Entering heaven together

Called to the ER, Dr. Reggie Anderson barely had his gloves on when the gurney rolled through the door.

White female, Seventy-nine years. Collapsed at home. 911 called. She was intubated on-site and IV placed. She had asystole on the monitor. However, we continued CPR en route since we were so close.

“Asystole was a dire form of cardiac arrest—the heart completely stops beating, and no electrical activity can be detected on the monitor. It is usually a serious and life-ending heart attack. Betty Sue hadn’t responded to any of the EMT’s initial interventions. The survival rate for her age and lack of response was less than one percent. Things didn’t look good. But a one percent chance was better than no chance at all.

“We moved her into the two-bed emergency room to see what we could do. The EMTs had been doing masked breathing, so we moved her from their portable machine to our larger one. No activity registered on the monitor.

Continue CPR. Push the EPI.

“Still nothing.

One amp of bicarb. Continue CPR.

“Nothing.

Charge the paddles.

“We shocked her heart. Still nothing. The ambulance attendant poked his head in the room and said: Her husband, William, is outside.

We’re busy working on Betty Sue. Tell him I’ll be out when I can talk to him. It will probably be a few minutes.

I don’t think you understand, the EMT said. She called us for him. William had a heart attack first. We’re doing CPR on him in the hall.

What? I looked up in time to see my nurse’s jaw drop.

“The EMT explained that the husband had collapsed at home and the wife had called 911, but by the time the ambulance arrived, William and Betty Sue were both lying on the floor.

Well, bring him in and put him in cot two! I said.

“Running two codes at once in our tiny ER was unprecedented. I continued to work on Betty Sue while the EMTs and nurses set up William in the adjoining bed. I strongly sensed God’s presence inside the ER. I felt his warmth as intensely as I’d ever felt it. The divine scents calmed me as I felt the veil parting for one or both of these precious souls.

Their children should be here in five minutes, the nurse said.

Continue CPR on both patients until they arrive.

“Handling one code was challenging enough, but trying to keep up with two at the same time was impossible without God’s intervention. Thankfully, I felt him directing my attention between the two patients and keeping me focused as I supervised the nurses. Once William was hooked up to his monitor, I could see that his heart wasn’t registering any activity either. Like his wife, he was flat lined.

“I intubated him, and we started mechanical breathing. Still no signs of heart activity. Let’s try to shock him. I didn’t think that shocking him would work any better than it had with Betty Sue, but I had to do something for the adult children who were about to learn they’d lost both parents within minutes of each other.

Charge the paddles.

“I turned to look at Betty Sue’s monitor one last time before I shocked William, but as soon as I turned toward her bed, his nurse said something that made me turn right back.

Doctor, something’s happening here.

“She pointed to the monitor where it showed a hint of activity. Then, even before we could shock his heart, we saw a single heartbeat. Blip.

Hold the paddles, I said. I think we’re getting a pulse.

“Then there was another. Blip. Only this second blip wasn’t from William’s monitor; it came from somewhere behind me. I turned to see what was happening, and I realized it was on his wife’s monitor!

Blip. A second beat on William’s monitor. Blip. Another beat on Betty Sue’s monitor. Blip, blip, blip went William’s monitor, and Betty Sue’s echoed with a blip, blip, blip. I turned my head to watch each volley of heartbeats as they registered on the monitors. Without intervention, William’s heart had begun to beat regularly, and then his wife’s followed! Soon the two heartbeats were beating in a synchronized rhythm.

“It was the most unusual thing I’d ever seen. The activity in the room, which had been so busy and chaotic while we were trying to run two codes, had ceased. All the medical professionals were speechless as we stood in awe and listened to the monitors amplifying the sounds of two hearts beating in unison. Days after the couple was transferred to the ICU in Nashville, Anderson received a call.

I have an interesting story to tell you about your patients, the Nashville doctor said. They arrived in the ER, and I had the same conversation with the kids that you did. They wanted the ventilators kept in to help them breathe, but they decided they didn’t want any further heroics. If their hearts stopped, we weren’t supposed to start them again. I admitted both patients and put them in separate rooms in the same cardiac unit.

This morning during rounds, I was standing at William’s bed when his monitor flat lined. Since we weren’t going to resuscitate him, I called time of death, and then went down the hall to the nurses’ station to write, “Discharged to a funeral home,” in his chart. While I was writing, I happened to look up at the monitors in front of me, and I noticed Betty Sue’s. While I was watching, hers flat lined too!”

“If heaven was closer than I thought, would that explain how, when God called William home, Betty Sue heard him and responded? Or did William, with one foot in heaven, stretch out his hand to his wife’s soul, so she could come with him? How close does heaven have to be for us to reach out and touch our loved ones, or for our loved ones to touch us?”

 

Reggie Anderson, Appointments with Heaven: The True Story of a Country Doctor’s Healing Encounters with the Hereafter (Tyndale, 2013), 215-219.