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Faith to Heal
Faith to Heal
Category:
Literary Fiction
Publisher: Kindle CreateSpace
ISBN-10: 9781481851725
Type: Fiction
Pages: 227
Copyright: December 25,2012
Price: $0.99 (eBook)
A remarkable story of God's grace. The story of a modern medical miracle.
Faith to Heal is the story of Susan Ramirez's triumph against impossible odds. Set in the mystical cultural melting pot of New Orleans, this heart wrenching story follows the remarkable recovery of a young woman diagnosed with terminal cancer. The single element responsible for her salvation is faith......and God's grace.
Excerpt
Chapter 1
Some say that miracles never really happen. They say that miraculous events simply represent normal occurrences that are blown way out of proportion. Figments of our imagination. Distorted thoughts and beliefs based on long held hopes and dreams. These miracles seem to be simply warped and fragmented views of a wishful reality. The so-called miracles are magnifications of sentinel occurrences that give life to mystical wishes of those who choose to believe…or imagine that there is a huge pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Or that horses fly and that the good guys always win.
Maybe these miracles aren’t imagined but are actually real. Perhaps they are true events that stretch our myopic view of truth and reality. The miraculous events may have actually occurred, but they are just rarely witnessed.
I believe that miracles are as real as the image that stares back at us as we look in the mirror. I am convinced that we witness miracles every day---upon awakening, breathing, listening to the sounds of birds chirping or children laughing. These seemingly small events are often overlooked. They are miracles. These daily events, our miracles, are as ubiquitous as the air we breathe or water we drink. Yet these miracles are often taken for granted. They are seen simply as expected occurrences not quite deserving of our full attention. We incorrectly assume that there is an endless flow of air or limitless supply of fresh water. We think that tomorrow is promised and that at the beginning of a new day, we will awaken and begin our usual life's routines. Routines infiltrated by the glorious trouble-free laughter of a child or the musical echo of humming birds at daybreak.
How mistaken we are. Tomorrow is never guaranteed.
Before I met Susan, I too was guilty of ignoring the blessed miracles of life. To breathe, see, smell, and feel. After knowing Susan’s story, I will never again overlook these small wonders. Miracles, in fact, do happen. They aren’t the result of our distorted dreams or blurred reality. They do occur. And I, Dr. Robert Black, had the rare chance of witnessing a medical miracle.
I sometimes think that maybe it was all just my imagination...that the events didn't actually occur. That they were just imagined. I often reflect on the strength and unbreakable faith of Susan Ramirez. The unfaltering faith that led to her miracle. That summoned God’s grace. Yes, Susan opened my eyes to the truth. She helped me see the Light. The patient teaching the doctor. Even as a physician, I was blind to the true power of faith. Susan helped me realize that there’s more to medicine than the information contained in textbooks. Statistics, prognosis and expected survival figures are merely man’s attempt to predict death. Just estimates. That’s all…just man’s best guess. The reality is that there is always God's plan---a plan that is often well beyond human comprehension. And that is the essence of this story…God’s plan.
So this story is about life. It’s also about death----then life again. Perhaps only for a short while you will dance with the faith-driven spirit of Susan Ramirez, a young woman who claimed her life and clung unswervingly to her belief and faith in God. This is a story of a modern medical miracle. A story of faith. This is Susan Ramirez’s story. I pray that it can be told as powerfully as she lived it.
May God guide my pen.
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Susan screamed at the top of her voice as she rushed into the narrow hall of their quaint New Orleans home. “Mama! Papa!” she hollered. “Mama! Papa! Ven rapido!”
Although her parents did not immediately respond, the shrill sound of Susan’s joyful scream seemed to please the house itself, waking the walls from their apathetic slumber. In fact, it was the kind of reverberation that makes a house seem to stand taller, proud to hold the intimate sounds of the people who call it home.
Though delight like this always exceeds language, Susan managed to call again, “Mama! Papa!” The melodic tenor of her voice echoed off of the solid oak doorframe and ornamental pictures that were neatly draped in the long entrance corridor, causing the frozen men and women in the colorful photographs that commemorated Susan’s heritage to smile.
For a brief moment, Susan caught a quick glimpse of herself in the gold-trimmed large oval mirror that watched over the comings-and-goings of the entrance to the home. Thick eyebrows framed her dark brown eyes, eyes that her grandmother said could intimidate the strongest enemy or soften even the harshest spirit. Years of sports in high school and college as an all-star distance runner toned her muscular frame, and she knew she appeared much younger than the more than three decades she lived in this little house in the heart of New Orleans. But Susan could also plainly see a melancholy in her face that revealed her recent disappointments.
Even with a degree from one of America’s top law schools, she found herself among the ranks of the country’s unemployed, and she was finding it very difficult to maintain a positive outlook. After too many rejection letters from local law firms, she searched the Times Picayune classified ads, and applied for secretary jobs, retail jobs, waitress jobs, care-for-the-elderly-at-home jobs, but consistently with no success. With no way of paying her mounting debts, or of helping her parents with the already-late monthly bills, it seemed her decrease in pride was directly proportional to her increase in frustration. The dream of the largely successful career she had imagined while in law school was being replaced by desperation.
And it wasn’t just her dream, but also a vision that belonged to her parents, and on which she knew they were counting. Counting on their daughter to liberate them, finally, from a long history of struggle and suffering. While strength and love created the Ramirez family’s foundation, they had also together grown accustomed to stress and hardship. Life for the Ramirez family was filled with the struggling that commonly belongs to the working-class poor. A pressure that is so tacit, muted and relentless that it becomes simply the way things are during the struggle to survive. And now with fading hope of Susan becoming the lawyer they had all hoped for, the family’s poverty was weighing on them heavier than ever.
Suddenly catching a glimpse in the mirror of the letter she clasped in her hands, Susan’s moment of self-reflection vanished as quickly as it had come.
“Mama! Papa! Tengo una gran noticia! I have great news!” she shouted. “Come quickly!”
Darting through the hall, her long dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail gleefully bobbed like a young girl’s on the playground. Her heart pumped with excitement.
As she pivoted past furniture with the suppleness of a gymnast or the agility of an Olympic sprinter, Susan ran from room to room hoping to find her parents. Swinging open the kitchen door, she was certain she would find her mother on the other side. Instead, she was greeted by the strong aroma of day-old roasted chicken the family had shared the night before. The smell of the familiar spices instantly filled Susan with a happy feeling, as if her mother were actually there to meet her, with the colorful floral-patterned apron wrapped around her large waist and hips, the frayed corners being the only indication that the apron had passed down from generation to generation.
Lost in a sudden daydream, Susan could hear her mother’s contagious laughter as she offered a grateful visitor a plate of chicken with chorizo and potato or a bowl of hot gazpacho soup. Sophia Ramirez’s cooking was the envy of everyone in the neighborhood and her kitchen was always the major gathering place for both family and friends. In addition to her mouthwatering dishes, Sophia’s radiant smile transformed the mood of others around her. Sophia was a beacon of light for everyone that she came in contact with, particularly her daughters. Her daughters, Susan and Maria, adored her.
Through the seemingly simple art of cooking, hours spent attentively watching their mother mix, and chop, and knead, and fry, Sophia shared stories of her life, and of the life of her ancestors, in which the young girls could glean many of life’s important lessons. As if it had just occurred, Susan imagined her little sister Maria’s lips and cheeks covered with the thick yellow cake batter as she licked the sweet flowery treat from the mixing spoon.
The sound of a barking dog near their backyard disrupted the silence within the house and brought Susan back to the vacant kitchen. On the verge of exploding with excitement from the good news, she ran from the kitchen and called out at the top of her voice one more time, “Mama! Papa! Donde estan?!”
Susan searched through the downstairs rooms of their quaint two-story New Orleans home. The design and layout of their tiny house was typical of the shotgun houses scattered throughout most of the working-class neighborhoods of New Orleans. Unlike most other major cities where there were subdivisions strategically designed to separate the “haves” from the “have-nots”, New Orleans was a place where these much smaller shotgun houses were splattered between enormous multimillion dollar Victorian mansions. The Ramirez’s home, shadowed by mammoth houses with circular driveways and four car garages, was not only distinguished by its size, but also its bright yellow brick walls. In spite of their neighbors’ well-manicured lawns and pristine flowerbeds, the Ramirez house glowed like the bright noon sun.
Ascending the stairs, she could see that the door to her parent’s bedroom was slightly ajar. At last, she could share the good news! Upon reading the letter, she imagined her mother excitingly raising her thick arms and exclaiming, “Oh Mio Dio! Oh Mio Dio!” and her father pulling her closely to him for one of his “reserved for special occasions” hugs, and all of them laughing and laughing, delighting in the prospect of being free from their wretched poverty at last. This was, after all, the best thing that had happened to anyone in the Ramirez family in decades. Susan couldn’t help but think that God’s divine light had finally touched her family and granted them relief.
Upon entering her parent’s bedroom, again she was greeted only by silence. In the brief moment she stood there surveying the room, her eyes went immediately to the brightly colored quilt perfectly centered on her parent’s bed. Elegantly knitted by her great-great grandmother, the handmade family treasure that told the story of her family and her people through each and every stitch was the spiritual centerpiece of not only her parent’s room, but also their lives. The vibrant quilt reminded Susan and her family of their heritage and helped to motivate them to disregard societal obstacles and prejudices encountered by many Latinos in America. The quilt encouraged them to reach higher and work harder to achieve “the American dream” – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Although life and liberty had not come easily for her parents and grandparents, they had at least been accomplished. Now it was time to achieve the toughest part of these inalienable rights; it was exactly what Susan ached for – happiness.
Susan was very familiar with her mother’s nightly ritual, and imagined her graceful gestures – first removing the quilt from the bed, then gently placing it on a nearby protective stand where it would rest peacefully alongside her resting parents until the next morning when Sophia would rise and return the blanket to its rightful place – a kind of ceremonial gesture to honor the sacrifice of past ancestors. Clearly not meant for external warmth, Susan often thought that this particular quilt helped to settle the chill lying deep within her parents’ souls.
Next to the bed were two worn wooden chairs in which her parents would often sit and talk late into the evening, recounting the events of their day. Sophia and Eduardo Ramirez shared not only a loving marriage, but also a remarkable friendship. On some nights, they would read side by side, and then discuss the interesting characters they found there in the pages of the novels, or maybe share a passage from the bible they found especially relevant or moving.
Finally resigned to the unrelenting truth that there was no one home, Susan collapsed in her father’s old rocking chair. She wiped the sweat from her caramel colored forehead, drying her hand on her well-worn blue jean shorts. Despite her tiredness and messy hair, she was still radiant. Susan’s beauty, like most exceptional beauty on young women, was often misinterpreted as the outer shell of an empty house. Yet those who knew Susan well, with her quick wit and generous nature, understood there is nothing empty or superficial about Susan Ramirez.
Catching her breath, she slowly opened the letter in her hands that had just been delivered. Reading its contents for a second time, her smile broadened. “We are pleased to inform you that the partners of the law firm of Brown and Smith unanimously voted in favor of your application to join our firm.”
Susan could hear the front door creak open. Her parents’ voices echoed through the hot and humid house, wafting up the stairway like the faint sound of a sweet song playing over the radio in another room. For one moment’s pause, she relaxed and beamed, allowing herself to bask in the happiness of the news she was soon to share.
Susan leapt from her chair. At the top of the stairs, with her first step down, she felt an unbearable sharp pain in her left hip that made her whole body freeze. She moved again, and this time when she stepped down on her left leg, not only did the agonizing pain return, her lower limb simply collapsed. With adrenaline racing through her veins, Susan managed to rise and take one more step. With the first contact of the heel of her sneaker, the pain intensified yet again and she heard a loud snap. Along with the snap came even more agonizing pain, excruciating pain that caused her to lose her balance at the top of the stairs. Trying to grab the railing, there was no way to brace herself to keep from falling. The momentum forward was too great. She was going down. Just as she started to tumble down the staircase, Susan managed to utter one phrase, “I have great news!”
Eduardo and Sophia Ramirez stood frozen at the foot of the stairs as they watched Susan falling towards them, bouncing and tumbling like a discarded rag doll forcefully tossed by an angry child. Her head struck the wooden stairs, producing loud thumping sounds as if a heavy bowling ball had been clumsily dropped on a lane.
The pounding of her skull against each step as her head bounced from one to the next sent an agonizing jolt of pain through her whole body. At the bottom of the staircase, Susan’s head hit the hardwood floor with a deafening thud. The light that she saw from the open door, with the bright Louisiana sun beaming behind her parents, became suddenly dark. And as the light faded entirely, Susan was sure that this was the end. That she was dead.
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