Sometime after or during his first radiation treatments, pneumonia sets in to complicate his cancer. And then a heart arrhythmia was detected. It wasn't hard to note; the pulse below his diaphram beat with alarming rapidity. This puts him in ICU and results in the prescription of more drugs.
That night he experiences frightening hallucinations. Fiercely anxious, he watches as the hospital room transforms into a vast warehouse with stacks of papers, all of which he realizes to his dismay, require his immediate attention.
He relates to us in his shallow breathless voice, how much these nightsweats upset him: "And I had nobody, see? I had no phone, no cell. I couldn't even call anybody to come." Just recalling the incident clearly leaves him shaken.
Fortunately, he was alert enough to go to the patient lounge. Here he kept a lonely watch as the clock slowly tracked the time from 2:30 to 9:30 a.m. . Sooner or later, he believed, someone he recognized, knew and loved would come and rescue him.
If only our rescue could have been complete!
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