Stereotypes and salvation.
As a hospital chaplain, I learned something valuable from a hurting man.
Note: This is a guest post by the talented , a former hospice chaplain and now full-time nursing student in South Dakota. Details and names of this story have been altered to protect staff and patient privacy in accordance with HIIPA protocol.
I had only just clocked in when the distinct buzz of my pager vibrated against my leg. Fumbling around to detach it from its clip, I faced it towards the faint blue glow of the computer so I could read the sans-serif font scrolling across its non-backlit screen.
“High acuity case, Chaplain call ICU 28072.”
The nurse picked up quick.
“Hey Chaplain, got a tough one for you. Patient is a forty-three year old male, presenting to the Emergency Department this morning with severe withdrawal sickness. Patient has only just arrived here, but has had many behavioral issues with staff, as we’ve come to expect with withdrawal patients.” She snickered. “He has been physically and verbally aggressive; an order has been placed for a Constant Observer to sit with him through the night to make sure he doesn’t try to rip out his IV and head to the bar or something. Would you have time to try and talk with him?”
In healthcare, staff is trained to care for every patient equally, no matter who they are or what they’ve done. It is an act of equity, of swearing an oath to protect the sanctity of life and offer healing where it is able. Yet the stereotypes exist, and the banter among trends can sometimes reduce certain admitting diagnoses to assumed patterns of behavior, at least behind closed doors and separated walls.
I sighed, my stomach rising to my throat as though it were floating autonomously from my abdomen to my thoracic cavity, all while cortisol spiked in my veins. I could feel my blood pressure rising, my face becoming flushed and anxious.
This was night shift. Anything could happen during nightshift.
Anything.
During nightshift, only one Chaplain is staffed within the 500-bed hospital. You’d step inside, and it was as though the monolith itself swallowed you whole; subsumed into a culture so very unlike what lay beyond, a realm of sterile walls and whispered prayers, a pendulum that teetered the keys of life and death in equal proportion.
Most commonly, Chaplains rounded the Emergency Department and Intensive Care Units (ICU), floating from case to case like some ministerial phantom dwelling in the liminal spaces of trauma, despair, and sometimes, hope.
It always seemed that hope somehow still pierced the veil and bled through the cracks that trauma and stereotypes and hurt forced open. I’ll never quite be able to explain it besides an act of supernatural blessing, but even in the very epicenter of insurmountable pain and misunderstanding, small and very evident seeds of hope would often bloom.
The hum of the unit was quelled to only occasional beeps and chirps, registered from telemetry monitors and IV pumps strategically placed around the floor and in each patient room. Per usual for the time, the lights were heavily dimmed to try — as well as a hospital could — to provide patients a simulated sense of night, where they could hopefully get a minute or two of much needed shut eye.
I peeked over the nurses’ station and made contact with the RN named Sarah, lines of stress and exhaustion evident in the heavy bags weighing down her eyes. One hand cradled a Red Bull energy drink, the other multiple papers with scribbled notes of what I presumed to be patient data.
“Oh yes, hey Chap”, she nodded her head in the direction of the room. “Room four. Good luck. Another withdrawal, of course. I don’t think he’ll be doing much sleeping tonight.”
I navigated my way towards his sliding glass door, the only concealment a light blue curtain dangling from a rod on the inside of the room. The space was cold, quite clammy with a subtle, rancidly sweet aroma to the air. The patient lay facing the ceiling, not asleep but not completely awake either, his eyes like fogged glass concealing a storm rolling over a mountainside while a young Constant Observer — “CO” as we often call them — watched him sleep.
I logged into the chart.
His name was Mark. He resided nearby and drove himself to the Emergency Department at 0813. No next of kin listed, although if he wasn’t in the best headspace upon arrival, he may not have mentioned much. Severe alcoholic hepatitis, sudden onset. Poor prognosis, more testing to be done to evaluate liver function. Emotional instability. I guess he tried grabbing a nurse this morning for some reason. Security called. No faith listed at this time.
I approached bedside, his eyes still fixed placidly to the ceiling. His skin and the whites of his eyes were heavily jaundiced, a sepulchral yellow hue encapsulating his body, resembling more of a real life Simpsons character than true flesh and blood.
“Mark? My name is Devon, I’m a Chaplain. Is now an alright time?”
No response. The air held its heaviness, tension weaving into the silence like a drawstring ready to snap.
“Mark? Can I sit with you for awhile?”
I eased myself into the swivel chair beside him, watching his chest rise and fall with each passing breath as his eyes still stared unblinkingly skyward. A peak of moonlight traced his forehead from the window. Without quite knowing why, I took his hand.
Minutes passed. Then an hour.
Finally he spoke. I startled.
“You think I’m another damn drunk, don’t you?”
I startled. His gaze was fixed on me now — well, more through me. It was as though he was taking a thorough inventory of my every thought, every little bead of sweat born in fear that wetted my brow.
“No, Mark. No, I don’t,” I said quickly. “I don’t believe someone wakes up one morning and decides to drink until they go to the hospital—”
“Well tell that to them!” His voice flared. “If another one comes marching in here telling me I’m here for drinking, they’re gonna get what’s coming to ‘em.” He ripped his hand from mine.
A flash of crimson crossed my vision, not blood, but ink. Four roses encircled in black, and at the center, a single name: Heather.
No more words were said between us.
By morning, Mark was asleep.
Nurses had repositioned him every couple of hours throughout the night to prevent blood clots and even so he slept on through them, not stirring or moaning or throwing any punches.
That’s when I noticed her.
A long shadow cast across the far corner of the room, where a young woman stood watching me. She was on the verge of tears, her eyes swollen, her face stoic holding the floodgates in place, lest a reason be given for them to finally gush forward and be relieved from the ducts in which they were held.
I went to her quietly.
Her gaze stared off, far from here, far from this moment, locked onto a point in the wall like a crosshair. Just like the man in the bed.
“I’m Devon,” I said. “The Chaplain. Are you… Heather?”
She began to cry, slipping back, sinking into the wall behind her. I felt like I had exposed a painful wound that ripped the void already between us even larger.
She eventually steadied herself, her cry more clicks and gasps than tears.
“No,” she gasped. “I’m Rose. Heather was my mother. Mark’s my dad. She died suddenly six months ago from a heart attack. That’s when… everything went bad. He had never really drank before.”
Her breath caught.
“I lost my mom six months ago and now… my dad seems to be on his way out too.”
I made my way solemnly to Mark’s bed, Rose in tow behind me.
Extending my arm, I placed my hand gently upon Mark’s tattoo, feeling his arm subtly react to my reach, cueing me that he was awake, silently tuned in to the conversation around him.
I leaned in. “Mark, I get it now. And I am so incredibly sorry for your loss.”
The three of us stood there for a long while, an emotional bond weaved together by grief and by love. Of despair, yes, but of understanding too. Something real. Something strong.
One clinging desperately to life, drowning in the ache of a world emptied of his betrothed, like an atmosphere stripped of oxygen, each breath a slow surrender to the part of him already gone.
The other clinging desperately to hope, holding on to the fragile threads of family and memory, even as grief threatened to unravel them both.
And I, a humble witness trying to weave a union from a song born of sorrow and misunderstanding. Wishing it would have never come to this. Wishing things could have been different.
Perhaps Mark and I would have once been pals once, before he was stricken by loss and institutionalized by a system that algorithmized his suffering to placated stigmas out of his realm of control.
I’d like to believe that, at least.
Stigmas and stereotypes reduce the living to nothing more than symbiotic patterns, grain amidst a machine that writhes and churns them into chaff to be tossed to oblivion.
We must do better.
We must adopt a posture of understanding—
Of holding hearts and hands and stories,
Listening through the noise, enduring the toil,
To those suffering quietly in our midst.
Revealing the sacred, the supernatural essence of Jesus,
Who still whispers goodness into the ruins,
Hope blooming amid hurt,
Peace rising from pain.
Only then can true, faithful healing awaken—
A healing that mends what is broken and makes whole again.
Devon Comp is a former hospital and hospice chaplain from Sioux Falls, SD. His clinical experiences include working in trauma-1 medical centers, emergency rooms, and intensive care units. He has sat at the bedsides of countless people experiencing insurmountable pain and grief. He writes from these experiences, weaving together real stories of faith, hope, loss, and the sacred moments of witnessing death in the heart of human suffering. Devon is currently enrolled in the accelerated nursing program to continue his ministry within healthcare. When he isn’t working, he enjoys spending time with his beautiful wife, Lexi, and his three children, as well as writing and reading fantasy novels.
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