Judgement Day

"There won't be any trumpets blowing come the judgement day, on the bloody morning after....one tin soldier rides away...."
It is human nature to pass judgement on others. Whether it is based upon social standing, color, nationality, or the shoes they wear, we all do it. Fifteen years ago I swore I would never judge another person by their looks.
That Friday morning in early July, 1994 was like any other at work for The Graham Group in Des Moines. The young assistant to the manager at Methodist Medical Plaza had brought down the time cards and we joked around as usual. But he went too far and said something that hurt my feelings before he left. Twenty minutes later my phone buzzed and the receptionist said I had a call on line two. I expected it to be him apologizing.
Instead it was my daughter-in-law; "Mom, you need to get up here to the hospital as fast as you can. They just brought Doug in. He has been electrocuted and they don't know if he is going to make it!" Thus began one of the worst weekends of my life.
I know I let out something between a scream and a groan as my co-workers quickly crowded into my cubicle to find out what happened and what they could do to help after I told them. I asked them to call Bud and tell him to meet me at Iowa Methodist. I knew I would need his support.
Doug held the certainty that he was going to die young because his father, Kenny, had died in June 1980 at age 37. As I rushed to the hospital I wondered if Doug had been right? He was almost 32. I also wondered if I was going to be like my parents and lose a child at an early age.
When I got to the emergency department I learned that Doug had been hooking roof trusses onto a crane at the job site when the boom came into contact with power lines. The electricity passed through his body and out his feet, blowing holes in the bottoms of both. It also stopped his heart. Two of his employees began CPR while another called 911.
At that time, Shelly was working at Iowa Methodist as an x-ray tech. She had been paged to the ER to do x-rays on an electrocution victim an ambulance was bringing in. The patient's clothes had all been cut off except his red briefs. There was a towel over his face. She saw Doug's tennis shoes on the bottom of the gurney; remembered that he had put on red underwear that morning and snatched the towel away to discover she had been paged to x-ray her own husband.
It is true the minutes passed as hours while emergency personnel worked to save my son's life and we huddled in a private waiting room. A hospital chaplain came in. A nurse came to tell me my boss was outside waiting to hear how things were going. I couldn't talk to anyone; I didn't know how things were going. Bud went out to talk to him.
Finally a nurse said I could see my son before they took him up to ICU. I was taken behind the curtains into a cubicle. My beloved first born lay unconscious on life support. All we could do was wait and pray. Only one person at a time could go in his room to see him for five minutes every other hour. On Saturday we were told they were keeping him in a medically induced coma. If they allowed him to come to wakefulness, he was combative - a sign of possible brain damage. Add that to the worry of whether or not he would live.
Sunday afternoon, the best of news - Doug had extubated himself. He was awake and talking. There were no immediate signs of brain damage. The next day he was moved to the burn unit to begin two weeks of recovery and skin grafting to cover the holes in his feet. He was in a wheel chair for awhile, then on crutches.
Doug has built many more houses since that awful time. Next month he will hold his new grandson at that same hospital. Grandpa Doug and great-grandma Ramona will have much to celebrate.
Oh, my vow not to judge people by their looks? Those two employees of his who saved my son's life were the most unlikely looking heros. They were kinda scruffy - types you would expect to see in a bar; certainly not guys you would pick to know CPR.
I have not been able to keep my vow; I still judge others. I just try harder not to.