Listening to April's coworkers share about her professional life got me to thinking, "Wait a minute, I've seen April 'at work,' but where was I?" As many lifelong extended families living in the PNW, most of us get that dreaded call to get to the Harborview ER ASAP. Pat and April called Mike and I late one night to get there as we were closest family in proximity.
God gives us all gifts and talents, we simply need to pull that gift off the shelf, dust it off and unwrap it and use it. I've witnessed Mike frustrated at a homeless man in Seattle rummaging through a restaurant garbage can, only to see Mike step past a crowd of patrons to escort the man through the line to get a proper meal. He has been gifted with an empathetic heart and puts things into action. Though not an outright germaphobe, Mike is keenly aware of areas in a hospital one should and should not expose oneself to things. I, on the other hand, can stay calm in most situations after having worked downtown for decades. I know the in's and out's of where to park, which areas are "safe" and during which hours.
We arrived at Harborview, parked where I knew was safe, navigated the cavernous hallways to a "staff restroom" I knew we could access so Mike wouldn't have to use the one in the ER waiting area. I checked us in with the assigned social worker, met with the family member to reassure them. I talked on the phone navigating Pat and April to a good parking space and they eventually met up with us in the ER where we proceeded to wait.
Pat can ease the most tense situations with his uncanny ability to find subtle and not-so-subtle humor in just about everything. His brother's unease about the various dried up and sometimes fresh "substances" on different surfaces in the waiting room was not going to escape Pat's notice. He began to tease Mike about it all to get us to laughing and lighten things up. He teased Mike about the surface of the chair he was sitting in as well as "gee, maybe Mike was going to have to actually toss the shoes he was wearing when we left." It was all pretty funny until Pat had to use the restroom and there was no way he was using the one for the ER waiting room and now the four of us had to make the hike back through the Harborview halls to the staff restroom Mike and I had used earlier.
Before we could leave, there was April "doing her job." Was she doing her job? Nope. There was something more. April was using the gifts God had given her and she was literally serving as God's Hands and Feet for one of the most unfortunate souls in the Harborview ER. Here she was kneeling down on the same floor we had just been cringing from and joking about. She was eye to eye with a man in a ratty old wheel chair. The man was not all together coherent, had probably not washed in weeks, was frail and trying to tie a medical boot he couldn't reach without falling out of the chair. April not only met the man "right where he was at," she was tying the boot while she naturally engaged him in conversation, enquiring what he needed, proceeded to wheel the man where he needed to go to get a ride. This wasn't April's "job." This was April.