The other night I cut my hand while making dinner. It was deep enough and in such a place that it needed stitches. My daughter drove me to the ER and I began my first adventure in an Italian emergency room.
All in all, after I got past the part of explaining what happened, it was pretty much the same as an American emergency room. People coming and going in various states of pain, anxiety, exhaustion. Babies crying. Adults crying. Raw nerves and worried faces.
And under it all the universal question, when will I be seen?
If you’ve been in an emergency room, you know how it goes. The triage staff rates your emergency. If it’s life threatening, you go back right away. People who come in after you in a more critical condition jump to the front of the line. I had managed to get the bleeding to stop, so my case wasn’t so urgent, and my number crept at a glacial pace.
At the 4 hour mark, there was only one couple still there who had been there when I came in. I don’t know when they arrived, and I don’t know what was wrong, but the husband kept going to the window to ask when his wife would be seen. Each time he was told they would have to wait. His anger, his frustration, his worry – none of them changed the situation. He retreated into watching make-up application videos.
Let me tell you – the patients might live, but hope dies in the waiting room.
Honestly after only about 2 hours I was more than ready to call it quits and just go home without being seen. But I stuck it out because the physician said I needed the treatment. Maybe it was the blood loss, or the long wait, or my personality but I got a bit philosophical about it all. And what I think is this – What keeps hope going is the knowledge that the resolution is worth waiting for.
Five hours after I arrived, the nurse finally called my name. The surgeon numbed my hand and started stitching. Our cures aren’t always easy. Even with the lidocaine, it felt something like an angry dad tying his kid’s shoes. But then the wait was over. The pain was gone. The healing could begin.
One more thing. The medical staff might not have seen me for 5 hours, but God saw me the entire time. It was His presence in the waiting room with me, reminding me that I was where He wanted me to be, that gave me the fortitude to stick it out. Without God, we’re all too likely to give up too soon, throw in the towel and go home without finishing the wait. But the finish line is where the healing is. That’s where the hopes are fulfilled. It’s going to be so good – you don’t want to miss that.
"If we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently." Romans 8:25