It was after nine on a Monday night. Outside it was winter dark. The emergency room, where I sat, was the harsh, cold white of fluorescent lights. I was petrified, my eyes bleary with exhaustion. A doctor appeared and ushered me and some friends and family members into a consultation room. The doctor’s tone was grave.
“Your husband is in cardiac arrest,” she said. “He doesn’t have a regular heartbeat. We’re doing everything we can, but his brain has been starved of oxygen for too long. He’s young, so we’re not going to give up. But I can’t promise anything.”
I could barely take in the doctor’s words. For a split second my entire marriage to Jeff flashed before me. Jeff, who had brought such compassion and steadiness to my life. Who had shown me what it meant to be a wife, a mother, a woman of God.
We’d weathered countless troubles and grown together in love and faith. Our eighth anniversary was just a month away.
Suddenly I remembered. Today was Valentine’s Day. Was I going to lose the man I loved today of all days?
I knew I shouldn’t let the news defeat me. I should pray, but I couldn’t form the words. Maybe it was that I was too stunned. Or maybe it was something deeper. Who was I to think God would do me a special favor?
We returned to the waiting room, which had filled with even more family members and friends from church. I couldn’t fall apart in front of them. I had to face facts.
Suddenly my thoughts were interrupted. “No!” my best friend, Allyson, declared. She waved her arms in front of her like an umpire calling safe.
“We are not going to accept this. Lord, we hear the doctor’s words and we honor her expertise. But we know you are the final authority. You can perform a miracle for Jeff if it is your will. We pray boldly for a miracle.”
Allyson and I had met when we were both on staff at the church Jeff and I attend. Allyson headed the children’s and youth ministries, and I worked in human resources. Just recently I’d given notice. Jeff and I were going to expand our promotional-product business—putting companies’ logos on T-shirts and other items.
I’d always admired Allyson’s forthright faith. I wanted to be bold in my beliefs like that, to put my concerns out there for God as if I totally expected him to show up and answer. My own relationship with God was more careful and conventional, almost guarded.
A chorus of Amens followed Allyson’s prayer, then the sound of people adding their own pleas.
Several minutes passed. The doctor returned. “We’ve restored his heartbeat,” she announced. “You can come see your husband. Briefly.” It took all my strength to walk through the large waiting room. My mom held tightly to my left arm, and Dad supported me on my right.
I followed the doctor to Jeff’s bedside. I could barely see him through a tangle of wires, tubes and devices. I heard beeps and a kind of mechanical gasping. A machine was breathing for him. He was pale. I grasped his cold hand.
“Don’t you leave me. Do you hear me? Don’t you leave me,” I said, trying not to cry. “You be strong.”
That was all. I returned to the waiting room, my mind fixed on a single word: Babe…
That was the last thing Jeff had said to me, calling out from our bedroom. Our three girls had just gone to bed. I was sitting down to watch TV.
Everything after that was a terrifying blur. Finding Jeff collapsed in the bedroom. Frantically punching 911 on my phone. Sending Emily, our middle daughter, racing to the neighbors. Sirens, paramedics, the ambulance.
I’m too young to be a widow, I thought as I found my seat in the waiting room. I was 34. Jeff was 39. He’d been diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy a long time ago. He’d always taken medication. But he’d resisted his cardiologist’s advice to have a defibrillator implanted. “I’m fine,” he’d insisted.
I think surgery was just too much of an acknowledgment that something was wrong. Jeff didn’t like being the center of attention, either.
After a long time the doctor reappeared. The room got so quiet I could hear her scrubs swish as she walked.
“I have good news and bad news,” she said. “Jeff’s heart is beating on its own. We’re moving him to Critical Care to cool his body. Our immediate concern is whether he lives until morning. But even if he does, the loss of oxygen to his brain likely means brain damage.
"The cooling helps to reduce the damage. But…I can’t predict what condition Jeff will be in if he wakes up.”
I noticed the doctor said if, not when. Yet Allyson immediately leaped up. “Lord, we praise you for this victory!” she exclaimed. “Amen!” everyone echoed.
I kept my eyes on the doctor. It had been an hour and a half since Jeff had gone into cardiac arrest. His heart had not beat on its own that entire time. I knew that the brain can’t survive more than a few minutes without oxygen.
I was grateful for Allyson’s prayers, grateful for her faith. But I couldn’t let myself get swept up in it. I had to be realistic. I had to be cautious.
A short time later a nurse told us we could go up to Critical Care to see Jeff. Two dozen people trooped into the elevators with me. Jeff coded twice more before a doctor came to tell us they’d stabilized him and begun the cooling process.
We walked into Jeff’s room and I sat at his bedside. He looked no better than before. He was still pale, still surrounded by machines. Numbly I took out my phone and texted an update to some friends, explaining Jeff’s dire condition and asking for prayers.
To save time I copied and pasted the same text message to other friends. Too late I realized I’d accidentally posted the text as my Facebook status. Right away my phone’s screen lit up with replies as my 800 Facebook friends began learning about Jeff’s ordeal.
Hours ticked by. To give myself something to do, I began posting updates to Facebook. Jeff’s potassium level is critically low. Pray for it to rise, I typed.
Not long after that, a doctor came into the room. “We’re not sure why, but Jeff’s potassium level shot up,” he said. “He’s doing much better than we had expected.”
I caught my breath.
“What are your top three concerns at this point?” I asked.
The doctor told me and I immediately posted to Facebook: Your prayers are working! Jeff’s potassium is up. Please pray for his kidneys to function, his glucose to be normal and his heart to beat rhythmically.
Two hours later a doctor announced that Jeff’s glucose level was normal. “We praise you, Lord!” Allyson exclaimed. I almost said those words right along with her.
Every time I saw a nurse or a doctor that day, I asked what the medical team’s top three concerns were and posted them. Every time, our prayers were answered.
Tuesday turned into Wednesday. We were gearing up for the rewarming process. At one point, I glanced out the waiting-room window and saw 30 people gathered in a circle on the sidewalk below. Friends from church, praying.
Prayers were also rising from the waiting room, now packed with 50 more friends and family members.
Suddenly, over the intercom, we heard, “Code blue, room 220!”
That was Jeff’s room!
I ran. A dozen doctors and nurses were gathered around Jeff’s bed. They managed to revive him again, and resumed the process of bringing him back to a normal temperature.
At last a nurse told me I could speak to Jeff. It was the first time I’d spoken to him since Monday. I moved to his bedside and, leaning over his body, I put my face close to his. I took his hand. It was even colder now, due to the cooling process.
“Jeff, I’m here,” I said, trying to give my voice the same authority I heard in Allyson’s.
Immediately his head turned and seemed to lift up a little. His eyelids twitched as if they were struggling to open.
“Don’t leave me, don’t give up!” I said. “Fight, Jeff! Everyone’s praying. You’re a miracle.”
His eyes didn’t open. He made no sound. But at that moment I knew he was in there. I knew he was alive. I knew that, against all odds, he was going to be okay.
How could I think otherwise, when so many people had prayed? When so many supposedly impossible prayers had already been answered? And when God, at this moment of fear and darkness, had somehow fought through to the center of my faith and met me?
At last I understood why people like Allyson pray so boldly. It’s not because they feel God has singled them out for miracles. It’s because they know that whenever we pray God always shows up.
Certainly he was there in that waiting room packed with our family and friends. He was there in the prayers flying around the internet. And he was there in Allyson’s voice calling us out in faith.
Regardless of what happened to Jeff, I knew God held us. He held us all—Jeff and me and the countless other people whose story had become part of ours.
It has been two years now since Jeff left the hospital. He has an implanted defibrillator and is not quite as active as he used to be. But in every other way he is fully, miraculously recovered—no damage whatsoever to his brain or other organs.
We celebrated last Valentine’s Day by having dinner at the heart hospital with the EMTs and hospital staff who helped to save Jeff’s life. We could have invited so many more people. A far-flung community had gathered together to ask God to work a miracle—which he did, in my husband’s heart and in my own.
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