By Not Known
The last rays of sunlight left the evening sky and the lights of the city begin to shine brightly against the dark sky. I did not turn on the light in my SGH room. These were precious moments for me after the last visitors were ushered out. I savoured every moment of this quietness. I was alive and mending form an open-heart surgery. It was time to read, to rest and to think.
Suddenly, a wheelchair was pushed into my room and a loud impersonal voice said, "Patricia Tan?"
I reached for the switch to turn on the beg light. A nurse’s aid stood there behind the wheelchair.
"Yes," I replied.
"X-rays," she said.
Reluctantly, I got out of bed, put on my bathrobe and climbed on to the wheelchair. The aid just stood there and watched. The mere movement made me feel nauseated. My chest cavity hurt. Open-heart surgery is not for the faint-hearted, I thought.
On the way to X-ray I seemed to hear a still small voice say, "There is someone I want you to talk to tonight."
Two women were in the reception area when I arrived, and somehow, I was led to talk with the one with grey hair. She looked lively and well. But the Lord has other things in mind that night. We exchanged looks and smiled tentatively and without preamble, I asked here, "Do you know Jesus?"
She gave an affirmative not and in a tired, frail voice, she said, " have had open-heart surgery."
"Me, too," I smiled.
We introduced ourselves and quickly, I said, "I was just thinking how blessed we are if we know Christ as a Saviour. If we survived this ordeal and live, we will still get to server Him. If we don’t, we get to be with him forever. We really can’t get a getter deal than this, can we? We can’t lose."
Mayr smiled and nodded. I can tell that it was an effort that cost her. At that time, I thought it was merely exhaustion from the same kind of pain I was having.
In a few days, I was discharged and within a week, I returned for my check up and on the way, I went up to the ward to look ofr Mary. One of the nurses recognised me and said, "Mary passed away yesterday but it was really strange."
"Mary kept telling us how ‘blessed she was.’ She said that if she lived, she could still tell people about him, but if he died, she would be with him forever. She kept saying that one one could be given anything better that that."
I just could not speak. My throat had constricted, and tears stung my eyes.
Peter Poon