When the Curtains of Death Parted: By MARTIN C. SAMPSON, M.D.

Courtesy: Medical Miracles, from Readers Digest 1981. November.

From the frontiers of science and the far horizons of personal courage, these stories of medical triumphs and miracles will reaffirm your faith in the awesome powers of the human spirit. Dramatic victories and human triumphs.

Selected and edited by the editors of Readers Digest

It was a hot Philadelphia summer day, and the air in the old Pennsylvania Hospital hung heavy and still.  I had been up all night in a vain fight to save a little girl from meningitis.  In reaction of her death I was feeling completely disheartened.  As a young intern I had seen so much of dying in the past months that life seemed fragile and meaningless.  I was face to face with cynicism.  Faith seemed to exist only to be mocked by death.

The first patient I was to examine that morning was a man I shall call John Bradley.  He was in his late 40s, with deep-set brown eyes and a gentle face.  During the few weeks since his admission his condition had declined steadily.  As I looked through the window of his oxygen tent I saw that his lips were blue, his breath fast and strained.  I knew that his heart had been weakened by rheumatic fever in his youth, and that in recent years hardening of the arteries had taxed it even more.

I couldn’t help thinking of his wife, a small, white-haired woman with a face in which the shadows of work and sorrow mingled with faith and trust.  She and her husband had constantly looked to me for help.  Why, I thought bitterly, did they ask so much of me?

I went over Bradley’s medications again in my mind, hoping to think of something new to relieve his suffering.  He was getting digitalis to control his failing heart, an anti-coagulant to prevent the formation of clots in its damaged wall, and injections to help rid his body of excessive water.  The amount of oxygen being pumped into his tent had been increased.  This day, as on many previous days, I inserted a needle to draw off any fluid that had accumulated in his chest.  Still, when I left him I had the feeling that all my efforts were fruitless.

Shortly after six o’clock that evening the nurse in charge of Bradley’s ward called me to come at once.  I reached his bed within seconds, but already his skin was ashen, his lips purple and his eyes glazed.  The pounding of his heart could be seen through the chest wall, and the sound of his breath was like air bubbling through water.

“One ampoule of lanatoside C and start rotating tourniquets, quickly,” I said to the nurse.

Intravenous lanatoside C would give the rapid action of digitalis.  The tourniquets would keep the blood in his legs from circulating and temporarily relieve the failing heart—but only temporarily.

An hour later Bradley began to breathe more easily.  He seemed aware of his surroundings and whispered, “Please call my family.”

“I will,” I said.

He closed his eyes.  I was just leaving when I heard a deep gasp.  I wheeled and saw that he had stopped breathing.  I put my stethoscope to his chest.  The heart was beating, but faintly.  His eyes clouded over, and after a second or two his heart stopped.

For a moment I stood there, stunned.  Death had won again.  In that moment I remembered the little girl who had died the night before and a wave of fury came over me.  I would not let death win again, not now.

I pushed the oxygen tent out of the way and started artificial respiration, meanwhile asking the nurse for adrenalin.

When she returned, I plunged the syringe full of adrenalin into the heart.  Then I whipped the needle out and listened through my stethoscope again.  There was no sound.  Once more I started artificial respiration, frantically trying to time the rhythm of my arms to 20 strokes a minute.  My shoulders were aching and sweat was running down my face.

“It’s no use,” a flat voice said.  It was the medical resident, my senior. “When a heart as bad as this one stops, nothing will start it again.  I’ll notify the family.”

I knew he had the wisdom of experience, but I had the determination born of bitterness.  I was desperately resolved to pull Bradley back though the curtains of death.  I kept up the slow rhythmic compression of his chest until it seemed so automatic it was as if a force other than myself had taken over.

Suddenly there was a gasp, then another!  For a moment my own heart seemed to stop.  Then the gasps became more frequent.  “Put the stethoscope in my ears.” I said to the nurse, “and hold it to his chest.”  I kept pumping as I listened.  There was a faint heartbeat!

“Oxygen!”  I called triumphantly.

Gradually the gasps lengthened into shallow breaths.  In a few minutes Bradley’s breathing grew stronger and so did his heartbeat.

Just then the screen around the bed was moved slightly, and Mrs. Bradley stood beside me.  She was pale and frightened.  “They told me to come right away.”

Before I could answer, Bradley’s eyelids quivered.  “Helen,” he murmured.

She touched his forehead and whispered.  “Rest, John, dear—rest.”

But he struggled for speech.  “Helen, I told them to call you.  I knew I was going.  I wanted to say good-bye.”

His wife bit her lip, unable to speak.

“I wasn’t afraid,” he went on painfully. “I just wanted to tell you—“ he paused, his breathing heavier,”—to tell you that I have faith we’ll meet again—afterward.”

His wife held his hand to her lips, her tears falling on his fingers.  “I have faith, too.”  She whispered.

Bradley smiled faintly and closed his eyes, a look of peace on his face.

I stood there, filled with a mixture of exhaustion, wonder and excitement.  The mystery of death was right on this room.  Could I, in some way, begin to understand it?  I leaned forward and very softly asked, “John, do you remember how you felt?  Do you remember seeing or hearing anything just now, while you were—unconscious?

He looked at me for a long moment before he spoke.  “Yes, I remember,” he said.  “My pain was gone, and I couldn’t feel my body.  I heard the most peaceful music.”  He paused, coughed several times, and then went on: “The most peaceful music.  God was there, and I was floating away.  The music was all around me.  I knew I was dead, but I wasn’t afraid.  Then the music stopped, and you were leaning over me.”

“John, have you ever had a dream like that before?”

There was a long, unbearable moment; then he said, with chilling conviction, “it wasn’t a dream.”

His eyes closed, and his breathing grew heavier.

I asked the ward nurse to check his pulse and respiration every 15 minutes, and to notify me in case of any change.  Then I made my way to interns’ quarters, fell across my bed and was instantly asleep.  The next thing I heard was the ringing of the telephone beside my bed.

“Mr. Bradley has stopped breathing.  There is no pulse.”

One glimpse of his face told me that death had won this time.

Why, then, had the curtains of death parted briefly to give this patient another few minutes on earth?  Was that extra moment of life the result of chance chemical factors in his body?  Or did it have a deeper, spiritual meaning?  Had his spirit been strong enough to find its way back from death just long enough to give message of faith and farewell to his wife?  Could it also have been meant to give a small glimpse of eternity to a troubled and cynical young intern?

Whatever the meaning, and whether of not it had a purpose, the incident made a deep impression on me.  This was my first step toward acceptance of certain mysteries as an essential part of life.  This acceptance, the gift of a dying patient whom I could not save, put me on the road back to faith.