“I know I could live my whole life hating the water and just do my best to avoid it,” she said. “But I don't like let ting this thing get the better of me. I don't want to be afraid anymore. Can you help me?”
The chaplain settled into his chair and gazed thought fully at the young woman seated across from him.
“When did you first become afraid?” he asked.
“I was a little girl, I guess. I don't really remember.”
The chaplain nodded. “Did you ever have an accident involving water?”
Bonnie thought back. Then she remembered. “Yes! Actually, I don't know if it was an accident or what it was. I was nearly three years old and I couldn't swim and my par ents say I fell into my grandparents' fishpond. I don't re member any of the details.”
A knowing look came across the chaplain's face. “Bon nie,” he said, “I believe if we could help you remember what happened back when you were a little girl, we could understand the problem you have with water.”
Over a series of counseling appointments, the chaplain helped Bonnie drift back through her memory to the day when she had been two-and-a-half and had visited her grandparents' house that Easter Sunday.
Eventually, she was able to describe the scene.
“I was in the backyard,” she said, her eyes glazed over from concentration. “I can see it. There was a big fishpond in the middle of the yard and I walked toward it. Inside were the biggest goldfish I'd ever seen. I wasn't supposed to touch them. Mom and Dad both told me not to touch them. But I wanted so badly to see how they felt, to pet them just once.
“So I leaned over and then all of a sudden I fell into the water.”
Bonnie screamed and covered her eyes, the memory vividly real.
“It's okay, Bonnie,” the chaplain said calmly. “What happened next?”
“I couldn't get out; I was thrashing about and swallowing water. My head was submerged and no one could hear my screams. I was drowning.”
Suddenly Bonnie gasped. “That's what happened! I re member everything now.”
The chaplain leaned forward in his chair. “Go on, Bon nie. What happened then?”
“I was sinking and my arms and legs weren't trying to fight the water anymore. Then suddenly there was a man there above me dressed all in white. He reached into the water and put his hands under my arms. Then he lifted me up and set me down on the walkway.”
“Where did he go then?” the chaplain asked, confused by the young woman's story. Where had the man come from and why was he dressed completely in white?
Bonnie paused a moment, searching the long-ago scene that was unfolding before her eyes. “He disappeared. He just set me down and disappeared.”
Bonnie's eyes came back into focus and she stared at the chaplain. “That's impossible, isn't it, Pastor?”
“What does your father say about the event?”
“Well, he says they were in the front yard of my grand parents' house and heard me screaming. They ran to me and I was standing in the middle of the walkway, dripping wet. They never knew how I got there or how I'd fallen in.”
“Was there anything else?”
Bonnie thought a moment, then she remembered. “Yes! My parents both remember that there were no wet footprints leading from the pond to where I was standing when they found me. There was no water anywhere on the walkway except right underneath me.” Bonnie thought a moment.
“But there must have been some footprints,” she con tinued. “Otherwise how did that man in white get me from the pond to the place where he put me down? You don't think … ?”
The chaplain smiled kindly and settled back into his chair once more. “I'm not sure I can explain it fully, Bon nie, but I do know this. The Bible says God protects us with guardian angels. Your rescuer was dressed all in white and left no footprints on the walkway.
“We'll never know exactly who he was, but in my opin ion God saved your life that afternoon. And a certain guardian angel returned to heaven with wings wet from the water of a goldfish pond.”
A Dream Come True
When Angie Bauer became pregnant with her fourth child, she and her husband allowed themselves to dream. They had been blessed with three healthy sons: Sean, seven; Bo, five; and Wesley, who had just had his first birthday. The boys were happy children and all had the dark eyes and dark hair of their parents.
“You know what I wish,” Ben Bauer said one evening as he and Angie rested on the living room sofa.
“What?”
Ben placed his hand on his wife's abdomen. “I wish we could have a blonde, blue-eyed little girl. Wouldn't that be something?”
Angie uttered a short laugh. She had dark hair and her husband's hair was even darker. Their boys had Ben's deep brown eyes as well. There were no blond, blue-eyed people in either of their families. “Good luck,” she grinned.
“I know, I know.” Ben pulled Angie closer. “Just dreaming, I guess.”
The first three months of Angie's pregnancy passed by normally. She was busy at home with the boys and Ben continued his work as a special education teacher in Akron, Ohio. Ben's students were mentally handicapped and each held a special place in his heart. Oftentimes he would come home and play with his sons, silently thanking God for their strong and healthy minds. On more than one occasion he had discussed his students with Angie and pondered how they would deal with such a child them selves.
“It would be so hard to see one of my own children go through what my students go through,” Ben would say. “But I know I would love that child the same as any other.”
Angie would agree and they would put the matter out of their minds.
When Angie was four months pregnant, her doctor or dered a routine ultrasound to make sure the baby was de veloping normally. After the test, Angie's doctor ushered her into his office and closed the door. He looked at the re port on his desk and cleared his throat.
“It seems we have a problem,” he said. “Something has shown up on the ultrasound and I'd like you to see a spe cialist.”
“It sounds serious.” Angie shifted uneasily in her chair and searched the doctor's face for information.
He nodded solemnly. “I won't lie to you, Angie. It is se rious. There's something developing at the base of the baby's neck and it looks like cystic hygroma, a rare condition involving fluid buildup in the lymph system.”
“What does that mean for the baby?”
He handed her the name and phone number of a spe cialist in Cleveland, forty miles north of Akron. “Get an appointment with him and see what he says about it. Then we'll go from there.”
A week later, Angie and Ben drove to Cleveland, where technicians performed another, more sophisticated ultrasound on the unborn child. The diagnosis was the same.
“She has cystic hygroma, which is a rare—”
“She?” Ben interrupted.
The doctor glanced at his notes once more. “Uh, yes. It's a girl.”
The couple remained silent but Ben squeezed Angie's hand tightly.
“What I was saying is that this is a very rare condition and almost always life-threatening for the baby.”
He went on to say that the baby's lymph system was not redistributing fluids throughout her body. Instead it was gathering at the base of the skull and developing into fluid sacs that would eventually circle her neck like so many sections of an orange and choke her to death.
“Can you tell how serious her condition is compared to others you've seen?” Angie asked. Tears spilled from her eyes and slid down her cheeks.
“It's very serious. I don't usually see this much fluid buildup until the thirtieth week. I'm afraid she won't live more than a couple months at most.”
“Isn't there anything you can do? Surgery in the womb? Something?” Ben was devastated. Angie was carrying their tiny daughter and now she was being given a death sen tence before she even had a chance to live.
The doctor shook his head sadly. “No, I'm sorry. The only thing I can s
uggest is to terminate the pregnancy and try getting pregnant again in a few months.”
Angie's eyes grew wide. “You mean abort the baby?”
The doctor nodded. “Mrs. Bauer, your baby will die anyway. It'll be much easier if you go ahead and terminate now. This is the standard recommendation for cystic hy groma. If you carry until the fetus dies, you'll have a long, difficult labor. Fluid will have to be removed from each of the sacs around her neck before she will come through the birth canal. It would be far more traumatic to deliver a dead baby than to terminate the pregnancy now, while the fetus is so small.”
Angie sat up straighter in her chair. “Doctor, you should know something about us.” She stared into her hus band's eyes and saw his love and concern. “We won't abort this baby. If she doesn't survive the pregnancy, then we'll deal with that situation when it comes. But my little girl won't die at my hands. I won't do it.”
The doctor sighed and set his elbows on his desk. “We don't agree with terminating pregnancies, either, Mrs. Bauer. This is a Catholic hospital and it is not our policy to do abortions. However, in this situation, there is absolutely no reason to continue the pregnancy.”
“Tell me this,” Angie said. “If I continue the preg nancy, will I be in any danger?”
“No, none at all.”
“Then I want to continue it. There will be no termination.”
The doctor paused a moment, understanding the cou ple's dilemma. “You must understand that your child has a fatal condition. Continuing the pregnancy will only pro long the suffering of you and your family.”
Ben spoke up. “She has no chance of surviving? None at all?”
Again the doctor sighed. “If by some very slim chance she survived the pregnancy, your wife would have to go through a very long labor where we would be suctioning fluid from the sacs around your daughter's neck. Then as soon as she was born, if she survived the delivery, she would be rushed into surgery so the sacs could be removed and so we could operate on any other organs that might be drowning in fluid. Then, if she still survived, she would be men tally handicapped. This is a condition that often goes along with cystic hygroma in female babies.”
“Then that's the chance we'll take.” Angie stood up and smiled at the doctor through eyes glazed with tears. “Sometimes you have to trust God on these matters, Doc tor.”
They made an appointment for the following month and returned to their car. The drive home was one of the longest in their lives.
“Why us, Ben?” Angie cried. She felt defeated and ex hausted and completely brokenhearted for the tiny child she was carrying.
Ben reached over and held her hand in his. “God has a plan in all this, Angie. We need to pray and have everyone we know pray. God can heal her, honey. You know that.”
Angie nodded, but the tears continued to stream down her face. “I know. But the ultrasound doesn't lie. She has this … this thing growing on her neck and it's going to choke her to death.” She was sobbing now and she buried her head in her hands. “I feel so helpless. Her little body is trying to grow and develop and all the while she's being slowly strangled. And there's nothing we can do to help her.”
Ben's eyes filled with tears and for a while they were both silent, lost in their shared grief. Finally, when they were a few minutes from Akron, Angie took a deep breath and slowly released it.
“It's the saddest I've ever felt about anything,” she said softly. “But you're right. We need to trust God that he has a plan of some kind. At least then he will give us the strength we need to be able to handle the next five months.”
They told their boys about the baby's problem that night before bedtime.
“The baby in Mommy's tummy is a little girl,” Ben explained gently. Angie sat near them, quietly wiping the tears from her cheeks. “But she is very, very sick.”
Bo, their five-year-old, nodded his understanding. “Like when I had the flu?”
Ben smiled sadly. “Yes. Only much worse. The doctors said that she might die before she's born.”
The child's eyes grew wide. Ben continued. “We're asking Jesus to help us and whatever happens we know that he will be there.”
After that, every night the couple would pray with their young sons in their room and the children would pray for their sister.
“Dear God, please make my sister be fine,” they would say. “Please don't let her die.”
Sunday came and after the service Ben and Angie went in front of their church family and asked for prayers.
“It seems there's a very serious problem with our un born little girl,” Ben said, his voice cracking. He pulled Angie closer to him and blinked back tears. “The doctors think she'll die before she's born and that Angie should have an abortion.” He tried to swallow the lump in his throat.
Angie smiled at him through watery eyes and contin ued for him. “We told the doctors that if the baby dies we'll deal with that. But she won't die at our hands. It'll have to be God's decision.”
A sob escaped her as a flood of tears spilled from her eyes. “Please pray for us. Pray that we will have strength to handle what God has in store.”
Throughout the congregation people were crying with them, their hearts reaching out to Ben and Angie and their uncertain future.
The praying began immediately.
That afternoon a group of grandmothers at the church made the Bauers' unborn baby their top prayer concern. They contacted other women they knew at other churches in the Windsor area and the prayer chain grew.
In addition, Ben's parents and Angie's parents prayed constantly for God to work a miracle and heal the tiny girl so she could survive the pregnancy. Over the next few days, the despair that gripped Ben and Angie and even their sons began to dissipate. They were not sure what God would do but they trusted him and believed he would help them han dle whatever came their way.
Six weeks passed and Angie and Ben returned to Cleveland for another appointment with the specialist. This time the atmosphere during the ride up was com pletely different. The couple was calm and strangely peace ful. Ben shared anecdotes about the students he worked with. Their unspoken thought was that one day the anec dotes might be about their own daughter.
If she lived that long.
Angie was scheduled to meet with the doctor first and then have an ultrasound done. When he was finished ex amining her, Angie sat up and looked intently at him.
“You didn't tell us the odds,” she said quietly. “What are the odds that this baby will survive?”
The doctor leaned against the wall and folded his arms.“There is less than a 1 percent chance that this child will survive the entire pregnancy. If she does, there is maybe a 50 percent chance that she will survive the delivery and the surgery involved to remove the fluid around her neck. The odds get worse from that point on.”
Angie could feel the blood drain from her face. The peace she had been feeling vanished and again she was gripped with sorrow as she considered the child inside her.
The doctor saw her reaction and responded in a gentle voice. “There is still time to terminate the pregnancy, Mrs. Bauer. But it has to be your decision. I could have it sched uled right away. This afternoon.”
Angie looked at her husband and shook her head quickly. “No. Her chance may be almost nothing but I can't take that chance away from her.”
The couple left the office and headed toward the room where sonograms were performed. Ben waited in the hall way while a technician turned down the lights and began scanning Angie's abdomen. Images appeared on the screen and Angie wished she could tell what she was looking at.
Minutes passed and Angie began to wonder why the test was taking so long. She moved, trying to get comfort able, and the technician looked at her curiously.
“Do you know why you're in here? Why you're having this ultrasound?”
Terror streaked through Angie's body. There's some thing worse, she thought. They've found something worse.
“Well,” Angie
began, her voice unsteady, “my baby has cystic hygroma and apparently there's a lot of fluid building up around her neck in a series of sacs.”
The technician nodded absently. “All right, I'm going to take these pictures up to my supervisor and we'll check them over. Stay here until I get back, just in case I need to continue the examination.”
Angie nodded and watched the woman leave. Alone in the dark room, she let her eyes wander to the machine that held the captured image of her unborn child. There were dark areas and fuzzy white areas and assorted lines. But there was no way for her untrained eyes to make sense of what she was seeing. She felt tears stinging again and she wondered what else could have gone so wrong that the technician would want to take the pictures to her supervi sor.
Silently she began to pray, repeating scriptures that promised hope and peace and telling herself everything would be all right. Even if it didn't feel that way.
Ten minutes later the technician returned.
“Okay, you can get up,” she said pleasantly. “We won't need any more pictures today. Your doctor wants to see you in his office as soon as you can get there.”
Angie studied the woman. If the news was worse than before, the technician certainly was hiding it well. For a split second, Angie allowed herself to hope. Perhaps the news wasn't bad. Maybe the news was actually good. Maybe the fluid sacs had stopped growing.
She explained what was happening to Ben as they walked down the hallway and rode the elevator to the doctor's office. After they were seated, he strode into the room smiling, his face beaming.
“I have good news,” he said, his words tumbling out in excitement. “Something has happened that I have never seen or heard of in my years as a doctor. The fluid sacs have regressed and disappeared almost completely. The fluid is being redistributed throughout her body in a normal man ner. At this point the sacs are nearly empty. Your baby will definitely live through the pregnancy.”