Let’s Just Say a Little Butterfly Told Me
After what seemed like an eternity, they pulled into the hospital parking lot. Piper found a space in the parking garage on the third floor and the two exited the car and walked to the entrance of the hospital.
“Can I help you?” the woman at the front desk asked.
“Yes, I’m Nick O’Brien and my mom Catherine O’Brien came here by ambulance a short while ago. Can you please let me know which room she’s in? Oh, and can you let me know the room of Fey Rodriguez? She’s her nurse and she arrived by ambulance.”
The woman checked the computer in front of her. “Your mom is in 316b in the ICU and Ms. Rodriguez is in 301a, just down the hallway.” She gave him directions to the room.
Nick and Piper hurried down the hallway, up an elevator, and down another hallway to her room. He held his Bible tightly by his side and had prepared the things he wanted to say. He hoped to find his mom awake.
When he entered her room just in front of Piper, he found her in her bed attached to a number of tubes and wires. A nurse greeted him and then left the room. He walked up to his mom and took a chair by her side. She was pale, almost ghostly, and he quickly noticed the bandages on her face. The rest of her body was covered in sheets, and it pained him to think of what was under the sheets, the other outcomes of the accident.
Piper sat down in a chair by the window and Nick pulled another chair up to the bed. He grabbed his mom’s hand and held it tightly, and prayed. After opening his Bible to the verses he’d identified on his ride to the hospital, he wondered whether she’d be able to hear him if he read her the verses. Probably not. Her eyes were closed and all he could hear from her was the sound of her heart beating on the heart monitor. She was sleeping. Or vegetative. Closing the Bible on his lap, he chose to wait.
He looked around the sterile room and at the heartbeat monitor and at all of the tubes in his mom’s body.
“She may die soon,” he thought as he studied her body, and he’d be left all alone. A feeling of loneliness and sadness blanketed his mind and ruptured any sense of positivity he could stir up within him. If she died, he’d be the only O’Brien to carry on the family name. No siblings. He’d always wanted siblings.
But he had Tanner. Tanner was like a brother and he was on his way to the hospital. Hopefully he was near; he needed to see his friend. And he was happy to be with Piper too. Piper was a dream to be around.
“Jesus, if she must die now, please let her join you in Heaven,” he prayed, “Please. She’s been the best mom ever. I couldn’t have asked for more. She helped me so much with my dad. I wouldn’t have made it without her.”
“It’s time to give the Bible a try.” He opened the Bible, which was still sitting on his lap, and read a few passages from the book of Psalms. His mom’s face showed no response. Nothing. Not wanting to give up, he read her John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Still nothing. Her hand hung limply by her side on the hospital bed and he felt the urge to grab it and squeeze it, which he did. Still nothing. So he turned to other passages that he’d identified on his way to the hospital and read them all. No sign from his mom. Nothing.
He flipped the pages to the book of Isaiah and read her chapter 53, which described Jesus’ torture and crucifixion.
“Mom, that passage was written about seven hundred years before Jesus was born. He held her hand tightly. Still nothing.
Twenty minutes passed before Tanner walked into the room, carrying both a Bible and a book by C.S. Lewis. He pulled up a chair and sat on the other side of Catherine’s hospital bed. He held her other hand and prayed with Nick silently.
“I read her a bunch of passages from the Bible, which I thought would help her. She told me she doesn’t believe in Jesus, you know. That’s why she never took me to church.”
Tanner’s eyes filled with tears as he looked at Nick’s mom.
“I’m so sorry, Nick. I’m here for you and I’ll do what I can to help you. And your mom. She was always good to me.”
Nick faced his mom and said, “At a time in Israel when women were treated as second class citizens, much as they’re still treated today in some countries of the Arab region, Jesus gave Mary Magdalene the privilege of making the most important discovery in the Bible; the discovery that he has risen. Why would the males who wrote the chapters of the Bible have made that part up? Why would the male church scholars who determined which chapters to incorporate into the Bible select the four gospels, which all identified Mary Magdalene as the discoverer of Jesus’ empty tomb? Wouldn’t they have crafted a story that was more acceptable to the leaders of their times? They were trying to recruit and blasphemy was a death sentence.”
Nick looked over at Tanner, who was sitting in a chair in his favorite fishing t-shirt and worn tan shorts. Just under his rumpled blonde mop, he watched Tanner smile and say, “I bet Jesus is here right now with us, blessing us and praying over your mom.”
After a few more minutes, a nurse arrived. She was carrying a notepad and started checking Catherine’s vital signs. She made a few notes and was just about to leave the room when Nick asked, “How’s she doing?”
“Well, she’s still alive,” the nurse replied before leaving the room. Nick didn’t like her answer, which came across as far too apathetic.
He read Psalm 23 to his mom and looked for a response. Nothing.
Tanner followed up with a message he’d read by C.S. Lewis. “Mrs. O’Brien, you may be like those people who consider Jesus merely a prophet or a great moral teacher. I like what C.S. Lewis said about that. He said that one must never say the very foolish thing that people often say about Jesus, that they are ready to accept him as a great moral teacher, but they aren’t ready to accept his claim to be the Son of God. If a mere mortal made the sorts of claims that Jesus made, he would not be a great moral teacher. He would have been either a lunatic, similar to a person who claims to be a poached egg, or the Devil of Hell. People can either accept that Jesus is the Son of God and fall at his feet and praise him, or they can decide that he was a madman or something worse. Considering him to be merely a moral teacher is patronizing nonsense. Jesus did not give us that choice.”
“Good one, Tanner,” Nick whispered, “well put.” He hadn’t heard those words before, but they applied to his mom. He and Tanner each held one of her hands, but he still felt no response. Nick wondered if her spirit had already left her. Taking a deep breath, he gathered his strength and stood up.
“Tanner, could you stay here for a few minutes? I need to check on my mom’s nurse. She was driving the car when they had the accident. She’s just down the hallway.”
“No problem, Nick, I’ll stay here.”
Nick walked down the hallway to see how Fey was doing. Fey was a petite woman with salt and pepper hair, probably in her fifties, and of Hispanic descent. She spoke with a slight accent and Nick decided that she’d probably been raised in one of the Central American countries. He knew little else about her, other than the fact that his mom really liked her. When he got to her room, he found her awake, though injured and in a neck brace.
“How are you doing?” He asked, “I’m so sorry about the accident.”
“Oh Nick,” she responded, “It’s not your fault! That driver was going the wrong way down the highway. We didn’t stand a chance.”
“Well I’m glad you’re conscious and I can talk to you. My mom is still unconscious,” Nick uttered.
“Well, she can hear you, Nick. She’s listening to each and every one of those Bible passages you’ve been you’ve been reading to her.”
“How’d you know that?” Nick was astonished.
“Oh, let’s just say that a little butterfly told me,” she answered with a wink.
Nick was a bit taken aback. She’d never talked like this before. “Butterfly?” He stared at her for a short while. “Fey, do you believe in Jesus?”
“Are you kidding? You bet I do! And I know he’s standing next to me right now praying over me and giving me strength. I should be getting out of here no later than tomorrow. He’s doing the same for your mother too.”
“You give me hope Fey,” he said as he walked up to her and gripped her hand. “Thank you and God bless you. I’m sure he has a place prepared for you in Heaven.”
“God bless you too. I’m sure he has a place prepared for you too. Now go back and tend to your mom. She needs you.”
Nick bid goodbye and headed back to his mom’s room. He couldn’t wait to share Fey’s message with Tanner. When he arrived, he found Tanner sitting next to his mom, praying over her audibly.