Faith

By Paul Boos

Coming onto the ward that Saturday morning, Lt. Verbals told me she had a really sick three-year-old in a crib in the corner of the ward. The doctor had been in about thirty minutes before and had written orders for the day. He did not have much hope for her recovery and neither did Lt. Verbals.

Little Alice was on oxygen and in a croup tent in her crib. In those days there were only a few antibiotics and she was on them. In order to bring her 104-degree temperature down, we gave her periodic alcohol baths.

Being a nineteen-year-old Navy hospital corpsman, I was unprepared for being around such a sick child. I felt helpless, and my faith was challenged.

While I was trying to get liquids down her, I would rock her in a big old rocking chair and sing the only songs I could remember from Sunday school. I sang Climb, Climb up Sunshine Mountain and Jesus Loves Me. I worked extra hours that night. Leaving the ward I was sad thinking about her critical condition. Mrs. Snodgrass, a civil service R.N. that worked the midnight to 8:00 A.M. shift said, “You’ve got to have faith son.”

I thought, Yah but I didn’t think she would be with us in the morning. Sunday morning, with a heavy heart I went to the ward thinking the worst. To my surprise, there was little Alice standing in her crib, singing Jesus Loves Me This I Know. As Mrs. Snodgrass was getting her purse and leaving to go home she said, “See son, I told you so.”