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Fighting the
Good Fight
By Steven Lloyd Neal, M.D.
I was driving home from UCSD
Medical Center in San Diego after a day, a busy night on call, and
another full day of clinic patients. I was bleary-eyed and hungry
and a warm meal and bed were calling my name, but stronger still
was the urge to visit the scene first-hand.
I got off I-805 two exits before mine
on Balboa Avenue and turned right into the FedMart parking lot.
It didn’t take long to find the spot. I got out of my old
beater-Impala and walked the vacated section of the lot, recreating
the scene in my mind.
The intense heat from the explosion
was still evident as the painted parking stall lines had bubbled
up along with a veneer of tar that gave the appearance of a black
hole in the middle of the lighter asphalt. It hadn’t been
entirely cleaned up. It wasn’t even 24 hours old yet.
There were crystalline pieces of windshield
and fuselage scattered about. I stooped and picked up an eight-inch
piece of airplane as I looked in the direction of Montgomery Field.
The smell of burnt fuel and tar was stronger near the ground. I
could picture the passengers on fire, scrambling out of the burning
wreckage.
Only blocks away I could see an airplane
tracing the exact path of the one last night. What could the pilot
of the plane over my head do if now his engine quit abruptly? His
choices would be the same as the pilot I met last night. He knew
his plane was coming down for certain and they were right over a
busy Balboa Avenue crowded with cars.
He saw the vacant Fed Mart parking
lot next door and banked left to position himself for a ditch-landing
— a good plan except for a few inches. The tip of his right
wing caught on the traffic light standard, flipping the entire plane
into a cartwheel that exploded on impact in the parking lot.
After the accident, I had paused long
enough from my duties as intern on the general surgery service to
grab a late dinner while I watched the News at 10 o’clock.
The headline story mentioned the plane was headed to Utah and included
a young BYU couple and baby in a list of five passengers, only two
of whom survived.
“Church members for sure,”
I thought.
“The survivors were taken to
the UCSD burn center,” the reporter concluded. I realized
that was just down the hall from where I was sitting.
I walked the 200 feet down the hall
toward the burn unit. In the receiving anteroom I saw one of the
burn victims, wrapped from head to toe in gauze and with an endotracheal
tube protruding from an unseen mouth. (An inhalational burn, I thought.
Not good.)
I slipped unnoticed into the burn unit.
Immediately I saw two Mormon elders with their hands on a completely
bandaged head and about ten doctors and nurses surrounding a bed,
some with heads bowed. After the blessing the man turned and asked
for a phone and requested the nurses dial his home phone number
for him. His wife answered the phone and he began to explain to
her his fate.
The man whose face I never saw had
a clear and unwavering voice. He was obviously brave in the face
of death. “The doctors tell me I have third degree burns over
90% of my body”, he said. “That means the skin is totally
destroyed along with the cutaneous nerves, so I am not in any pain.
In fact, I feel fine. However, they also tell me that I have about
a zero percent chance that I will survive.”
I felt as though we were intruding
— that we were eavesdropping. But nobody moved. Nobody even
whispered. The EKG beep was the only sound during the silence in
which his wife reacted to that devastating message. Among other
things he said to her, I remember only that he told her he loved
her very much.
Next he talked to one of his daughters.
“Remember our temple blessings and that we are a forever family
if we keep our covenants.”
It was late in Utah and only two of
his children were roused from bed to talk to him. Next he talked
to his oldest son, who must have been about eight years old. “Remember
son, that you are now the man of the house. You will need to help
your mother and help take care of your sisters. I will not be able
to do it.”
His voice didn’t crack or waver.
But as he spoke, the edges of his visage blurred. Through my tears
I could see that I was not the only one moved. The audience of elders,
nurses, and doctors were wiping their eyes and looking down at the
floor.
I have seen many patients through the
years prepare to meet their Maker. Some of them have spoken of trivial
matters such as football, the weather, or other idle chit-chat.
But never do I remember a patient who was so seemingly prepared
to go at a moment’s notice and with such a memorable display
of fortitude and power than that which I witnessed that night.
Pulled from the ranks of everyday infantry
of Latter-day Saints, he was tapped to leave this realm in one instant
and given a lucid interval in which to first report to his family
he was leaving behind. I asked myself then, “What if my Impala
bomb blew up with me in it tonight. Would I be ready to go? Did
I accomplish everything I was supposed to do?”
Meaning of Life
As Latter-day Saints, the meaning of life is foremost in our minds.
We speak of our missions on earth in the next cadence following
any discourse on the Plan of Salvation. “What did God send
me on earth to do?” is for me a daily question.
We receive patriarchal blessings to
know what God expects of us. We pray constantly for inspired revelation
to guide us in our daily lives for help in our problems. We are
able to do even the impossibly difficult tasks in our lives if somehow
we know it is in God’s plan for us.
“I give unto men weakness that
they might be humble” (Ether 12:27). Or, “I will go
and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that
the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men save he
shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing
which he hath commandeth them” (1 Nephi 3:7).
When I was accepted into medical school
I felt that was confirmation that I must turn my back on any art
talent that I might possess. The dean of students said to me when
I interviewed at Southwestern in Dallas, “What do you plan
on doing about all of these extraneous interests you have listed
here?”
“I don’t see how I will
have time to do them,” I responded. “That is right,”
he returned. But God didn’t agree with that assessment. I
had forgotten what it had said in my patriarchal blessing.
It was only three years after that interview that I experienced
some deeply spiritual experiences that corrected my error. I have
found that whatever art talent God blessed me with has been greatly
multiplied as I have developed it to help proclaim the message of
the Restoration, and especially the Book of Mormon.
Art has been a medicine for me —
and a blessing. It has blessed the lives of my patients, too. Even
though I thought I already knew the course my life should take,
the Lord has directed me into some very unexpected side paths, for
which I am very grateful.
As expected, the LDS pilot passed away
on an air ambulance flying back to Utah. After witnessing that,
I am especially grateful I was able to help my wife raise our children.
We never know which day will be the
last of our lives. But since we all must meet our Maker eventually,
the only thing that matters is that at that day we can answer with
a good conscience, “I have fought a good fight; I have kept
the faith,” — that we have done what we came here to
do.
“Doctor, doctor, will he die?
“
“Yes, my child. And so must I.”
I kept that piece of fuselage for a
long time.
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