My phone rang. I rolled over in the dark and fumbled around until I answered the call, "Hello?"
"Hey Charles, a nurse in the Emergency Room is requesting a chaplain. A patient may be on his way out, and there's no family,"
"Anything else I should know?"
"The patient was mugged and shot. The bullet has been removed, but he's in critical condition,"
"I'll be there," I managed. My bleary eyes focused on the glowing alarm clock: 2:15am. I left the bedroom light off and swung my feet around to the cold wooden floor, pausing to ensure there was no movement or sound from my wife. We were expecting our first child, a son, in a few months, and my wife had been sleeping fitfully for weeks, usually made worse by the nights I was on call. I glanced at her face, took a breath, and crept out of the room.
I brushed my teeth, shrugged on some clothes and a coat and made my way out into the streets of New York City. Dirty snow piled up along the sidewalks, and I breathed in icy air. If I wasn't awake before, I sure was by the time I flashed my ID at the security guard.
Shot? No family? What had happened with this man? Questions kicked my mind. I reminded myself that finding out answers to my questions was not my job. My job was to be there for others in their suffering, to offer spiritual care in time of need through prayer, guidance, and above all, listening.
When I listened, the questions would get answered.
Or they would dissolve into the night.
I made my way through the dimly lit emergency room; I passed a woman with a mangled, swollen face, a man with bloodied jeans and an elevated leg wrapped in bandages, and other men and women with obvious and not-so-obvious pain.
A few beds had curtains drawn around them. When I reached bed 88, I paused. I folded my palms. Help me God, I prayed. Help me, Krishna.
I parted the curtain.
A young man lay on the bed wearing a pale blue hospital gown, but I could see the edges of a white bandage that covered his upper right chest. His round, youthful face surprised me. Brow furrowed and eyes closed, his chest rose and fell somewhat unevenly. The beep of his heart rate monitor mingled with the monitors of others in nearby beds.
I approached the young man. Not wanting to wake him, I sat in one of the chairs next to the bed and folded my palms and prayed.
Time passed by in strange, thick waves that night. At one point a nurse came in to fill me in on some more details and confirmed that the doctors had done all that they could. Although they had stabilized him as much as possible, the young man was declining - his heart had been irrevocably damaged.
I stayed in the room, a coldness creeping into my limbs. Would this young man die alone here in Bed 88 of the Emergency Room? I mean, I was here. I resolved in those moments to stay until the end, even if I was no longer on my shift. But he had no family? Friends?
"Who are you?"
I started in my chair and turned to look at the curtains that had parted. A middle-aged woman stood there, her face drawn, her hair in ragged gray wisps.
I stood. "I'm Charles Rossman, I'm with the spiritual care department,"
The woman regarded me warily. "Are you Christian?"
"Actually, I'm a Hindu chaplain,"
She frowned. "You don't look Hindu,"
I was quiet.
"But... thank you for coming. I'm Mrs. Graham," The woman's eyes landed on the young man and her face sagged. She stepped forward to his bed and wrapped her hands around his hand. "Matthew," she murmured.
"I'll step out until you need me," I said.
"No," she turned to me, her face fierce. "Don't go, please,"
I bowed my head. "Sure, ma'am, I'll stay,"
She turned back to the patient and said, "My Matthew loved people. He would've wanted to have been surrounded by people at... this time." Tears began to pour down her face, her body wracked with gentle sobs. "Chaplain," she said, "I just got this news a few hours ago. I've been driving in the dark to get here, blinded by tears. I've had to pull over a few times to cry." The woman turned to me, her eyes bloodshot. "I can't even process that my son is dying. He is such a bright young man. You're spiritual care. Tell me something, anything,"
"The first step," he said gently, "Is to just be with your grief, even though your mind is so overwhelmed with grief*,"
"Grief is drying up my senses**, chaplain, it's hard to even see or hear you, or my son. I can't think straight,"
"For now, just be with your grief,"
"If I give in to grief, though, it seems like an ocean with no shore and I'll drown. I can't drown right now. I have to be here for my son. But I'm drowning. Please help me." The woman collapsed into a chair, her head in her hands.
I had learned to stay afloat, to not drown in other people's grief. I had been a chaplain for over a decade - I had seen death come to babies, teenagers, middle-aged men and women, the elderly, and everyone in-between. Death could be heart-wrenching, confusing, terrifying, beautiful, profound - sometimes all those things at once. I had learned to be there for others with a gentle presence of compassion, and I had learned to let the emotions of death and suffering wash over me and away. I would not be able to function or live my life if I let each stroke of suffering and each death consume me.
Unbidden, though, came the image of my wife resting in our bed, the light from the streetlamps filtering in to touch her face. Within her body, she carried our son.
What if one day she received a call in the middle of the night like this? Decades of love poured into raising a good, strong man, our lives revolving around caring for him. The bonds of our hearts as strong as a thousand silk ropes.
Then with the shot of a gun, ripped away from us. Forever.
I began to sweat. My throat became dry. Silence smothered the room.
"Chaplain?" Mrs. Graham said. She observed me, her face streaked with tears.
The deaths I had witnessed or been a part of over the past ten years flooded my brain with images and sensations. So much pain. So much suffering. So much loss. I sucked in a breath.
Now who's drowning? I thought. Trying to help a drowning man could mean drowning myself.
"Mrs. Graham, may I be excused?"
She looked at me, wary and concerned. She nodded.
I stepped outside of the curtained partition and took deep breaths. I walked away, down the emergency room past broken bodies and took a seat on the edge of the room. The deaths rushed at me, wave after wave. Not only the deaths of those I had experienced as a chaplain, but the death of my grandmother, the death of my cousin at the ocean one day, the death of a friend in college in a car accident, the deaths I had heard about in the news - school shootings, terrorist bombings, wars, earthquakes in Nepal... the deaths of entire species from overhunting and blazing fires that were overtaking the world more and more and the deaths of this choking earth.
My breaths became ragged again. My face was hot, I could feel wetness on my cheeks. I sipped air.
In the midst of the flames of what I was seeing, the words I had been saying for so many years before I entered a room to help a patient or a patient's family surfaced: Krishna, help me.
I grabbed onto those words. Krishna, I pleaded. How can this be? You are all good. You are supposed to be.
A verse from the Bhagavad-gita spoke to me: Time I am, great destroyer of the worlds.***
Time. By dint of time, everyone was rushing into the mouth of death. Every single last one of us. No one would be spared - not me, my wife, or unborn child. We would all be destroyed. Not only living beings, but worlds.
My chest began to shudder each time I drew breath, my hands trembled. The truth of death may be real, but the pain, the overwhelming pain of it all twisted me up. That young man did not deserve to die. Not like this. I buried my head in my hands.
Krishna, help me. Soothe my heart.
After seeing this form of yours as Time, my mind is disturbed with fear, Arjuna had spoken in the Gita. Please bestow Your grace upon me and reveal Your form as the Personality of Godhead, Krishna. ****
Behind my closed eyes came the image of Krishna - this Krishna was a deity who resided in a temple in the Lower East Side. He was made of white marble, about three feet tall. He held a flute to his lips, and a smile played on his face. His eyes soft. Luminous. Others might say He was a statue. To me, God had come in a form that I could see and exchange a glance with.
The mahamantra, the prayer composed to Krishna and the divine feminine, Radha, flowed over my fever in cool waves, over and over again.
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare,
Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare.
I don't know how long I sat there, murmuring the mahamantra, my mind fixed on Krishna's beautiful form.
Still, the pull of my duty commanded me to stand up, do my job. Be there for others. Care for others.
With a deep, shuddering breath, I rose to my feet. I went to the restroom to wash my face, and then set my feet back to Bed 88.
"Hello," I said from the other side of the curtain.
"Yes?" Mrs. Graham responded.
"May I come in?"
"Yes," she said.
I parted the curtain. Mrs. Graham was gazing at the face of her son, a hungry expression turning her features raw. "He's going to leave soon," she said, "I can feel it." She turned to me. "What can we do?"
She did not mean what could the two of us do to save him. What could we do to... to care for him in the deepest sense.
"We can pray,"
The woman scoffed, but tears softened the harsh sound. "I don't believe in prayer," but a look of desperation fell over her when she turned to the face of her son. "But I have to try something. We. We have to try something to..."
"I can pray in silence, if you prefer," I said, coming closer and taking a seat next to her. My inner tempest had calmed to the stillness of a lake.
"No, no, Matthew should hear your prayer," she paused, then looked over at me. "You said you were a Hindu chaplain. What kind of prayers do Hindus do?"
"The foremost prayer we make is one of love, a kind of calling out to God, to Krishna, with all of our hearts,"
The woman's eyes softened for the first time, and silence fell around us, only punctuated by the erratic beeps of the heart monitor.
"Whatever it is you do in your tradition," she said, "I give you permission to do it with all of your heart,"
I hesitated. Whatever we do in our tradition? Would it be... improper at this time? Unsuitable?
But Mrs. Graham was looking at me expectantly. Now was not the time to debate propriety and details.
So I looked over at Matthew, whose brows were furrowed, and sang the mahamantra. I sang in a soft tone, a gentle, simple melody. I circled to Matthew's right side and held his hand while his mother held the other. I brought to mind the image of Krishna and sang and sang. Tears poured down Mrs. Graham's face in silence and stillness.
Matthew's heart rate became irregular and slowed. The furrow smoothed on his face, the tension I could feel in his fingers dissolved. I sang, my voice becoming hoarse, but I continued on.
Then, the young man took a breath and exhaled. He did not inhale again. The heart monitor flatlined. Mrs. Graham closed her eyes. "Take care of him, take care of him," she murmured.
I sang one last mahamantra and then fell quiet, holding Matthew's still-warm hand.
*1.46
**2.7
***11.32
****11.45
Note: This story was inspired by my husband's line of work as a hospital and hospice chaplain, as well as Arjuna's experience of viewing Krishna's universal form in chapter 11. In this section, Arjuna views the flaming rivers of death and is utterly terrified, and Krishna tells him that He is time, destroyer of the worlds. Arjuna asks to be pacified, and Krishna eventually reveals to His friend his beautiful, two-armed form as Krishna once again.
