On Her Wings and a Prayer

Though many of my family members had chosen the medical field as a vocation, Grandpa Rosenburg a doctor, Grandma Del a nurse, Dad an army medic, I suppose my desire to go into  medicine was most heavily influenced by my mom.

Mom worked in several capacities as a registered nurse over the years and juggled her work and family life well. Home Health for a stint, then as a floor nurse at our local hospital, then in their emergency room where there were no doctors on staff. In whatever way she could flex her work schedule around her five children and husband, she would, sometimes working nights and weekends, sometimes swing shift.

I have fond memories of her coming home after her 3-11 ER shifts. Even after a long day’s work, she’d always look in on us kids, climbing the stairs to our bedrooms, the two boys bunked in the smaller room on the left and we three girls piled in the larger room on the right. I was a light sleeper and woke easily to the sound of her footsteps, the creek of the door opening allowing entrance to the tiniest ray of light.  “Who did you save tonight, Mom?” I’d inquire about the red stains on her white dress, imagining all kinds of scrapes and skirmishes skidding through our small-town ER.

Having a mom as a nurse had its downsides, though. We kids knew we had to be on death’s door to get out of chores or school or homework. “You’re not that sick,” Mom asserted, pressing her palm against the forehead of whichever one of us was claiming to be sick and rebuking any illness back into the dark abyss from whence it came. Late one night during one of her shifts, my dad carried me up the three cement steps through the back door of that small town ER. I was a wilted flower limp in his arms, my temperature having escalated to over 104 degrees  Dad’s alarm met nurse Mom’s experience and composure. “She’ll be alright,” Mom assured him after a thorough exam, and gave me Tylenol with a glass of water and sent us out the door. “I’ll check on her when I get home.” And she did.

Our family outgrew the small house on Eastbrook Drive and we moved across town a few blocks away from the hospital to Vernon Avenue and a larger but older home in need of a few repairs and fresh paint. With our family’s changing needs, Mom’s job changed too. Eventually she worked for Dr. Charles Warne, a General Practitioner, whose office was housed in a professional building in the same block as the hospital.

Dr. Warne was a mountain of a man. He stood over six foot tall and I’m guessing weighed all of three hundred pounds. Complete with booming voice and commanding personality, he was not only mom’s employer, he was our family’s doctor. I made sure I was really sick before ever complaining to Mom.

“She has the bronchitis again,” he’d pronounce distinctly into the Dictaphone which sat on the desk in the efficient exam room. He could hear my coarse breath sounds wheezing their way out of my lungs; he hardly needed to use his cold stethoscope. He’d dart out of the room and my mother would dart in with a syringe full of penicillin aimed right at my left thigh.  

His waiting room was always packed. Dr. Warne would see upwards of forty, sometimes sixty patients in a day. Mom would make haste to fill the six exam rooms, everyone dressed down to the waist, gown open in the back, no matter what their chief complaint was, a puncture wound on their index finger even. And he would start down the line, weaving in and out of the exam rooms one through six, then back to one, like the carriage on an old-fashioned typewriter. He had a method to his breakneck madness, dictating while taking a history, then a perfunctory but skilled exam, then barking out orders to his two nurses who moved like whirling dervishes to keep pace with him. I’d come home from softball or tennis practice in the early evening to find Mom sprawled on the living room couch, unwinding from the day’s dizzying work. 

But there were the occasions when Dr. Warne would slow down and give all his attention to one patient for thirty minutes, even an hour. A nurse would call from the hospital to clarify orders for an inpatient and Mom would have to put her on “hold heaven.” Dr. Warne had a strong foundation of faith. And when his patients needed it, he prayed with them. Apparently, no one minded the imposed longer wait at these times because they knew if they ever needed more than the usual five-minute visit with Dr. Warne, they would get it.

When I was old enough, Mom arranged for me to clean Dr. Warne’s office to earn extra money and learn the importance of work ethic. One Saturday afternoon when I arrived, he was there in the back office sitting behind his big oak desk catching up on paperwork. He called me into his room.

“Take a seat,” he said nodding his head toward the chair in front of the desk, not really looking my way.

 I complied.

“Your mother tells me you want to go to medical school,” he began matter of factly, raising only his eyes over his glasses, his head staunchly perched over the piles of paper.

“Yes,” was all I could muster, startled by the personal nature of his question.

“I’d like to pray for you,” he said as more of a statement than a request.

“Ok,” I must have said, having no idea what to expect. Prayers to me at that time were rote, responsorial, before meals, mostly at church.

Dr. Warne rose from his chair as I shrunk in mine. He proceeded to call on God as if he knew Him personally.  He laid his hand on my shoulder as he spoke inviting a calming presence that pushed my fears away.

I had been watching Mom living her life fully as a nurse and a mother, but I saw her sacrifice too. I dreamt of going to medical school and having a family of my own one day; but I had no idea how I was going to make it happen, or what it took to make it happen really, only that the road ahead would be a long and challenging one. Would it be worth it. His prayer conferred a reality to my dream which made it seem like a worthy struggle which would ultimately come to pass.

I am not sure I spoke to Dr. Warne much after that. I was off to college and Mom changed jobs again, this time working as a charge nurse in a new nursing home on the outskirts of town.  One winter break, I volunteered at the nursing home to get some practical experience now that my course seemed set. For the first time, I got to really work alongside Mom, observing her carrying out her duties with great skill and caring for her patients with even greater compassion.

My family moved away from that small Ohio town to Texas.  I soon followed and applied to Texas medical schools. In time I attended UT Houston and completed a Family Practice Residency in Kentucky.

I am who I am today because of my mom and her consistent example of hard work, resilience, and kindness. And my thanks to Dr. Warren,too. I will never forget his empowering prayer.