Divine intervention
The old priest asked me how I was doing. I had almost died of alcoholism a few short weeks before. I fell through the glass top of my coffee table, drunk, cut myself up like a hog ready for butcher and nearly bled to death. But it was the best thing that could have happened to me. The handwriting was on the wall (in blood). I had a serious problem with drugs and alcohol, and I could never drink again. Fine. I wouldn’t drink. But I didn’t need any help from anyone. I could do it on my own, by willpower.
I told the priest that I was okay, that I had been clean and sober going on 30 days.
“Just okay?” he asked.
“Well, to tell you the truth,” I told him, “I have no desire to drink or use, but there’s just this kind of emptiness right here in the middle of my chest.”
The priest got real close to me, inches from my face, looking me right in the eye. I could smell old man on him. “You want to drink, don’t you,” he said.
“No. I’m done drinking, I…”
The old priest grabbed me by the front of my shirt and shouted in my face, spit flying, “You want to drink, and if you don’t admit it, you’re going to die drunk!”
He was right and I knew it. I got into a program of recovery and made sobriety my number one priority.
A few weeks later, my pager went off in the middle of the night. I was a volunteer fire fighter and EMT on our local fire department. I pulled on my clothes and headed out, picking up Dave on the way. The call was for an “Unknown medical emergency” at an address not far from us. We went directly there. Everything was blurry. I reached up and touched my face. I had forgotten to put my glasses on.
As we were pulling up, so was the Fire Department ambulance. We grabbed the medical kit out of the back and headed into the building, which was an apartment house. On the way in, Dave said, “You’re in charge.” We took turns being in charge on medical calls.
We had to go up three flights of stairs. The medical kit was bouncing off walls. Everything is so surrealistic at 2:00 am in the morning, like a gyrating tunnel collapsing in on us. An apartment door was open with a woman directing us in. We entered.
It was the old priest! He was unconscious on the floor with his skinny arms crisscrossed over his chest. I went to work on him, while Dave questioned the family. I could hear him, “Has this ever happened before?” “No.” “Is he on any medications?” “No. We just found him like this.”
I did what I was trained to do, trying to take blood pressure and pulse and getting oxygen started. Without my glasses I had a hard time reading the BP dial. I had no idea what was wrong with the priest. I began to lock up. I whispered, “Please God, help me.”
Paramedics arrived from the regional hospital and thankfully took over. They were having a hard time too. I heard the same questions being asked. The paramedic in charge told me to hand him a bag of saline. “Let’s get a I.V. started, cut-and-run.” I fumbled for the bags. I didn’t have my glasses on so I wasn’t sure what I was grabbing. The paramedic got the I.V. started. All of a sudden, the priest’s eyes popped open, he smiled and said, “Oh, hello.”
The paramedic turned the bag over. It was glucose, not saline. The paramedic looked at me, shook his head, and said, “Good job.”
The family of the priest stepped forward and squawked, “Oh, didn’t we tell you? He’s diabetic.”
Divine intervention? I think so. The old priest had saved my life, God saved his.
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Have a good story? Call or text Curt Swarm in Mt. Pleasant at 319-217-0526 or email him at curtswarm@yahoo.com. Curt is available for public speaking.