Angels on the Night Shift (6 page)

“Just listen, Jeff,” I replied patiently. “You’ll see.”

2:30 p.m.
It was a spring afternoon, one day in the middle of the week. Johnny Gee was the ER doctor on duty and was standing at the nurses’ station, reviewing the run report of EMS 2. The paramedics on the unit that day were Rob Freeman and Greg Hartley. They had just brought in a teenage boy who had tried to drive his four-wheeler through a pine tree. No major injuries, though, and he should be fine. Just a routine call and transport.

The whole day had been routine—nothing out of the ordinary. And that had been fine with Rob and Greg. They had been working together for a lot of years, and were both now in their early fifties.

Hartley was the more serious of the two. He was a deeply spiritual man, always calm and patient in the face of even the worst catastrophe, and never afraid to share his faith. Yet, as St. Francis of Assisi would say, he preached the gospel “without words.”

Rob Freeman, on the other hand, was a free spirit, though less so now that he was getting a little older and had two grandchildren. But still, he didn’t take many things very seriously. Certainly his job, but in spite of all their years together as EMS partners, Greg had never been able to draw Rob into a serious conversation about his beliefs. He just wasn’t interested. That didn’t make him a bad person to be around. In fact, he was one of the people best liked by the ER staff—always laughing and joking, and always ready to lend a hand wherever it was needed.

They made an interesting pair, and were two of our favorites.

On this particular day though, they had something important on their minds. It was already past two o’clock and they hadn’t had a
chance to get anything for lunch. There had been a series of minor calls all morning long, and now for the first time, they didn’t have anything pending.

“See you guys in a little while,” Gee said as the two were walking out of the building.

“Hope it’s not before we get something to eat,” Rob called back to him, stopping in the ambulance entrance and rubbing his less than svelte belly.

“Come on, Rob,” Greg said to his partner. “I’m hungry.”

The two men walked out under the portico of the ambulance entrance and toward their unit. Greg went around to the driver’s side and jumped in, while Rob walked to the passenger side. As if choreographed after all their years together, they settled into their cushioned but well-worn chairs, buckled their seat belts, and adjusted their side mirrors. Greg cranked up the reluctant diesel engine, and they lumbered out through the parking lot and onto Herlong Avenue.

“Where you want to get lunch?” Greg asked his partner. He was checking his side mirror, making sure no one was behind him as he got ready to move into a turn lane and onto Ebenezer Road.

Looking ahead again, he repeated, “Rob, what do you want for lunch?”

It was a simple question, one about food, which was something Rob Freeman was always interested in.

There was still no response, and when Greg glanced over to the right, he slammed on the brakes of the ambulance, causing it to swerve in the middle of the street.

Rob Freeman was sitting up in his seat, held in place by his seat belt. But his head was hanging down on his chest, rolling from side to side. His face was a dark blue, and he wasn’t breathing.

Hartley yelled at him, reached over and shook him, and instantly knew he had a decision to make. Did he stop in the street, pull his partner out of the cab, and start doing CPR? Or did he head back to the ER, a little over a minute away?

He didn’t hesitate. Switching on his lights and siren, he made a U-turn in the middle of Ebenezer, scattering startled drivers out of the
narrow road, and sped back to the hospital. Repeatedly blasting his horn as he approached the ambulance entrance, he got the attention of some of the staff.

Within another minute or so, Rob Freeman was on a stretcher in the cardiac room with Dr. Johnny Gee standing over him.

“Flatline,” Angie Weathers told Gee. She was one of the nurses on duty this morning, and was trying to maintain her composure. Like everyone else in the department, the man dying in front of her was a friend, someone special.

Gee went to work, barking orders, securing Freeman’s airway, and doing everything he was trained to do to save this man.
What could have caused him to collapse so suddenly? He doesn’t have any history of heart disease and he doesn’t smoke. He doesn’t take any medications. It must be his heart. But what about a pulmonary embolus?

Greg Hartley stood in the doorway of cardiac, trying to stay out of the way. He felt helpless, not wanting to watch this but unable to make himself leave.

For over an hour they worked feverishly. Every once in a while, an irregular complex or two would appear on the monitor and then quickly disappear. And then once again there was that awful flatline.

Everyone in the room knew it was time to stop. Johnny Gee, flushed and sweating, knew it too. He was about to call the code and pronounce the death of Rob Freeman, when suddenly the cardiac monitor erupted with activity. Freeman’s failing heart was making one last attempt to keep him alive. The irregular complexes were coming more frequently, and then they became less irregular. In another minute or two he had a normal rhythm of about a hundred, and he had a pulse!

Gee stood back from the stretcher as Rob began to breathe on his own through the endotracheal tube taped to the side of his face. The doctor looked over at Angie Weathers and they just stared at each other.

Then Rob’s right hand went up in the air as he reached for his face and the aggravating tube. Angie quickly grabbed his hand and happily secured it to the side of the stretcher.

An hour later, Rob Freeman was sitting up in his bed and talking. Amazingly, he seemed to be completely normal. Over the next few days,
his cardiologists would determine that he had a rare and usually fatal electrical problem in his heart. He had successful surgery and never had any more trouble with it.

“Wow, that’s a great story!” Amy interrupted me. “Maybe even a miracle. I’ve never met Rob Freeman but I’ve heard some of the guys talk about him. But it really doesn’t have anything to do with what we’re talkin’ about, does it?”

“Well, just hold on, Amy,” I said patiently. “I’m not finished yet. The
real
miracle might be what happened next.”

After all the excitement, Johnny Gee found himself alone in the cardiac room with Freeman. He was writing on Rob’s chart, hesitant to leave the room for fear that something might happen to undo what had just transpired.

“Doc, I gotta tell you something,” Rob said quietly.

Johnny looked over at the paramedic. “Sure, Rob. I’m right here.”

Freeman cleared his throat, trying to collect his thoughts. He was obviously struggling with something—some difficult emotion.

“I need to tell you what just happened,” he said finally.

This surprised Johnny. He hadn’t left the room since Rob’s arrival in the ER, and he knew everything that had happened. He pulled over a stool, sat down, and waited patiently for his patient to continue.

Freeman took a deep breath and began.

“I’ve heard people talk about ‘near death’ experiences, but never paid them much attention. I always thought those people were crazy. But Doc…well, I
know
it’s true now. I just don’t know any other way to explain this.”

He paused and glanced over at Johnny Gee, hoping for some sign of understanding. Or at least some sign that Johnny didn’t think he was crazy.

Gee just looked at him, smiled, and nodded his head. That was all Rob needed.

“It’s hard for me to put into words. But heck, here it is. From the first moment I got to the ER, when Greg brought me in on our stretcher, I can remember everything.”

Johnny Gee’s eyebrows rose, but he said nothing. He only shifted a little on his stool. This man had been unconscious—completely unresponsive.

“I can remember the whole thing,” Rob continued. “I could hear you talking and giving orders, and I could hear Angie Weathers over in the corner. ‘Flatline,’ she kept saying. And I can remember somehow seeing the cardiac monitor, and it
was
flatline. But somehow that didn’t bother me. It was all so peaceful, and I just watched and listened. It wasn’t like I was floating on the ceiling like I’ve heard other people talk about. It was more of…more like just being in the room, but not
in
the room. Does that make any sense, Doc? I told you this was hard to understand.”

Johnny nodded again and said, “Go on.”

“Well, that’s when it got stranger. I could hear you and Angie talking and then your voices started to sort of fade away. Not completely, but you were getting harder to hear and understand. And the room started to get sort of hazy, or cloudy. And it was getting darker. That’s when I saw the light. It seemed to be over near the doorway, and I thought someone else might be coming into the room. But the door was closed, and I remember thinking,
It’s just like they all say,
you know, the light and everything. And I laughed at myself a little for thinking that. Funny, but I remember laughing.”

He paused, put his hand to his chin, smiled faintly, and shook his head.

“Then your voices got louder,” he continued. “And the room got brighter and the light started to fade away. It was about that time that Angie hollered out that there was some electrical activity on the monitor, but she still couldn’t feel a pulse. Things started getting darker again, and then there was the light. After a minute or two, it faded away again and I could hear you guys plain as day. This happened a couple more times until finally things got dark, really dark, and you guys were gone and I couldn’t hear anything. It seemed like I was all alone.

“And the light…well, it really got bright. The brightest yet. I found myself being drawn toward it, walking straight at it. Not like a magnet or anything like that, or something I couldn’t resist. It just felt
comfortable, and…like something I was supposed to do. It was the only thing in the room, the only thing in the world right then—this bright light.

“Then all of a sudden, there he was, right smack in the middle of it. I could see the figure of a man, clear as you are right now. He just stood there, watching me. I remember being surprised, and I must have stopped, ’cause he raised his hand and motioned for me to come to him. I started walking forward again, thinking of all the times people had talked about something like this, and now I understood. I knew they weren’t crazy, or making stuff up. It was just natural, and peaceful. And I began to remember the things people had said about heaven and about meeting Jesus and their loved ones, and it was…it was like I was just floating toward him—completely at peace.”

Rob stopped here and looked down at his hands, and Johnny thought he saw tears in his eyes. Then the paramedic trembled a little. It was a slight movement, and passed quickly.

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and looked up again at the doctor.

“Then there I was,” he continued, his voice now subdued. “I was standing right in front of him. I looked up and into his face, and it was…it was the face of a wolf. And Doc, I have never been so scared in all of my life. Those eyes, they were mean, and bright red, and it was like there was all of this hatred behind them. And then the feeling I got was that they were hungry.”

He paused again, took a deep breath, and blew it out loudly.

“That’s the first time in my life that I’ve ever felt fear,
real
fear. But it was more than that, Doc. It was an emptiness, a gnawing sort of pain, and the worst thing—the
worst
thing was that I knew I was lost. Then from somewhere behind me, I heard your voice again, and I heard Angie saying, ‘Look, he’s got a rhythm back, and I can feel a pulse.’ The room started getting brighter, and the light started to fade, and then your voices started getting louder and louder. And that wolf, or whatever it was, just stood there, reaching out for me and grinning. But it wasn’t really a grin. It was…I don’t know. And then it was gone. And I was lying on the stretcher, looking straight up at the ceiling. And I was breathing.”

Johnny Gee and Rob Freeman looked at each other in silence. Then Rob said, “Doc, I know that sounds crazy, but what do you think? Do you think what I saw was real?”

Johnny looked him square in the face, struggling with what he had just heard. “What do
you
think, Rob?”

Without hesitating, Rob answered, “I
know
it happened. Just as sure as I’m talking to you right this minute, I
know
it happened.”

Johnny slowly began to nod his head. This
did
sound crazy—but Rob Freeman had just described in perfect detail the account of his own resuscitation. How do you explain that?

I stopped and just sat there. All of us were quiet, each wrestling with our own thoughts. It was Jeff Ryan who spoke first.

“That’s quite a story. But how can you know it was real? I mean, there’s no way of knowing for sure, is there?”

He was looking at me, and then they all were.

“What do you think, Doc?” Amy asked quietly.

“I’ll tell you what I think,” I began, scooting up to the edge of my chair and leaning forward, my forearms resting on my thighs. “And it’s based on the only
facts
we really have, and that’s what happened next.”

“What do you mean?” Clara Adams questioned.

“Well, after Rob Freeman got out of the hospital, he went straight to the director of EMS and turned in his resignation. No questions, no explanations, nothing. Just thanked the director and walked away from all those years. Then he started talking to Greg Hartley about what he was thinking of doing, and asked him for some advice. Within a few weeks, he was signed up for some college-level courses at York Tech, and a year later, he was in seminary. A few years after that, he became a minister.”

“He did what?” Amy exclaimed, sitting straight up in her chair. “He became a preacher? I thought he didn’t—”

“It all changed that day in the ER, Amy,” I told them. “Whatever happened in the cardiac room, it was absolutely real for Rob Freeman, and it changed his life. He’s been preaching ever since in a small church just outside of Lancaster.”