Touched by an Angel??

By Erin S. Cox-Holmes

I have never seen an angel. The closest I have come was the time someone cleaned two feet of snow from our driveway. I could swear the mark left behind came not from a snowblower but from a feathery wing.

But I do know someone who has actually seen an angel. Four angels, to be exact. I take him at his word. Let me tell you about my son.

Several years ago, three weeks after Graham's sixth birthday, I started his bedtime breathing treatment, a routine part of a daily battle against asthma.

About one minute into the treatment, Graham made a queer choking noise and called out "Mommy!" My mouth was opening to yell at him to quit screwing around and get to sleep. My feet, with a deeper wisdom, knew something was terribly wrong. They were running in even as I gathered breath to scold. There he was, unable to talk, turning blue.

My brain disconnected from feeling and began a series of calculations. Call ambulance? No. A raging blizzard, six inches of snow, outside, and our hill's too steep. Go to emergency room? Yes. Only three minutes away. Put on coat and shoes? No. Wrap my coat around his bare feet.

I scooped him up. Out in the family room my husband looked up at me with a let's-cocoon-in-front-of-the-TV kind of smile on his face. I said, "He's in respiratory failure. We've got to go. Now." Kent's feet, too, were moving before the expression on his face caught up.

By some grace bigger than comprehension, the car was parked facing out at the street end of the driveway. I nestled Graham in my lap, as if my fierce presence could keep all powers to destroy away from him. I do not remember it, but he tells me I stroked his head the whole way murmuring, "It's going to be OK. It's going to be OK."

Kent somehow kept the wheel. We made it up the unplowed road to the hospital. I ran him in; paperwork melted before dangling bare feet; he was hooked up to monitors within seconds. All of them were flashing. Beeping. Alarms going off.

His pulse oxygen level was 28.

The doctor pulled us aside. Began the speech: "We're doing everything we can, but you need to understand that he's been without oxygen to the . . . couldn't get an airway . . . just step out into the waiting room for a few moments while we . . .

We went out into the empty waiting room. Kent and I sat side by side, staring straight ahead.

The helicopters were grounded due to the blizzard. They couldn't life-flight him. They finally got him stabilized, but couldn't get the oxygen level regulated.

Because of the snow the chief anesthesiologist was still at the hospital. An ambulance crew was hanging out in the break room. The roads were officially impassable. The crew volunteered to venture into the jaws of hell and drive him to Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh. Even though he was currently stable, the great fear was that once the steroids wore off the rebound paradoxical bronchospasm might carry him away. And I had always thought paradox the gift that makes life possible.

They sedated him to keep him one level above death. The anesthesiologist volunteered to ride in the ambulance to guard the precarious balance. This meant there was no room for either Kent or me.

I gave my only son a kiss on his pale, still face as they slid him into the ambulance. I noted that his cheek felt like marble under my lips.

I watched his father kiss him and heard the doctor say, "Don't cling to him," speaking in doctorese.

Kent and I drove home, wordless. I tried to turn off the computer but couldn't remember how to boot down. We gathered belongings for a stay of unknown duration. I forgot any shoes for Graham.

In the car I remembered the old spiritual "When I get to heaven gonna put on my shoes, gonna walk all over God's heaven." That brought the only tears of the whole episode. I stuffed them down.

Normally it is a one- and-a-half-hour trip to Children's in Pittsburgh. It took over three hours. We were following one set of tracks. I kept my eyes away from ditches along the side.

When we got there, Kent dropped me at the door while he went to park. I did not run in like some frantic, crazy mother. I plodded in. It was the longest distance I have ever walked. A technician took one look at my slab of a face and walked me to the emergency room.

And . . . and . . . there was my son.

Chattering away. Elated that he'd pulled his first all-nighter.

He was glad to see me, but really wanted his Dad. He needed to pee. They were going to make him go in a bottle. All of the nurses were female. He was mortified.

Mortified, not mortician. My brain thought that was a hysterical play on words.

Graham and I held hands and watched the sunrise. I finally said, "Graham, I have never been so scared in my entire life. What was it like for you?"

He told me the part about my stroking his hair, saying everything would be all right.

Then he said that every night when he goes to bed, he and his daddy would pray together. I knew this, but they had never let me listen in on the prayer. He said, "Every night my daddy prays there would be four angels with flaming swords around the four corners of my bed, and the four corners of the house, to keep me safe.

Click to enlarge picture. The angels who ride in ambulances are robed in ambiguity. They are not the New Age Nice Angels who ride around on my friend's shoulder. They live in shadows I can't pierce.