smile in the dark

All of a sudden, D Ward got sad.

It's partly because Oumar is still lying in his ICU bed a few feet away, the swelling in his throat stubbornly refusing to recede, forcing us to keep breathing for him. It's partly because there are now two babies in there, skin-and-bones little babies who just haven't been getting enough to eat. Babies who need us to keep a watchful eye on their mamas to make sure they're not left crying for food.

Granted, there are some happy cases. There's the one baby who had a tumor in her mouth, but before she went to the OR, it just kind of "fell off" and she swallowed it. At least, that's what the mama said, and since there was nothing to be seen, we had to believe her. There's Emmanuel, who came to us with a tumor growing over the left side of his face. We had to take out half of his jaw, but he's doing so well; the tube that's been giving him food is going to be removed in the next day or two, and he should go home soon.

The rest of the place, though, just feels so hopeless. I write that word knowing full well that we're here claiming to bring Hope and Healing. But today it just felt empty, like hope was the last thing we could offer. We had a little boy come in, his belly swollen and grotesque because his intestines don't work properly. He'll need at least two surgeries to fix what's wrong; we can only do the first, and when we explained, his mama sat down heavily on the bed next to me. But how will I pay? How will he get the other surgery? I have no money. Not surprisingly, I couldn't give her an answer.

There's the little girl in bed seven, small for her two-and-a-half years, the side of her face angry and large. She'll have tests tomorrow that will tell us whether or not it's cancer. If I were a betting woman, I'd say it is, as much as that thought makes me want to scream.

Across the room is a thirty-five year old man. He has two lumps, one in front of his ear, the other on his forehead. When I asked the surgeon, jokingly, if we couldn't get a two-for-one deal and take them both off at the same time, the look of sorrow on his face shocked me. He shook his head, turned his back to the man and explained that the tumor on the side of his head had grown too fast. It was invading his brain now, so could I please call the palliative care nurse? Because that's all we can offer.

I stumbled from bed to bed, handing out bad news and tickets to a hopeless future, wondering how so much pain could possibly be contained in one room. The last chart I picked up was Joy's.

She's two, and instead of a left eye, Joy has a tumor, red and angry. I knew she probably got shunned in her village, scorned because of her deformity, so I sat down next to her small body and held out my hand, prepared to show her as much love as I possibly could. Bonsoir, I offered, one word I was planning to use to erase a short lifetime of hurt. She leaned into my side but didn't offer me her hand to shake.

When her mama reached out and placed Joy's tiny fingers in mine, my stomach lurched, because I knew what it meant. I gently turned Joy's face so I could see her right eye, and read in it's milky surface a future darker than I could have imagined. She's two years old. One of her eyes has been destroyed by a tumor, the other is shuttered by a cataract.

I sat there on the end of Joy's bed, our fingers intertwined, and I wanted to cry.

Instead, I kissed her cheek. She lifted her face to me, her blind eye searching to see, and she grinned. A perfect, two-year old grin. I looked up to her mama, and she was smiling too, the smile of a woman who refuses to see the darkness, a woman who chooses to live in the light of her daughter's smile.

So I smiled back. Because, honestly, on the hopeless days, there's not much else I can do.