The Mad Minstrel

Strength is not always found in your muscles and family is more than a shared genetic bond. I learned these lessons from the most unlikely woman. When I met her, she was being rushed into a trauma room with an oxygen mask on high and second degree burns on one arm. She looked like a grandmother, in her pink dressing gown, all frail and covered in black soot.

There was a fire at the nursing home where she lived. She had her own room on one of the top floors and, from what I learned, she didn’t have family. So her life was relegated to the activities within those walls.

The fire broke out and trapped her on the top floor with little hope of escape, but this woman was a fighter and wasn’t going to take it lying down, so she got her walker and started shuffling down the hall to find a window and call for help. On her way, she saw her friend passed out in her room. The heat had already started to blister her skin and the smoke was so heavy that breathing was becoming more and more difficult.

The woman abandoned her walker and went to her friend, slowly dragging her by the arm. Because of the blisters, her friend’s skin peeled off and the woman lost her grip, but she wasn’t about to let that scare her away, so she redoubled her efforts, grabbing her friend by both hands and dragging her backwards, down the hall and to the window.

Thankfully, the fire department was able to send a ladder and the woman waited for her friend to go first.

This is where we met. She was alone in a sterile hospital room, breathing painfully from the smoke inhalation and being stuck repeatedly with needles. When the ER began to calm down, I sat with her for a few minutes, all of the other patients had someone, but she was alone. She asked about her friend, I told her I didn’t know so I checked with the firefighters, they told me what happened and pointed to a room across the hall, it was filled with a dozen family members.

Timidly (and after checking with the Charge Nurse), I knocked on the door. The woman in the hospital bed hadn’t regained consciousness but the family was hopeful.

I told them what happened.

I can’t say for sure, but I think it was the woman’s daughter. Her eyes glistened with tears as I relayed the story. Her face, when she looked across the hall at the room devoid of family, it was a mixture of pain and appreciation. She didn’t even wait for me to finish, she walked out of the room and went in to thank the woman, they both cried and hugged, holding each other for a long minute.

I shed tears of my own as I stood in the hall and watched the entire family file into the room. They never left her side and I don’t think they ever will.

Family is far more than shared DNA, it’s the people we choose to share everything with, the people who choose us in spite of our differences. That woman loved her friend so much that she risked everything, they were family, genetics be damned.