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The hospital was unusually quiet that bleak January evening, quiet and
still  like the air before a storm. I stood in the nurses' station on  the
seventh floor and glanced at the clock. It was 9 p.m. I threw a stethoscope
around my neck and headed for room 712, last room on the hall. Room 712 had
a new patient. Mr.Williams.  A  man all alone. A man strangely silent about
his family.

As I entered the room, Mr. Williams looked up eagerly, but  drooped his
eyes when he saw it was only me, his nurse. I pressed the stethoscope over
his chest and listened. Strong, slow, even beating. Just what I wanted to
hear. There seemed little indication he had suffered a slight heart  attack
a few hours earlier. He looked up from his starched white bed. 

"Nurse, would you - ". He hesitated, tears filling his eyes.

Once before he had started to ask me a question, but changed his mind. I
touched his hand, waiting. He brushed away a tear. 

"Would you call my daughter ? Tell her I've had a heart attack. A slight one. 
You see, I live alone and she is the only family I have."  His respiration 
suddenly speeded up. I turned his nasal oxygen up  to eight  liters a minute. 

"Of course I'll call her," I said, studying his face. He gripped the sheets 
and pulled himself forward, his face tense  with urgency. 

"Will you call her right away - as soon as you can?"  He was breathing fast 
- too fast. 

"I'll call her the very first thing," I said, patting his shoulder. 

I flipped off the light. He closed  his eyes, such young blue eyes in his 
50 year old face. Room 712 was dark except for a faint night light under the 
sink. Oxygen gurgled in the green tubes  above his bed. Reluctant to leave, I 
moved through the shadowy silence to the window. The panes were cold. Below a 
foggy mist curled through the hospital parking lot.

"Nurse," he called, "could you get me a pencil and paper?" 

I dug a scrap of yellow paper and a pen from my pocket and set it on the 
bedside table. I walked back to the nurses' station and sat in a squeaky 
swivel  chair by the phone.Mr. Williams's daughter was listed on his chart as 
the next of kin. I got her number from information and dialed. Her soft voice 
answered.

"Janie, this is Sue Kidd, registered  nurse at the hospital. I'm calling
about your father. He was admitted tonight with a  slight heart attack and ..."

"No!" she screamed into the phone, startling me. "He's not dying is he ?"

"His condition is stable at the moment," I said, trying hard to sound 
convincing. 

Silence. I bit my lip. 

"You must not let him die !"  she said. Her voice was so utterly compelling 
that my hand trembled on the phone. 

"He is getting the very best care."

"But you don't understand," she pleaded. "My daddy and I haven't spoken. On my 
21st birthday, we had a fight over my boyfriend. I ran out of  the house. I-I
haven't been back. All these months I've wanted to go to him for forgiveness. 
The last thing I said to him was, 'I hate you'".  

Her voice cracked and I heard her heave great agonizing sobs. I sat, listening,
tears burning my eyes. A father and a daughter, so lost to each other.
Then I was thinking of my own father, many miles away. It has been so long
since I had said, "I love you."  

As Janie struggled to control her tears, I breathed a prayer.  "Please God, let 
this daughter find forgiveness." "I'm coming. Now! I'll be  there in 30
minutes," she said. Click. She had hung up. 

I tried to busy myself with a stack of charts on the desk. I couldn't 
concentrate. Room 712; I knew I had to get back  to 712. I hurried down the 
hall nearly in a run. I opened the door. Mr.Williams lay unmoving. I reached 
for his pulse. There was none. "Code 99, Room 712. Code 99. Stat." The alert 
was shooting through the hospital within seconds after I called the 
switchboard through the intercom by the bed. Mr.Williams had a cardiac arrest. 
With lightning speed I leveled the bed and bent over his mouth, breathing air
into his lungs (twice). I positioned my hands over his chest and compressed. 
One, two, three. I tried to count. At fifteen I moved back to his mouth and 
breathed as deeply as I  could. Where was help ? Again I compressed and 
breathed, Compressed and . He could not die! "O God," I prayed. "His daughter 
is coming! Don't let it end this way." The door burst open. Doctors and nurses 
poured into the room  pushing emergency equipment.  A doctor took over the 
manual compression of the heart. A tube was inserted through his mouth as an 
airway. Nurses plunged syringes of medicine into the intravenous tubing. I 
connected the heart monitor. Nothing. Not a beat. My own heart pounded. 
"God, don't let it end like this. Not in bitterness and hatred. His daughter 
is coming. Let her find peace."

"Stand back", cried a doctor. I handed him the paddles for the electrical
shock to the heart. He placed them on Mr. Williams's chest. Over and over 
we tried. But nothing. No response. Mr. Williams was dead. A nurse unplugged 
the oxygen. The gurgling stopped. One by one they left, grim and silent. How
could this happen? How? I stood by his bed, stunned. A cold  wind rattled
the window, pelting the panes with snow. Outside -everywhere - seemed a bed
of blackness, cold and dark. How could I face his daughter?  

When I left the room, I saw her against a wall by a water  fountain.  A doctor 
who had been inside 712 only moments before stood at her side,  talking to her,
gripping her elbow. Then he moved on, leaving her slumped against the  wall. 
Such pathetic hurt reflected from her face. Such wounded  eyes. She knew. The 
doctor had told her that her father was gone. I took her hand and led her into 
the nurses' lounge. We sat on little green stools, neither saying a word. She
stared straight ahead at a pharmaceutical calendar, glass-faced, almost
breakable-looking.  

"Janie, I'm so, so sorry," I said. It was pitifully inadequate.

"I never hated him, you know. I loved him," she said. 

God, please help her, I thought. Suddenly she whirled toward me. "I want to 
see him." 

My first thought was, Why put yourself through more pain? Seeing
him will only make it worse. But I got up and wrapped my arm around her.
We walked slowly down the corridor to 712. Outside the door I squeezed her
hand, wishing she would change her mind about going inside. She pushed
open the door. We moved to the bed,huddled together, taking small steps in
unison.  Janie leaned over the bed and buried her face in the sheets. I
tried not to look at her at this sad, sad good-bye. I backed against the
bedside table. My hand fell upon a scrap of yellow paper. I picked it up.
It read:  "My dearest Janie, I forgive you. I pray you will also forgive
me. I know that you love me. I love you too,  Daddy"

The note was shaking in my hands as I thrust it toward Janie. She read it
once. Then twice. Her tormented face grew radiant. Peace began to glisten in 
her eyes. She hugged the scrap of paper to her breast. "Thank You, God," I
whispered, looking up at the window. A few crystal stars blinked through
the blackness. A snowflake hit the window and  melted away, gone forever.
Life seemed as fragile as a snowflake on the window. But thank You, God, that 
relationships, sometimes fragile as snowflakes, can  be mended together again 
- but there is not a moment to spare.

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