伊麗莎白·庫伯-羅斯/Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
No one knows where love’s wings will land.At times, it turns up in the most unusual spots.There was nothing more surprising than when it descended upon a rehabilitation hospital in a Los Angeles suburb—a hospital where most of the patients can no longer move of their own accord.
When the staff heard the news, some of the nurses began to cry.The administrator was in shock, but from then on, Harry MacNarama would bless it as one of the greatest days in his entire life.
Now the trouble was, how were they going to make the wedding dress? He knew his staff would find a way, and when one of his nurses volunteered, Harry was relieved.He wanted this to be the finest day in the lives of two of his patients—Juana and Michael.
Michael strapped in his wheelchair and breathing through his ventilator, appeared at Harry’s office door one morning.
“Harry, I want to get married,”Michael announced.
“Married?”Harry’s mouth dropped open.How serious was this?“To who?”Harry asked.
“To Juana,”Michael said.“We’re in love.”
Love.Love had found its way through the hospital doors, over two bodies that refused to work for their owners and penetrated their hearts—despite the fact that the two patients were unable to feed or cloth themselves, required ventilators just to breath and could never walk again.Michael had spinal muscular atrophy; Juana had multiple sclerosis.
Just how serious this marriage idea was, became quite apparent when Michael pulled out the engagement ring and beamed as he hadn’t done in years.In fact, the staff had never seen a kinder, sweeter Michael, who had been one of the angriest men Harry’s employees had ever worked with.
The reason for Michael’s anger was understandable.For twenty-five years, he had lived his life at a medical center where his mother had placed him at age nine and visited him several times a week until she died.He was always a raspy sort of guy, who cussed out his nurses routinely, but at least he felt he had family at the hospital.The patients were his friends.