What do you do when you sit beside a bed with your eyes closed afraid to open them and see that you aren’t dreaming? How do you face the hard cold reality that your only son is lying in this bed completely out of your control. Your only son in horrid distress, misery, unbearable pain and wasting away like some malnutritioned child on the cover of a hunger relief pamphlet. The crisp white linen sheets emit the scent of cleanliness and sanitization. However, the whole world seems dirty all around and every imagined particle of dust seems to be a deadly danger. A constant state of fear grips Lori. Imagining that every dust particle is a piece of poison that might enter Dustin’s lungs and somehow set off a fire of immune system breakdown. She sighs with relief with every breath he exhales because it means he is still alive and fighting. She cringes with every breath he takes because it strikes tremblors in her body and mind that some unseen villain is in each draw of air and demons may be riding the tide as well.

How can she come to convince herself there isn’t such a threat? How can she, after all the hell that has invaded her mind and soul as of now? In one damnable night her whole world changed. All her peace vanished with a phone call from some blasted country she really didn’t know much about and one that was thousands of miles from her and even further away from any concern she had until her son said he was going there. Now, because he went there, she endured that 3 a.m. phone call months ago and months later she sits here beside this firm hospital bed while her son lies as fragile as glass in a shell of a once strong and hearty body and soul. She sits here breathing his every breath with him. Even now, as he sleeps, she feels it too unsafe to move from her chair. She not feels it unsafe to leave the room, go for a walk, stretch her legs or thoughts, to run for a quick bite to eat of lunch or any other thing she is told to do a million times, she feels it too unsafe to even flinch a finger or lift a foot. If she is going to make any move at all, it is going to be to raise her hand and gently caress the forehead her son while he suffers these sleep sweats. Maybe she will dare to lay a hand on his chest or stomach and try one more time, for the billionth time it seems, to pray away the demons. To pray away the sickness, the disease, to pray for healing and most of all, pray for a miracle. She feels betrayed and abandoned by the God that she once loved and admired so much. Why would He do this? How can He allow this to happen? “Where are you God?!! Why? Why?! Why did you give him to me if you knew this was going to happen? Why did you bless me with him God? Why did you answer all my prayers, hopes and dreams when I got pregnant, when I prayed over him for safety when he was little and when he went to that stupid war, only for this? Why God?”

“What did Dusty do to deserve this? Are there things he did that I don’t know about? Why is he being punished so cruelly? What could be so bad that brought this about? Is all this just a test and for your Glory God and not the result of sin? Is this something you are doing to get glory, honor and praise? Will there be a miracle, Dusty fighting through this, becoming strong, healthy and laughing again? Will we look back from the other side of this and see how great you were, how you kept us and did wonders in front of the doctors, God? God, you aren’t going to let him die are you? If you are God, take me, please, please, please take me!!” The tears begin to pour from Lori’s eyes and stream down her tired and wearied face. Her eyes have grown puffy from all the long, tired days and nights of this same seemingly endless repetition. Her back aches, her head aches, she’s exhausted in every way imaginable and unimaginable. Fear for her only son has wracked her body, mind, soul and spirit to a million splinters of numbness. Her every thought gets boggled and bogged down in a spinning wheel that has built itself inside her head as if it were a perpetual machine made to torture her eternally. Just like her body, all the questions continue infinitely spinning out of control and draining her from rest, relief and sanity.

It was just this morning that, for the third time in as many months, a nurse pulled her aside and, at great risk obviously, told her to look into depleted uranium regarding her son. Lori begged for more information but the nurse was risking her job and who knows what else just for that tidbit of information. Now, here she sits, in complete torment and unable to bring herself to move, much less find a computer and search for whatever depleted uranium is and how it could possibly have anything to do with his condition. After all, Dusty has cancer, all the doctors have made that conclusion a long time ago, what in the world is depleted uranium and how can that explain any of this? How can a raging, ravenous cancer riddle her son’s body and any answer be found in something so foreign and distant from her most fevered imagination? Lori makes up her mind to get to the nearest computer as soon as Dad gets here to relieve her and she will type in a search on it, on depleted uranium, after all, the nurse was clearly serious and there was no doubt she was taking a risk for her son. But for now, Lori can’t move, can hardly breath, dares to keep asking God questions and keeps praying a mother’s tearful pleas for mercy, safety, compassion and healing from a now distant source of her faith, a God up there looking down here. One more prayer, one more prayer of repentance for each and every unknown possible sin. “Just help God, just stop this, end it, bring a miracle so we can all smile, laugh and praise you, please?? I don’t have time to look at depleted uranium right now, not until Dusty is better, then we can look at it. It will have to wait, this is more important.” And so Lori does wait, and wait, and wait and, eventually, depleted uranium has no place in her thoughts while this war rages for Dustin’s life. Depleted uranium will have to wait for another, better day. At least, that is how she thinks now in this room, at this bedside still living in a world of unbelief.