction was “How is that possible?” Nobody at the hospital knew the answer, but perhaps you do. How is it possible for an incarcerated man to have such expensive wounds? Why did he earn the deep beating that he received from those of his own kind? Did he deserve it? Was it persecution? He wouldn’t be the first, says John, and Matt, Mark and Luke.

Perhaps the most haunting part of our man’s situation, and coincidentally his most striking parallel to Jesus, were the marks left on his wrists by the hate that was inflicted upon him. It wasn’t nails that severed his arteries and every major string in his wrist, but rather, a machete smuggled into a cell to deal out penance. If I were a heaven and hell man, which I am not but I will postulate, I might say that two half wrists might do the man right, push him toward meeting the ‘good ole’ Lord. But lets be honest, having a Mark Rothko painting of your own blood splattered up and down your body doesn’t exactly say, “praise heaven.”

But compassion might. Might say such things, that is. Henri Nouwen, an author of many books, would tell us that compassion is partly the act of saying, “I do not know what to say or what to do, but I want you to realize that I am with you, that I will not leave you alone.” Compassion is not putting a sentence on a man already sentenced, is not finding advice or the perfect word lost in a word find. It is simply being there, and perhaps finding a bit of hope therein.

I thought about this as I stood next to our man. As I tapped the needle. As I reached down and squeezed the meatiest part of his being. As I injected the two inches of silver, wishing that I could inject in him more than just an antibiotic.

*I hope that this writing portrayed the lackadaisical nature of much of the hospital staff. That was the intention. However, it should also be noted that there are, as everywhere, some real good people within the walls of the hospital. Some very good doctors, and soon to be doctors work there, and they should not be slighted.

my own little babel.

This month I will be writing without ears. I will be the deaf muse, scribbling only the actions and the unfolding drama, and not the verbal arrangements. Like an old black and white film set to the tune of a musical background, my pen will find a song to play behind the scenes.

To write without understanding has its disadvantages. It seems incomplete. Imagine reviewing a political address without hearing the speech. What can one pull out of simply watching the crowd, or the man or woman at the podium? Perhaps you could gather the tone of the event through the pumping fist of the speaker or the jarred expression on a face in the crowd, but you still would not know the words that evoked them. You are left writing a piece with missing pieces.

But perhaps there are advantages as well. By not hearing words, you are distanced from the biases and manipulations of others. You are able to see things purely as they are happening, without thieves present to rob or change your perceived understanding. Sure you still have your own biases, but don’t you always?

In any event the purpose of my writing, at its base, is egocentric. I am not writing to prove, to conclude, to sell, or to persuade. Rather, I am writing to display my own thoughts in front of my own self, so that when I look at them later, I can eat them up and spit them back onto paper in a refined arrangement, an order that might get me closer to the core, closer to understanding.

To understanding what? What else is there but to discover where my maniacal God is in all of this?

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