Emergency medicine doesn’t take holidays off, but this was the first time I’d pulled an EMT shift on Christmas. Already we were racing to a studio apartment in an independent living community to answer the night’s first 911 call. I couldn’t help thinking this was supposed to be a night of miracles, not injuries.
The ambulance had barely come to a full stop when my partner, Dan, and I jumped out with a gurney. A staff member from the facility waited at the apartment door.
“Miss Lily had a fall,” she said as we knelt down around the elderly, white-haired woman on the floor. “She’s one hundred years old,” the staff member informed us with a note of pride.
Miss Lily’s studio apartment was neat as a pin. She’d even decorated for the holidays. “We’re going to examine you to see where you’re hurt,” I told her. Miss Lily nodded. She winced when Dan touched her hip but tried to hide it behind a smile. “Shortening and rotation of the leg and foot on the affected side,” Dan said. Miss Lily winced again. “Increased pain with palpitation to the hip.”
Dan and I nodded to each other. It was a classic case of fractured hip—very common in elderly people. We lifted her gingerly onto the gurney, started her IV in the ambulance and headed to the High Desert Medical Center at full speed.
I knew the harsh realities of a broken hip. Many older patients never fully recovered their strength or stopped hurting from their injury. We learned that Miss Lily had been relatively pain-free and strong for 100 years. Even now she bravely chatted with us between gasps of pain. All that would work in her favor, but it just seemed wrong, somehow, for her to have such a setback on Christmas, of all nights.
Once we got her settled in a hospital bed in the ER, Miss Lily shut her eyes, signaling she was finally overwhelmed by the pain. She looked gray and wilted on the bright white hospital sheets. Colleen, one of the nurses, hooked her up to a cardiac monitor. She pulled the curtain shut around Miss Lily for privacy.
It was Christmas somewhere, but in the ER it looked like any night. Doctors, nurses and EMTs dodging one another to get to patients. I got out of the way and went to the supply closet to restock the ambulance.
Afterward I glanced in at Miss Lily. She lay propped up on some pillows, eyes closed, breathing unevenly. She might not make it through the night, I thought. It still didn’t seem right. Christmas was a time of surprises and miracles, not suffering and death, even after a long life like Miss Lily’s.
I sat down outside the ER to catch up on my paperwork before we got another call. When I looked up from my writing I saw Dan pushing the gurney away from Miss Lily’s area. I went to help. Just then Colleen popped her head out from behind Miss Lily’s curtain. She looked stunned. “What is it?” I asked. ER nurses have seen it all. What was it that had left Colleen speechless?
Instead of answering me, Colleen drew back the curtain. Miss Lily sat there, upright in her bed, beaming.
“Miss Lily,” I stammered, “you look much better.” Her cheeks were all apples and peaches as she nodded. “Yes, yes,” she said. “The medicine worked wonders, just wonders!”
As far as I knew no one had administered any medications to Miss Lily. Colleen confirmed my impression with a shake of her head.
“Which medicine?” I asked.
“Why, the little pill the nurse gave me,” she said. “The nice nurse with the white cap.”
White cap? Nurses hadn’t worn them in decades. My own sister, an RN, had complained about having to wear one for her formal graduation photo. No nurse would bother with a cap while on duty—especially in the ER. And besides, no one would have given Miss Lily any pills. Any medicine would have been administered through the IV in her arm.
But there didn’t seem any reason to tell Miss Lily any of that. Instead I just squeezed her hand gently. “Merry Christmas,” I said.
Colleen and I stepped around to the other side of the curtain. We faced each other, baffled. “Do you believe in angels?” Colleen whispered.
How else to account for Miss Lily’s healing? “Yes,” I said. “I do.”
I don’t know if Miss Lily lived to be 101 or 102 or how old. But I do know that an angel watched over her for the rest of her days. The same angel who brought her comfort that night in the ER. Christmas miracles really can happen anywhere, even when it seems like any other night.
Read more stories about heavenly angels and angels on earth.
