A chaplain shares three stories of nighttime ministry in the corridors and rooms of hospitals.

Neither Was Alone
It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night. (Psalm 92:1, 2)

The call came just after midnight, "There's been a death. Can you come?”

The hospital is different at night. It is darker, hushed, less hurried. Even when something must be done with great urgency, such as a code blue, voices are subdued. This night I went to the door of the room of the deceased, Edith, and knocked, and a voice softly invited me to come in.

Edith lay in the bed, eyes closed, mouth slightly open, permed gray hair curling toward her temples. Beside the bed a young woman sat in an armchair, holding Edith’s hand. No one else was there, and no lights were on in the room. The only light was that from the hallway.

I introduced myself, and Edith’s daughter Michelle welcomed me. I sat down with her and we talked quietly in the dark. Michelle told me that she had come from New York City to be with her mother in her last days. Michelle was an opera singer, internationally known, her permanent home in Switzerland with her husband and children. She spoke about growing up in small-town Iowa, dreaming of the singing career she now enjoyed, and about her widowed mother who shared the dream. Edith had sacrificed much to give Michelle singing lessons, and French, German, and Italian lessons, and the music education she would need to be successful. In the next week, Michelle was opening at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

I asked if her mother had ever seen her on that stage. With a beautiful smile, Michelle recounted her mother’s excitement at traveling to New York to see her daughter’s debut at the Met. Edith never got to Switzerland, but she never stopped talking about Michelle singing at the Met. She kept a scrapbook of clippings and articles about Michelle.

“I could never repay her for all she did for me, especially for believing in me and never doubting that I could do it,” Michelle said. “I tried to give her back in some measure out of the great good fortune I’ve been given, but she never wanted anything for herself. She was content to stay in her little town with her neighbors and church and garden after she retired. I am so thankful to God for everything, but this, being with her as she died, this I am most grateful for. Neither of us was alone.”

We talked a little more. I offered a prayer in which I tried to frame Michelle’s gratitude, Edith’s mother’s love that had sustained Michelle, and God’s great love for them both, the one who nested and the one who soared. When I left, Michelle still sat with Edith in the darkness, holding her hand. The light that was there was enough.

“Talitha cum”
Some years ago, before we had a special unit for children with cancer, those patients were often cared for during crises and at the end of life in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) of Blank Children’s Hospital. A row of rooms opened onto the nurses’ station opposite. Although the rooms had doors, privacy was mostly achieved by pulling a curtain across the doorway.

We had known all day that Jenna was dying. She had been in the hospital many times for treatment of a brain tumor. Jenna and her mother and father had been faithfully supported by their pastors and congregation. Jenna was a beautiful and winsome child who was held in affection by everyone. When she was hospitalized I would check in with her and her parents and, although I was welcome, they always told me about how well their congregation was taking care of them. It made me happy to hear this. Chaplains have their place, but we can’t go home with people.

On that day I had made periodic visits to Jenna’s room in PICU and always found pastors, relatives, and church members with them as Jenna slowly declined. Then, through the evening, people said their good-byes and left. Soon only Jenna’s parents and one pastor sat vigil at her bedside.

About 2 a.m. I was paged with the message that Jenna had died. There was stress in the nurse’s voice, and I assumed as I walked toward PICU that my main job would be staff care. When I walked into the unit I heard a man’s voice in Jenna’s curtained room: “Talitha cum! Talitha cum!” Puzzled, I went to the desk where the nurses were clustered, tearful, and angry.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“It’s their minister. He’s trying to raise Jenna from the dead,” one nurse said. “Why can’t he leave those poor people at peace? Can’t you stop him?”

The command to the little girl to get up (from Mark 5:41) was interspersed with fervent prayer. I told the nurses that if this was what Jenna’s mom and dad wanted right now, I couldn’t interfere. The night staff were so angry that they couldn’t listen. They went to their other duties.

And so I waited. I sat on the floor in the hallway where I could hear and waited. Finally, there was silence. Soon the PICU door opened and the pastor came out. He didn’t look my way, and in the darkened hall I watched him walk away, head down, shoulders tense. I felt pity for him because I thought that perhaps his faith had been greatly tested by Jenna’s death; and helpless in the face of that terrible stillness and her parents’ anguish, he wanted to do something to make it un-happen. I thought about his drive home, the rest of his night, the questions that must be flooding his head, the questioning of his own faith and failure to do what Jesus had told his disciples to do: cure the sick, raise the dead (Matthew 10:8).

I got up and went into Jenna’s room. Her mother was curled up in the bed with Jenna in her arms; the father held them both. With their permission I blessed Jenna and them, too. I used Aaron’s blessing and said the Lord’s Prayer. They kissed their daughter and tucked her in for the last time. I walked them to their car through the darkness of the pre-dawn sky. It was enough light for now.

The Healing Cross
I will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, O Lord, make me lie down in safety. (Psalm 4:8)

Next to Iowa Methodist Hospital is First Methodist Church, a Romanesque building with a dome. On top of the dome is a lighted cross that turns slowly. From certain hospital rooms, one can look at this cross. Because both hospital and church are on a hill, the cross is not obscured by the downtown city lights that surround the buildings.

When I was twenty, a young wife and mother of a baby girl, I became very ill. I needed surgery. When the surgeon went looking for a diseased gall bladder he found something he had never seen before. He threw a wet towel over my open abdomen and went to the medical library. When he returned he had a name for what he thought he had seen. He did his best to make repairs, and when I awoke he told me that there was a good chance I had a fatal disease in which, over time, all of the ducts of the body scar shut. There was treatment but no cure.

After a week in the ICU, I was transferred to a regular floor. My room was one of those with a view of the cross. However, I was supposed to lie still on my back unless there was someone to get me up, and I couldn’t see the cross. I was very frightened. I did not want to die young. I worried about my husband being left alone with our little girl. I mourned the possibility that I would not see her grow up, not have more children, not have time to serve God with my life as I had promised to do.

One night, unable to sleep, I struggled to a sitting position and looked out the window at the glowing, rotating cross. Weeping, I asked God what was going to happen to us. I begged for my life. I begged for my husband and child. When I could not pray or weep anymore, when I was spent and silent, staring at the cross outside my window, I heard, “You belong to me. I will never let you go.”

Peace came over me. I received a wisdom that would stay with me and strengthen me as I would go to others in the night during years of service, without the dread disease. I knew that, short or long, our lifetime is our lifetime, but in kairos is life eternal. I was able to go to sleep knowing that whatever happened, I was in kairos then and there. The light of the cross was light enough.

Linda Franciso Bets, an associate in ministry, works as a chaplain at Iowa Lutheran Hospital, Des Moines, Iowa.

The Subculture of the Third Shift: One Chaplain’s Story
Chaplain Phillip Parker, a minister of the Assembly of God, works three twelve-hour night shifts each week at Iowa Methodist and Blank Children’s Hospitals in Des Moines, Iowa. He has a special knowledge of the night shift staff, toward whom much of his pastoral care is directed.

Phil says that the medical staff who choose to work nights often do so to avoid the hospital politics and competition. Nobody bothers them, but then, nobody asks their opinion, either. Sometimes decisions that affect them are made during the day by others, and that makes them feel disrespected and slighted. An example of this would be a decision to close the grill in the cafeteria during the two hours of the midnight mealtime.

Night shift workers are skilled multi-taskers, Phil notes, because things that are done by specialists during the day, such as starting IVs, must be done by the staff at night when the specialists are not there. They are flexible and confident and thrive on having a broad skill set.

Patients are different at night, too. They are not waiting for someone to take them out of their room for a test. They are not trying to entertain guests. There are fewer interruptions and they may be wakeful and reflective. At night patients may be more open to talking about their feelings.

As the night chaplain, Phil has a slightly different role as well. Care of the staff, getting to know them and their lives and histories, is a bigger part of the job. At night there is more time to listen. Often in a crisis, the chaplain will step in to do things that during the day are done by a social worker or child life specialist. He rounds in the surgery waiting area frequently. By day that room bustles; by night it is as quiet and deserted as a tomb. A patient’s family members may feel as though they have been abandoned and forgotten in the lower level of the huge building. If a patient suffers respiratory arrest during the night, Phil is there to support a spouse or adult child who might be staying in the patient’s room. To have one person whose only job it is to stand with them during the code blue is priceless.

Sometimes Phil’s job is as simple as turning on the lights. He tells of a night when a patient was returned to his room after dark. The patient became agitated, not knowing where he was, not recognizing the hospital room he occupied that day. As is often the case, the staff called the chaplain to calm the patient. When Phil arrived, he assessed the situation and turned on the overhead light in the room. The patient recognized his surroundings and was at peace.

Linda Francisco Bets