The things above me.

It’s a peculiar thing calling a hospital “home”. Even stranger, is knowing that while I am sleeping, above and below me patients are sleeping—or trying to sleep. My bed is directly beneath the pediatric ward. Every night as I sprawl my body like a starfish on the twin-sized bed wrapped in hospital sheets, I wonder which children are on the next floor. A light sleeper, I lay awake, listening to things being wheeled above me—an IV scooting along, guided by a nurse, a bed shifting closer to the wall to make room for a new patient, the harshness of a metal meal cart unpleasantly squealing as it is pushed across the tile floor. The wheeling noises remind me I’m not alone in this house of a hospital—I am sharing my home with the sick and the dying. For a moment I’m overwhelmed with my healthiness. I shift in my half-sleep, my mind more restless than my body.

To satiate my night-time curiosity, I had to explore the pediatric ward above me. Today I walked in just after lunch, my arms brimming with crayons and coloring books, an excuse to visit the children. Twenty beds lined the walls, stark white metal set against bright oranges and yellows—choice colors to bring some sense of cheer to the children’s eyes. There were no separate rooms, no dividing curtains, no corners of privacy. Instead, a mass of mothers and children filled the room—each mom cuddled closely beside her child. Kids were nursing, crying, sleeping—some were screaming with pain while others were preoccupied with giggling as their mother’s entertained them.

Not knowing where to go first, I inched towards a little boy whose eyes immediately caught my attention. One was gazing forward while the other danced in circles, twitching relentlessly and periodically positioning in the opposite direction. He looked weak in his hospital gown which covered him like an oversized pink pillowcase. I handed him a blue crayon dulling at the tip. “Color?” I asked. He nodded without a smile. Wincing with pain, he lifted his right hand, wrapped like a mummy in surgical tape and gauze—a thick needle positioned just right in his vein followed by a cylindrical tube ready to be connected to an IV. “What’s your name?” I asked.

“Mohammad Das,” he said in a raspy, oatmealish voice. I had wondered by his mother’s clothing if they were Muslim, but the name gave it away.

“Malaria,” Mohammad’s mom told me. “Brain malaria.” I kept staring at his eye—erratically jolting like a marble in a pinball machine, but I was even more distracted by his mother. She was strikingly beautiful with naturally outlined eyes and flawless skin. She was the kind of beautiful you can’t help but stare at. Her head-to-toe black clothing revealed only the oval of her face, but even with a small window, it was evident she was young. Considerably young. She couldn’t have been older than twenty. It is likely she was married at fourteen or fifteen. She looked at me and smiled. I grinned back. Two women, around the same age, with radically different stories connecting in a moment of friendliness.

After a few minutes she stood up, patting Mohammad firmly on the head, and grabbing the palm of my hand. She gently pulled me across the room to another Muslim woman, hunched like a black cloud over her baby wrapped in white. Mohammad’s mom had an expression of grief on her face as she watched the infant with maggot white skin. Beyond his paleness, he was premature—his head petite and only slightly larger than a Satsuma orange. His body was coiled in a network of tubes. One tube protruded from his nostril, another connected to his stomach. A third tube ran from an IV directly into his thumb-sized arm. “Twenty-two days old”, his mother said, her eyes pooling with water and wrinkled from lack of sleep. It was hard for me to watch her anguished expression. Clearly she was loosing hope. In her limited English vocabulary, she continued to tell me that it was her son’s first day out of the ICU. That it was her first time seeing him since he was born. She was overwhelmed with emotion. She kept repeating, “He is so weak. He is so weak.” She was right. He looked like he had no energy to continue to fight. His tubes were the thin line separating him from life and death. I watched his eyes, small as peas, slowly blink. Every blink was a grain of hope for the life ahead of him. I asked his mother if I could pray for him. Kneeling down, I placed my hand on him—completely overlapping his entire body. I began to pray and his mother kept watching him with concern. I prayed for healing, for new hope, for his little life to have big purpose in bringing his family to Jesus. I prayed for a miracle.

When I finished, I stood up and noticed the time. Four-o-clock. Visiting hours were over. I wasn’t ready to walk away from Mohammad and the beautiful young Muslim mothers. I had so much I wanted to share with them, and so much more I wanted to ask. Most of all, I was reluctant leaving the baby. With a final goodbye, I left the ward and walked down a single flight of stairs to my room.

Six hours later I am back in my bed. Laying with my head facing the ceiling, I continue to pray for the baby above me, only a few feet separating my room from his hospital bed. I imagine his mom, sprawled over him like a protective tent. I begin praying for the Holy Spirit’s presence to enter that crowded room of children and mothers—some sleeping, some lying awake in anguished pain. With such limited contact and no knowledge of the Bengali language, prayer is the most powerful weapon I have here. I continue praying, unable to sleep, expecting great things from God and knowing there is no limit to what He can do. The longer I pray, the more my faith begins to rise.

Things begin to hush into a nighttime silence. It is quiet, except for occasional wheeling sounds above me. Reminders that God knew just what He was doing when he placed me in this hospital—for now, my home.