Читать книгу All Hands Stand By to Repel Boarders - Cordell Strug - Страница 19

It’s sometimes hard to find things out in small towns because everybody assumes you know everything worth knowing already. Most directions you get are some variation of “Well, it’s just down the way,” spoken as impatiently as possible. More elaborate directions usually require you to recognize landmarks that have been obliterated for decades.

People calling on the phone—not, to be fair, anyone’s favorite way to communicate locally—would never tell you who was calling. They would just begin talking, assuming you would recognize them and know what they were calling about as well. I could sometimes be wildly, hilariously wrong about this.

But one night the phone rang when it was almost midnight. I would get an immediate rush of apprehension and alertness when this happened. I jumped up and grabbed the phone. “Hello—Strugs.”

I heard a woman choking, wheezing. She managed to gulp out, in a high-pitched voice that was almost a shriek, “You’ve got to come over! I called the ambulance! He fell down and I can’t get him up!”

This was one of the many times I felt the Holy Spirit must be guiding me because I could almost see her getting ready to slam down the phone and I shouted, “Don’t hang up! Tell me who you are!” It was an older couple I knew who lived only a block or so away. If I hadn’t known where they lived, I don’t think I could have gotten coherent directions from her.

When I got there, the town’s first responder had already arrived and the EMTs and the ambulance weren’t long in coming. I knew the woman who had called as a very commanding, self-possessed person: it was one of the first times I saw how shockingly and quickly the fear of losing a spouse can make someone come apart. She rode in the ambulance; I followed to the hospital.

This was one of my long hospital vigils, when I sat with two people, one struggling for life, one terrified, hour after hour, with not much to do beyond waiting to see if the next gasp for breath will come or not. That night, the breath came, then the breathing eased and, about five in the morning, we felt we could stand down and get some rest.

But, if you serve in the same community long enough, you’ll watch all the old ones die, the strong elders who ran everything when you first arrived.