The woman had no family listed on her chart, no emergency contact, and had been lying there for hours amidst the madness. I grabbed the chart, took a deep breath to steady my nerves, and prepared myself to walk into another crisis, expecting to find a frightened, lonely woman. But the second I walked into Room 4, the atmosphere changed so drastically it was disorienting. The deafening noise from the hallway—the shouting, the beeping, the clatter of metal trays—didn't just fade; it seemed to vanish completely, as if I had walked into a soundproof vault. The air in the room didn't feel sterile and cold like the rest of the hospital; it felt thick, warm, and incredibly peaceful, almost like walking into a sanctuary. I paused, blinking, confused. Such a strange change in sensory input. I looked at the monitors, expecting to see the erratic heart rhythms that had brought Mrs. Higgins in, but the lines were smooth and steady, indicating a perfect resting heart rate. Mrs. Higgins wasn't thrashing in pain or crying out in fear; she was lying perfectly still with a serene smile on her face, looking toward the empty chair beside her bed. When she noticed me, she didn't complain about the wait or the noise outside. She simply gestured with a trembling hand toward the empty plastic chair and whispered, "You can't see him, honey, but he’s been sitting here holding my hand all night, telling me I’m going to be just fine."
I looked at the chair. It looked empty—just a beige, scuffed hospital chair. But the hair on my arms stood up, not from fear, but from an overwhelming sense of reverence. I knew, with a certainty that defied my medical training, that the chair was occupied. Later, the doctors were baffled by the sudden, unexplained improvement in the Mrs. Higgins’ condition, scribbling "spontaneous recovery" on the chart. But I knew better. I realized that in the places where people feel most alone, God often sends company that doesn't show up on a visitor log.
