THE WAITING ROOM

by Sarah Polon

Courtesy of Hamodia Magazine

not for reprint

     My stomach was churning, my heart beating hard. I unconsciously clenched my hands. I pulled off the weird hat, gown, mask, and sterile bootees and tossed them in the garbage can, which at 7:30 a.m. was already full of them.

     I chose a seat in the corner, setting my pocket-sized Tehillim down on the empty chair next to me. The room was filled with rows of shiny blue armchairs. The blinds were pulled up all the way and the early morning sun streams in as if to chase away the clouds hanging over each person sitting there. I imagine that some nurse pulled the shades up each morning in an effort to give some warmth to the forlorn people sitting there, the parents all waiting to hear…

     I had just left my little girl in the operating room, in the care of a team of green and blue clad doctors and nurses, under bleeping machines and bright lights that gave no warmth. They’d made me shiver.

     Now I sought the warmth of the sunlight to drive away the darkness in my mind and fill my world with light and happiness. I needed to close my eyes and feel its warmth on my face and let it soak into me.

     I sat there for some minutes, doing just that. Then I looked around at the others seated there and reflexively adjusted my turban. I was already used to wearing a turban in the hospital. It was so much more practical and comfortable than a sheitel.

     You see, this morning was the culmination of almost a year of heartache, worry, tears, and tefillos, and being in and out of the hospitals. I mentally gave unending thanks to Hashem for the medical knowledge He had bestowed on these doctors who help to heal my little girl.

     I can still recall how I’d felt, speeding down the winding Yerushalayim streets in a taxi on the way to the pediatrician; the sweet concern of the taxi driver as he pointed out to me that if we would need it, chas veshalom, why, there was a Magen David Adom ambulance right in front of us. I was of course aghast at his suggestion; I’d thought my little girl just had a stomach virus and wondered why on earth he had said that. Was it the way she just lay there, unmoving, in my arms, her eyes tightly closed and her small figure hunched up in pain?

     It had been a quick diagnosis for something so rare. “One in a million” a pediatric surgeon later told me when I had innocently asked him how many such surgeries he had performed.

     Had I ever thanked Hashem that I had a normal bile duct? Who had ever heard of a bile duct? How much goodness have I been granted that I do not even know about?

     It had been a long road till that day in the emergency room. How many times had I prayed with a mother’s heavy heart that we would find the right shaliach? That Hashem would bring us to this very day?

     And now I sat looking at these waiting people. Parents waiting outside the pediatric operating room. Waiting for the return of a child who at that very moment was in a deep sleep, under the watchful monitoring of a roomful of machines and doctors. I remember wondering: was any of them thinking about Who else was watching their child? Who was enabling each breath and every beat of their own hearts and their child’s heart and the hearts of every living being?

     A few were reading the early addition of the news. Some drank coffee. I looked around the room and asked myself: were they aware? Were they worried? Or scared? Did they recognize that their child’s fate lay not in the surgeon’s skilled hands but in the hands of the Creator of the world? Had their love for their offspring led them to focus on Who is really in charge of this world? Who has the power to heal their child?

     So there I sat, with my Tehillim and earphones, enveloped in the sun’s warming rays, wrapped in the knowledge that my Father was holding my hand, directing the hands of the surgeon as he operated on my daughter. I was thankful to be able to daven, to pour out my heartful prayers, the prayers of a mother. I was soothed in the knowledge that my Tatte was listening as I shut my eyes and turned up the volume on my iPod so I could hear the melody of the tefillos and let it sweep my own words and tears upward.

     My eyes were closed and wet with tears. My heart was heavy. That’s when a woman tapped me gently on the shoulder and I was jolted back to the waiting room, far from the hills and peaks I had been climbing together with my tefilos. She was called the Navigator, she said. I supposed they called her that because she helps parents navigate the road from the operating room to the waiting room to the recovery room.

     She asked if I was okay. I nodded – a halfway attempt. How could I be okay while my child was in surgery? I realized that she must have noticed me because I was crying and davening.

     And then it struck me – and the realization warmed me more than any sun can ever do: how lucky I am to have a Tatte! A Tatte who is always listening, always watching, always protecting. A Tatte with Whom I am connected, to whom I can pray with the realization that our fate is in his hands and his alone in Whom I can direct all my fears and insecurities.

How lucky we are not only to have Him, but to know it.

Today, as I watch my healthy little girl play, my heart soars in thanks and praise.