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  Miraculously, when Joan and I arrived at the changing room at eight that morning, a student from the host school, Onalaska High, wheeled in another twenty-five sequined costumes they had also found in their storage cabinets. Now we had fifty costumes for the forty girls, but could they all be fitted in three hours?

  In the meantime other parents made regular runs to the local Walmart for makeup, undergarments, duct tape, Scotch tape, and feel-good snacks. The homeroom was alive with mothers and girls trying on ill-fitting costumes. My wife was supervising the fittings with generous amounts of silver duct tape and safety pins. She was cutting and sewing and taking in and out seams. When I saw her come up for air, she was drenched in sweat.

  Girls from all twelve schools at the competition and their directors and parents stopped by regularly to see how they could help. “This is what heaven must look like!” one of the mothers declared as she witnessed the kindness exhibited that morning.

  We still had to deal with the lack of shoes, and we could not perform on the risers without them. But before we had time to panic, our host school located a closet with dozens of tan high-heeled shoes for our girls. In addition, performers from competing schools and coaches who heard about the “burning-bus school” showed up and literally took off their own shoes for us to use. It was such an act of generosity and kindness that it brought my wife to tears.

  During their brief warmup in the fitting room at ten thirty, several girls lost their tops, so my wife had to attach all the straps with more duct tape and pray they would hold during the actual performance.

  At eleven, twelve hours after the devastating fire, the girls filed onto the stage, half in sequined purple costumes and half in beautifully contrasting silver, and all with shoes. The master of ceremonies announced that just hours before, this group of girls was in a burning bus and that their costumes were all destroyed, but with determination and a heroic effort, they overcame all obstacles and were ready to perform. A spontaneous cheer came up from the audience.

  Then a hush fell over the stadium as the girls began to sing Jimmy Eat World’s stirring anthem from “The Middle”: “Little girl, you’re in the middle of the ride, everything, everything will be just fine, everything, everything will be all right.”

  Their song about overcoming adversity and persevering had been selected months before, and now they knew why. It fit perfectly with the series of coincidences that punctuated that fateful trip. The girls performed with such beauty and passion that there were few dry eyes in the audience.

  At the end of the day came the award ceremony. There were outstanding schools from all over the Midwest. Second place went to one of those schools and then first place. Even if our girls did not win, they were reassured that they had done their best under unbelievable circumstances. But that wasn’t the end.

  “Now for the grand champions,” announced the master of ceremonies as the stagehands lifted a trophy nearly as tall as many of the girls.

  “The winner—Wheaton-Warrenville South Esprit, having overcome a bus fire to do the impossible! Congratulations!”

  A standing ovation followed, with both cheers and tears for the group of girls, their parents, and the director who refused to give up, and for the series of miraculous events that brought us to that unforgettable moment.

  Back in the homeroom, no words were needed. I just hugged Luci.

  PART TWO

  DEATH AND THE AFTERLIFE

  CHAPTER 5

  GRANDMA O’HANLON

  JOHN A. HEITZLER, MD

  MY WIFE, JOAN, WAS BIRTHING our fifth child with her attending obstetrician, two nurses, and me in the delivery room, when a quiet, unassuming midwife, Johannah O’Hanlon, stepped in and, without saying a word, saved Joan’s life.

  In order to understand the significance of this miracle, you need to know a little more about the background of this exceptional midwife. Johannah O’Hanlon was Joan’s grandmother. As a young lady, she and her two brothers were sent to the safety of the United States from Ireland by their father, Michael. Michael regularly skirmished with English soldiers, rode on horseback at midnight on illegal missions, and hid Catholic priests in secret rooms in his home. It was a time of great danger, and Michael feared for the lives of his family, particularly his special daughter, Johannah, who demonstrated remarkable charity to all the rebels who crossed their threshold in the dark of the night.

  After immigrating to the United States, she lived with her uncles on a farm in Sterling, Illinois, until her new home could be constructed by her two brothers and her betrothed. When the home was completed, she married and moved into the bustling Irish community in Chicago. She gave birth to her first child, a son, who lived only six months and died of complications of pneumonia. She took in laundry for a time until after the birth of her second child, a daughter, Marie. When Marie was two, Grandma O’Hanlon became a midwife and stayed with her families for up to six weeks after a birth. She took Marie with her and tutored her when they were away from home. Marie became a beautiful young lady and found the love of her life, married, and moved into their own home in the Chicago suburbs.

  Grandma O’Hanlon continued her service to others as a midwife, but, when her husband died in his sixties, the family encouraged her to move in with Marie, who now had a child of her own, Joan (my future wife). There, the love that Grandma O’Hanlon and Joan shared ultimately bonded them in a way that would overcome the boundaries of time and space. Joan often said that when she got into trouble with her mother, if she could make it to Grandma O’Hanlon’s lap, she’d be safe.

  Grandma O’Hanlon continued to serve as a midwife, but, at the time, there was considerable prejudice against the Irish population in Chicago, so she was primarily involved with delivering babies in the Irish community on Chicago’s south side. If her service was needed and the family could not pay, she gladly worked for free. I remember one grateful family with very little money, but Grandma O’Hanlon was named in their will. The lot in Chicago near the Dan Ryan Expressway that she inherited after the couple died turned out to be very valuable.

  Grandma rode the train into the city and got off near Madison Avenue. In those days, there were many homeless men on the streets, and she always had something for them. Her friends thought she was foolish to give money to the homeless because they would often use it to buy alcohol, but Grandma simply said that she did what God would want her to do, and what the men did with the money was up to them. She became a spiritual model for the entire family.

  Joan’s fifth pregnancy proceeded uneventfully, and, when the ultrasound revealed that we were expecting another boy, we decided to name him Michael, after Grandma O’Hanlon’s father. She would like that.

  Labor contractions started on March 14, and, on the fifteenth, the Ides of March, we went to the hospital. I called my partner, Dr. Michael Hussey, to do the delivery. With contractions coming closer and closer, Joan was moved to the delivery room where there was a flurry of activity to make sure their busiest obstetrician (me) would not be disappointed with his own team. I tried to maintain my role as husband and father and not participate as an obstetrician. Everything went well, and Joan delivered a healthy baby without anesthesia or pain medication. After the delivery, the routine in those days was to manually explore the uterus to make sure no part of the placenta was remaining. During that procedure, Joan began to experience considerable pain.

  To lessen her pain during the procedure, Dr. Hussey suggested she be given the standard drug at the time, Trilene, which is administered by mask to induce a deep sleep. Joan hesitated to accept it because she did not want to become unconscious, but she finally agreed. As the nurse was about to put the mask over her face, Joan looked up and saw Grandma O’Hanlon, who had just come into the room and stood at the foot of her bed. She was dressed in her typical blue dress with tiny white polka dots and a gray knit sweater vest. Her hair was white and put up in a bun on the top of her head. She didn’t say a word but stood there, shaking her head, with
her arm on her hip and a look of displeasure on her face. Joan realized immediately that her beloved grandmother did not want her to accept the anesthetic, so she pushed the mask away.

  No one remembered that Joan had eaten a large meal before she went into labor, and two minutes after refusing the anesthesia, which would have put her into a deep sleep, she suddenly vomited the large meal. Had the mask been on her face, she could easily have choked and aspirated into her lungs, which could have killed her.

  Grandma O’Hanlon, without saying a word, slipped out of the delivery room as quickly as she arrived, her mission complete, her presence unnoticed by anyone else in the room. Joan made it to the safety of her lap one more time, their unconditional love transcending all earthly bounds—because Grandma O’Hanlon had died twenty-two years before.

  CHAPTER 6

  MARY’S CHRISTMAS CAROL

  DAVID MOCHEL, MD

  SHE WAS DEAD; NO QUESTION. Eyes closed, no pulse, no heartbeat, no respirations, no movement, and unresponsive. I don’t know how it happened. It was a routine ankle surgery. Mary was given general anesthesia and went to sleep, but when her antibiotic was given intravenously, she arrested. Her monitor showed a flat line, and I immediately called a “Code Blue.”

  The operating room was suddenly filled with people. Our scrub nurse initially started to do CPR, but Mary was over three hundred pounds, and my nurse was not tall enough to adequately do compressions. One of the OR techs with strikingly red hair rushed in from the room next door and took over. Young and relatively inexperienced, the red-headed tech was not doing the compressions well enough to generate a pulse, so I asked him to step aside. He did not move. I asked him again, but again, no movement.

  I still couldn’t feel a pulse. In the heat of the moment, politeness is sometimes compromised. I gently but firmly elbowed him out of the way. The tech stumbled away, and I took over. I had to do the compressions forcefully in order to achieve a pulse, and, in so doing, I felt her sternum and possibly one rib crack. After several minutes and some cardiac meds given intravenously, Mary regained a heartbeat and started to breathe on her own. She did not wake up until after she was transferred to the intensive care unit. Cardiologists took over and multiple tests were done, including a coronary angiogram, but nothing revealed the cause of her arrest. We assumed it was a reaction to the antibiotic.

  Mary was a little dazed for several days, but she eventually recovered, and, after one week, she was ready to be discharged. I stopped in on her last day to give some final instructions about the care of her ankle.

  Mary had always been a very negative person, and I expected to be blamed for causing her arrest, but her mood surprised me. She was sweet, pleasant, and very respectful.

  “Thank you for saving my life,” she said in almost a whisper.

  Now I had to sit down. This was not the person I operated on. I thanked her for her kindness but told her it really was a team effort.

  “No,” she said. “I know it was you! I watched you from above the operating room. When my heart stopped, I could feel myself floating above my body, and I watched everything. I saw the young orderly with the bright red hair come in from the room next door and do CPR, and then I saw you elbow him out of the way since he would not move when you asked him. You saw him stumble away, didn’t you?”

  Her statement gave me goose bumps. There was no way she would have known this unless she was right there observing everything in the room.

  “Then I saw you have my attending internist paged, and you kept looking at the door over and over waiting for him to appear, but he did not. My grandmother, who passed away years before, came to me and told me that if I was kind and loving, there would be a special place in heaven for me, but this was not my time. I came back when you started to do my CPR.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Her observations of the minutest details of her arrest were things that no one would have known. My mind raced to find a logical scientific explanation for what she was telling me, but I could not. She had not been conscious, her eyes were closed, and she had no logical way of knowing what took place in the OR that day.

  I saw Mary back in the office several times after that hospitalization, and each time, she was the most loving and considerate person I could imagine. She was like Ebenezer Scrooge in The Christmas Carol. Her near-death experience and her conversation with her deceased grandmother gave her a new outlook on life. She became a joy to her widowed father and to everyone she met. Mary lived only a few more years because of her multiple medical problems, but I know that during that time, she made her grandmother proud and is now in the special place she promised.

  CHAPTER 7

  A CALL FROM MOM

  PATRICK C. FENNER, MD

  “PATRICK, I DON’T THINK I was a very good mother for you. I think I failed you.”

  I was a second-year resident in internal medicine at Butterworth Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan, when my mother called me with that opening pronouncement. Anyone who knew my mother would know how extraordinarily unusual this was. During my residency, I spoke with her at least every one or two weeks, but she never called me. We did not have cell phones at the time, and she knew that she would never reach me in my apartment because I was always so busy, and when I was not in the hospital, I was probably sleeping.

  The most unusual thing about that call, however, was her demeanor. My mother never complained about anything. After I grew up and left home, I realized how hard her life had been, but she was never anything but positive and optimistic. Her statement was so shocking to me that I knew that our roles had now reversed, and it was now my turn to comfort her. I’m not sure I was ready for that responsibility!

  Mom had just come through a major gallbladder surgery, which entailed a very large incision through her abdominal muscles, making the recovery long and painful. She was in the hospital five days and called me on Saturday afternoon, the day after she was released. I felt guilty when she called because I had intended to send her flowers, but had somehow never gotten around to it. I also could have taken the time off to visit her in Florida, where she was living, but this was a particularly busy rotation, and it would have required a heroic effort. I hoped she would understand.

  The night before she called, I had gotten only three hours of sleep, but I had the entire Saturday off. It was a beautiful spring day, but I was so tired that I could only muster enough energy to watch college sports on TV. At the time, I thought it was a coincidence that she would call on the only day in two months that I was home and awake, and the only day that I could speak with her for longer than fifteen minutes.

  “What’s wrong, Mom?” I asked.

  “Patrick,” she said, “I have been having a bad day. I have a horrible feeling that I have been a bad mother and haven’t given you what you needed as a son.”

  “Mom, you were the best mom I could have ever had,” I said. I played both football and basketball in high school and college, and my mother came to every game I was in. Every one. I’ll never forget my first pass play in a college game. I was a receiver, and the coach called a long pass to me. After the snap, I ran on pure adrenalin. A beautiful spiral pass was launched into the air, and I stretched out my arms, grabbing the ball with my fingertips. Then I ran for a total of sixty-three yards and a touchdown. Our fans were on their feet cheering wildly, but I didn’t hear them at all because I was looking over to where my mother was in the stands. I always knew where she was. We instantly made eye contact, and I’ll remember the unspoken communication for the rest of my life. I’m really proud of you, Son. That expression of joy and true love made every struggle worthwhile.

  “Do you remember that game?” I asked her, referring to that memorable day.

  She knew instantly what I was talking about. “I will never forget it,” she said. “I was so proud of you that day. I knew how hard you were working to excel in sports and still maintain your academics. The glow on your face after your pass made my humble efforts to support you s
uddenly so meaningful.”

  I could tell that she had been crying when she first called, but the thought of that first college pass must have brought a warm remembrance that brightened her mood.

  I was the youngest of three children. I had an older brother who lived just five minutes away from Mom in Florida. My older sister was also out of the home and living in New York. But I think I was her greatest concern. She never told me that and would never admit it, but since I was the baby in the family, and had suffered a serious eye injury when I was three, I had the opportunity to spend more quality time with her than my brother and sister did, and she and I treasured our time together. I was able to share my childhood problems with her, and she always seemed to make me feel better. But she never shared her true feelings with me. Things were always just fine. But now I was seeing a different side. She really was human, with human emotions of pain and uncertainty and regret. This was always hidden while I was growing up.

  Now she needed me. I was the one listening to her. I never told her how much I loved her and really appreciated all that she had done for me as a child. She was always encouraging when she needed to keep me on the right path. Because of her, I did well in school and was able to get into a good college and. ultimately, into medical school. She taught me determination and perseverance. She taught me about love and family. She taught me that there was something higher than us. She taught me to use my talents well. She was my example and my hero, and I knew this was the right time to tell her. As I did, the emotions built up in my chest, and a tear ran down my cheek.

  “You were the greatest mom anyone could ever have,” I blurted again.

  There was a long silence on the phone. I think that statement made her cry again, to hear it from me. We had never talked liked this before. I could tell as we spoke that she was at peace with herself and with me.