She waited in line behind another man in the triage area of the hospital emergency department. Her red, swollen face made her feel as though she was a walking tomato with eyes, nose and a mouth. Something had kicked off another histamine reaction; her faced itched and burned until she wanted to peel it off. "Who needs collagen?" she thought when she surveyed her swollen lips and puffed cheeks in the bathroom mirror. One tumescent eye impaired her vision. A partial crack gave her enough vision through the distended second eye to drive herself to a local hospital and be seen by its emergency department staff.
"Thank God for sun glasses," she thought as she waited in line. The early morning hour and empty waiting room of the emergency department offered her a wiff of hope. Maybe triage would expedite her wait. She longed to escape into the privacy of a treatment bay, pull the curtains around the stretcher and hide before she saw someone that she knew. A migraine headache began to stake its claim between her temples and added to the persistent nausea that stemmed from a combination of post-op fatigue from her recent surgery and her growing list of complex health issues. Anxiety gnawed as she worried that yet another impending illness loomed in front of her. Random tears welled up behind her inflamed eyelids, their salt stinging the dry crevices at each of their outside corners and smarting almost as much as her own self pity. "Will I ever be well?" she wondered and wished with whatever reserve of strength that was left within her that she could once and for all be done with illness. She was just plain sick of being sick.
As she wallowed in her own misery, she gradually became aware that an unusual encounter seemed to be taking place between the man standing in line ahead of her at triage. The man was talking on the phone from a line located within the nurse's triage station. She could hear fragments of his dialogue and knew from his speech that he was a functional mentally impaired adult. As he talked, he wept openly, wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve. "I didn't mean for it to happen but I couldn't help it. You'll come for me? Oh thank you, thank you. Yes, I'm all right. I'll wait for you right here. "I love you so much." When he finished his conversation, the man handed the phone receiver back to one of the nurses behind the glass partition of the triage desk. "Thank you so, so much," he said, repeating himself again and again as several of the triage staff soothed him. She surveyed the triage staff who were now all completely engaged in the welfare of this one man standing at the window. Several staff members smiled. A few bowed their heads in sheepish discomfort, perhaps unused to being privy to such unabashed guile.
So engrossed in the unfolding drama at her disposal, she forgot about her own reason for her visit to the emergency department until she realized that a nurse beckoned for her to approach the second window beyond where the man was still talking to the rest of the staff.
"What happened? Is he alright?" even while she knew that HIPAA violations may prohibit any of the staff from answering her question. In a low voice, a nurse answered her. "He was mugged on the street right around the corner from his group home." They stole his cell phone and he had no way to reach his supervisor. So he came to the hospital because he hoped that we would help him."
Another nurse handed the man an envelope and put her fingers to her lips when she spoke directly to him. "Now remember, this is our secret," she said in a kind, firm voice. The man listened with the rapt attention a second grader would give to a beloved teacher. "You cannot tell anyone that we gave you this. You can wait for your ride right here," and the nurse indicated a seat in the nearby waiting area. "They're on their way to pick you up."
Despite their exterior professional composure, the entire staff looked pleased that the man's deep pain had been turned to profound joy. "Oh, thank you, thank you," he repeated over and over again. "I love you so much. Thank you." The man continued to weep through a smile that spread like warm honey on toast. No one resisted smiling back.
Someone called her name and the double doors to urgent care yawned wide open to admit her. The desire to know about the contents of the envelope far surpassed her previous desire to lay down on a stretcher and be seen by a physician. When she paused at the window to inquire about the envelope, the triage nurse did not wait for her to ask the question but volunteered the information to someone that had been admitted into a community of compassion, trust and confidentiality.
"We took up a collection so that he could buy a new cell phone and put the money in an unmarked envelope and made him promise not tell anyone what we did. We just don't want him to tell anyone what we did because we really don't want to give people the idea that the ED will buy them a new cell phone -- you know what I mean? But we could help him, so we did."
Christian hospitality offers disciples of Jesus the opportunity to participate as a sharer in the life that implies generosity in the act of giving rather than receiving in the same way that Martha and Mary offer their home to Jesus in today's gospel (Luke 10:38-42). Martha’s hospitality becomes obscured by her complaints, her task-oriented service and her mounting worry and anxiety prompted by her focus on everything else but the person in front of her - Jesus. Martha forgets that she needs to hear the Word in the person of Jesus before acting on the Word. In a nutshell, she gets in her own way. Which one of us can say that we have not done likewise as a disciple of Jesus? Further, how often do we miss an opportunity to be for the other as a eucharistic community? To greet and care for the other standing right in front of us because we're too busy wallowing in self-pity, stress and other indulgent behavior? Our eyes can tend to become a bit swollen and our hearts somewhat crusty with our own entitlement if we eliminate the focus of the Christian's center - Jesus, the better part.
Maybe we just need to get out of our own way.