7 IN THE PIT

7 IN THE PIT

Her digestive system was next to go. She had never suffered from constipation in her life. The slightest spicy recipe could always trigger her digestive process, but now the functions ceased, and gashing abdominal cramps began. Four ounces of liquid paraffin brought no results. Seven laxatives lay in her stomach like rocks.

The paralysis had reached her intestines. Menstruation had stopped - her last vestige of womanhood - reminding her that she was now nothing but a lump of cells that refused to work and had slipped into some crazy Rip Van Winkle trance. She was no longer an athlete, a student, or even a woman. Paranoia began to settle in. Nita pored through medical texts and quizzed her doctor-friends on the sly. She could tell that her family was telling her less and less, and she was driven wild to know more. What she read terrified her, but still she had to know.

Convinced that Shan and his orthopaedic boys could do no more for her, Nita demanded to be moved to neurology. The red tape seemed to take forever, and when the paperwork finally did come through it was early one evening, after her family and other visitors had left. All the hospital's specialists left at four each afternoon, so there was no staff to introduce the new patient in the customary manner. Nita was wheeled into Ward 46 alone.

It was a pit.

Ward 46, the neurology ward, doubled as the emergency ward at Colombo General. Critical cases were admitted here, then transferred to other parts of the building. The twenty-bed ward always had about thirty-five people in it, with patients lying in every crack of space, even along the outer corridor under a verandah! The concept of privacy was laughable, even with the bamboo mat that rolled down from above to serve as curtains between beds. The walls stopped short of the ceiling, and crows were common visitors in the rafters. Flies buzzed and lighted everywhere.

The ward nurse had just come on duty when Nita arrived. She had no idea who this girl was, or where to put her, and had not received instructions to move any other patient out into the corridor, and leave the new one inside. So Nita ended up in the corridor, not far from the toilet. The nurse went about her work, trying to care for all the patients at once.

Nita's senses were already thoroughly assaulted; her emotions were stretched to snapping point, and the scene overwhelmed her.

Visitors customarily used the other side of the corridor wall for spitting. Nita was not in a position to see this, but she recoiled in horror every time she heard it. Bloody emergencies were carted in and out at regular intervals and doctors, nurses and visitors squeezed through the crowded ward incessantly. The horrible trolley came around. Nita's private attendant squirmed and pleaded; because of the continuing kidney infection, she was to keep her patient on schedule. But the trolley was filthy, the bedpans on it were grimy, and Nita refused to empty her bladder.

Adjacent to Nita's bed was another holding an eighty-five-year-old woman, who was suffering from dysentery, and who was often completely delirious. The old woman began throwing her stained, filthy bedclothes out of her bed, and they were landing dangerously close to Nita's feet. Nita, terrified, could not even draw up her legs to avoid the missiles of human excrement.

The flushing of the nearby toilet made Nita nervous and she couldn't stop listening to the soft constant pings as flies ran into the tall metal locker next to her bed. The sound made her flesh crawl. She finally drew herself, as best she could, into a distant corner of her bed and pulled the sheet completely over her head to shut out all the filth. Her mind was racing furiously, her head throbbing and pounding. She squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth, trying desperately to separate herself from the horrors of Ward 46.

Meanwhile, her visitors continued to show up at old Ward 3 and were being redirected to 46. Each of them came to the new location, but no one could see Nita in the outer corridor. Each one in succession left the hospital, puzzled. In her most horrible private hell, Nita was all alone. There was a terrible irony of the evening. The young man who had led her to the Lord arrived with some friends. They had searched all over and finally found her. Nita was fuming.

"Go get my mother," she said sharply.

They left, but Mrs. Edwards failed to show up. She felt a growing terror. Had her own mother turned? Was she so horribly obnoxious now that even her own mother could not stand to see her any longer? Night fell slowly, and finally the ward's main lights were shut off. Hours passed and Nita shivered under her covers.

After a little while, when all was quiet, Nita slowly pulled the sheet away from her head. She gasped. Above her was a grotesque deformed face, gaping at her, slobbering crazily in a toothless grin. She learned later that she, a neurotic patient in the next bed, had climbed over the metal locker to see what the new girl looked like. Nita choked back a scream and pulled the covers again over her face.

"Go away," she groaned anxiously from under her cover. Then she looked again, and the ugly old face was still there--she just kept staring. Normally Nita would not have reacted to a deformity, but now her nerves were jagged and she could not absorb any more.

An attendant came hurrying back from supper to pull the crazy woman back into her own bed. Nita shivered and closed her eyes again.

How much more can I take? she thought. She had to get out of this human junkyard. She would rather be dead than stay here.

The neurological specialist arrived with his staff early in the morning. Nita was already awake. In the morning light her terror had turned to fury. She heard the doctor talking but did not pull the sheet away from her face. Suddenly it was stripped off, and the surprised doctor was looking down at her. He had expected to see a corpse, not Nita.

"What are you doing here?" he cried, not waiting for an answer. He wheeled on his staff. "Why did you put her out here?" he demanded.

They scurried into action, moved another patient out of the room, cleaned the area, and wheeled Nita in.

The doctor checked her output of fluid. There had been none. He threw back the bedsheet, to find Nita's abdomen looking like a small igloo. A bedpan was called for - sterilized at Nita's insistence - but her system refused to function. The delay had caused complications. The doctor ordered an ice bath but it produced no change. Finally she was hooked up to a catheter.

Angry and aching, she watched a crow take position on a rafter just above her head and proceed to drop on her. It was the crowning blow for the daughter of the late Judge Edwards!

She had reached the limit of her calm. When her mother arrived later, Nita's months of bottled frustration finally exploded forth. She attacked from the moment her mother walked in.

"You don't care! Where were you last night? I spent the night in the corridor! You leave me to rot in this stinking place!" The tirade went on.

Mrs. Edwards was shocked. A relative, Nita's uncle, had died yesterday, and she had raced to attend the funeral. She had sent a message to her daughter but Nita hadn't received it. Neither had the boys who carried Nita's terse message the night before been able to locate Mrs. Edwards.

Nita's mother had visited her twice every day for more than six months. She had thought that one evening without her would make little difference, and she knew there were several friends planning to visit. She also thought the new ward would be as acceptable as the last, and she knew the private attendant would be on hand.

But she had not counted on Ward 46!

"You are moving me out of this place today," Nita commanded. "I want a private ward."

Visibly upset, Mrs. Edwards walked directly to the front office and filled out the transfer papers. But she returned with bad news. The private ward was being repainted, and Nita could not move in for another twenty-four hours.

Nita sighed, grim-faced. One more night! Well, it couldn't be as bad as the night before had been. But she was wrong. It was a more horrible ordeal than that of the night before - a strange dance of death.

During the day a nineteen-year old girl was wheeled into the place next to Nita. She was a leukemia victim, the daughter of an undertaker. She had gone home for the weekend but came back critically ill. Through the curtain Nita could hear the commotion around her bed. She kept asking the nurse what was happening, but they told her nothing. Eventually the commotion ended, but the curtain remained down. Nita suspected her ward mate was dead.

Night fell again on Ward 46, and the room grew quiet except for the intermittent groanings of its inhabitants. The private attendant noticed tiny bedbugs crawling on Nita's legs and began picking them off, trying to be casual about it. She knew her mistress would be horrified. Nita noticed - and grew nauseous. She could not even feel the bites, and yet the filthy creatures were growing fat on her blood. Her spirits sank to a new low.

Soon an aide came into the ward and wheeled one of the patients out. There was a sheet over the entire body. Nita shivered and thought of the body that still lay next to her bed. When would they remove that one?

Suddenly the ward exploded into action. Lights flashed on and nurses began shouting and scurrying. A stomach pump was rushed in. A woman had swallowed pesticide, trying to take her life, and was wheeled into the room of broken bones. Doctors and nurses worked her over noisily, until she could vomit on her own - which she proceeded to do throughout the night.

Again Nita felt anger stirring within her. Here, all around, were people desperate to stay alive, and this cowardly woman creates chaos trying to kill herself!

Once more the ward settled down, but before long the night nurse had drawn the sheet over another patient's face. Nita watched nervously as the covered corpse was wheeled past her. She tried to relax, but her heart was beating much too fast for that. As she stared aimlessly around the dark room, the night nurse covered another fresh corpse and signalled for the aide to fetch it.

Nita's heart pounded harder.

Am I next in line? she asked herself frantically. Will they pull the sheet over my face and wheel me away and dump me in the mortuary with the rest of the corpses?

She had never been exposed to death. She could recall that once her father pulled the car to the side of the road when a funeral passed by. That was all. Her father's corpse was too familiar to qualify as an object of death; she had kissed him, in fact, at the funeral. But now she felt the fear of death taking hold of her. As each new body was removed, she could see death's steady advance.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . . She had learned the verse as a child. Now Nita's mind began to reel with it. She was lying in a death station, waiting for her number to be called.

.. I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.

It was as if the undertaker were pacing the hall outside her door, waiting impatiently for her. Any breath could be her last. What would become of her?

She breathed deeper, quoting the psalm over and over, but her head kept spinning. The room began a slow, uneven whirl, and through the sickening motion Nita watched yet another whitesheeted corpse slipping toward the exit.

Will I meet God this night? she found herself wondering. Am I ready to present myself to the Almighty?

The room spun faster and faster, till it was nothing but a pearly blur; and against the blur she began to see the scenes of her life, flashing in rapid succession ... every wasted dollar, every convenient lie, every cherished happiness, every lost friend. She saw her daddy, grinning and joking ... her mother offering such strength ... her brother and sister in good and bad ... She saw the rebellious years all over again, incident by painful incident, played out on the movie screen of her memory. She tried to look away, but the movie stayed in front of her eyes. She could hear her pulse in her ears, growing louder by the minute, till she thought her eardrums would burst. And still the memories continued rolling.

Deep into the night, far into the darkness of early morning, the pictures kept flashing before her, until finally they faded. Nita was devastated. She had never confronted much of her past. She had submerged most of it.

In the waking light of morning, against a cheerier backdrop of singing birds and a pleasant breeze, Nita's eyes ran down the lines of Isaiah 43:18, "Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old."

Suddenly she heard weeping from the vicinity of the next bed. The mother of the nineteen-year-old leukemia victim had arrived just as a nurse was yanking the oxygen equipment carelessly off the girl. She had also died long before in the night, like the others, but someone had failed to advise the family.

"Behold, I will do a new thing," Nita read in the following lines. "Now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it?"

She listened as the body was covered and dumped over onto the death trolley, accompanied by the sobs of a sorrowing mother. Nita thought of her many sins, all dredged up again last night, and how she deserved to be on that trolley. But the Word of God told her differently.

"I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins."

Nita felt the soothing ointment of Scripture enveloping her spirit, and she resolved once again to give her life wholly to God.

But the life she was offering to God today was not the same life she had known. Now she began to realize that these memories - the pains and passions of her past - were the sum of her life as a normal girl. There would be no more of them. Her crippled body afforded her no more of that former carefree existence.

From now on, it was the bed, the ward, and - someday, she knew, the grave. But her life, or what was left of it, was God's. It wasn't much, but it was all she had left.