Perfect Strangers
“Make the bed quickly, he’s dying,” the nurse said to me quietly as she hustled into another room. Some nights on the hospice unit were slow and quiet. This was not one of them.
The unit was bustling when I’d arrived a few hours earlier for my weekly volunteer shift. The rooms were full save for one, and the lead nurse was busy with an admission. Like so many of our patients, this middle-aged woman entered hospice care with the prospect of only a few days to live. Her daughters, in their late teens and early twenties, were just beginning to grasp that their mother’s death was near, and they were frantic. The nurse was managing the mother’s symptoms and her daughters’ anxiety.
As I got to work, the nurse alerted me that an elderly gentleman was on his way from the hospital, but he had been delayed. The timing of admissions was seldom predictable, but the nurses disliked evening admissions because they often meant challenges related to medication needs and pain control. I was hopeful he would arrive soon so that we could get him settled.
Reviewing the intake information for the woman who had just arrived and the man on his way, I added their basic details — name, birthdate, next of kin, and diagnosis — to the volunteer logbook. The usual rhythms of the evening kicked in and I checked in on the other patients, delivered meals, and tidied up. I took a call from the nephew of the man we were expecting. He was in Hawaii and, eager to join his uncle, was at the airport about to board a plane headed our way.
A little before 8:00, as things quieted down, I prepared to go down the hall to speak with a group of volunteers in training. Before I left, the nurse spoke with the hospital and learned that the gentleman we were expecting would not arrive tonight; the transport ambulance had not arrived to pick him up and it was now too late on our end to accept a new admission.
When I came back forty-five minutes later, the story had changed. The ambulance had, in fact, arrived at the hospital to pick him up and they were pulling up at our entrance. I gave the nurse a heads up and quickly headed to the empty room to start making up the bed. Then I heard another patient’s motion monitor blaring. Though this gentleman was supposed to stay in bed, he was halfway to the bathroom when I reached him, so we kept going. I waited until he was done and helped him back to bed.
That’s when the nurse saw me coming out of his room and told me to get the other bed made quickly. Our new admission had arrived and was close to death. We needed to get him out of the hallway and into his room.
An aide and I hightailed it and started making the bed as quickly as possible. Before we were done, the patient, the two ambulance medics, and the nurse were all crowded in the room with us. The nurse, a kind woman and good caregiver, was voicing her frustration. She imagined the hospital staff had known this gentleman was close to death and, rather than allowing him to die in the hospital, had rushed him out the door and into the ambulance in order to avoid the paperwork required of a death at the hospital. Paperwork that would have been especially unwelcome late in their own shifts.
Soon enough he was in the bed as the chatter continued. Recognizing that these complaints were of no use to him, I heard the voice of a wise teacher in my head. “Sit down, be still, and be quiet.” I did just that, hoping the others would see that I was settling in and take their leave. After finishing up their required tasks, they did.
Then the room was still. Now we were alone and together, two strangers, one about to die. I knew his name, his age, and that somewhere in the sky, his nephew was trying to get to his side. I knew that I, a total stranger, would likely be the last person to see him alive.
Of all the people in the world, I would be the one to accompany this man at his death — a man I knew nothing of just three hours before. Sometimes we miss the signs when our life intersects with the profound. The signs this night were too clear to miss. I wondered what force had delayed his departure or pushed the hospital nurses to get him out the door? Was it the divine that had assured he left a noisy hospital for this gentler place, just in time to die? Rather than disgruntled, I was humbled.
I stayed quiet and matched my breathing to his. Then over the course of 15 or 20 minutes his breaths grew less and less frequent until he died, quietly, peacefully, not more than 45 minutes after he arrived. I sat with him for a few moments in the stillness, then alerted the nurse. At her request, the aide and I prepared his body for the funeral home that would arrive in the hours to come.
We finished, and I went back to the reception area. I made my final notes for the night, gathered my things, and walked to the car accompanied only by a sense of wonder and awe at what had just occurred.
