I’ve been working in a hospital for the past couple of months. It’s one of the bigger systems here in in Massachusetts with many campuses. The one I work in has a big medical school and many buildings and departments. It’s a big, full service hospital.
So every morning I go there, I don’t always work on campus, I park in one of the many parking lots. It’s a good walk from where I park to where I go, a nice walk when the weather is nice, and since this has been a relatively warm and pretty much snow-free winter (I know I shouldn’t say that because it’s not over yet and I’d be willing to bet God has a good laugh in store for us) the walk has been nice and even pleasant most of the time. I like to walk. I was a mid-pack long-distance runner for many years, and I loved running too. Yes, I did run the NYC marathon twice.
Lots of people who are either students in the medical school or workers in the hospital get there about the time I do, so there are always lots of people walking from their cars to where they are going. Sometimes I see the med helicopter taking off from behind the building where I work. I work in the main hospital building on the campus. Each time I see this I think how my young daughter who is just crazy about such things would love to be seeing it rise up from behind the building and going on up into the sky and off to where it is headed. It’s a sight, for sure.
Much more often than seeing the helicopter, I see ambulances. Actually, and I know you all know this, I hear the ambulances long before I actually see them. Since I am familiar with the grounds and the area, I know what streets they are coming from and what direction they will be heading. Almost always they end up at the ER.
When I go into the building and up to the floor where the office I work in is, it’s small clinic, a very specialized one, I don’t get to see the ER. But I have seen it. My wife was in it once. Sometimes it is so crowded they don’t have beds inside the ER and the halls outside are lined with patients on gurneys. My God!
I do have a good walk inside the hospital too, so on the first floor walking to the elevators I need I pass clinics and treatment areas where I see patients who are sick and needing help or are being rolled in by the EMTs. I see lots of people in wheel chairs being pushed by a loved one, lots of older people like me.
So I think, and I especially think it when I hear those ambulances coming, which is almost every morning I go there, there but for the grace of God. I think how lucky I am to be up and walking and working and on the right side of the earth.
There but for the Grace of God.
This morning there were several ambulances and as I was walking from the parking lot, two police cruisers came up one of the streets on the wrong side of the street to block off traffic. Whatever it was, it was an especially bad one.
There but for the Grace of God.
