The Evils of the World

I have been depressed for the past couple of weeks. There are a few reasons I can readily identify: lots of new aches & pains that have effectively prevented me from going to the gym for the past couple of months, including a flare-up of the nurse's curse, plantar fasciitis. This is THE WORST. The first step out of bed in the morning, or after sitting for a while, is just awful. And the treatment: take anti-inflammatories, try to stay off your feet, and use ice on the affected foot. Then wait six months.

I'm also starting to feel old for the first time. My birthday was last week and it was neither a "big" number nor really a particularly impressive one (I'm officially 53), but it's just left me more than a little blah. I look at Diana--she is so gorgeous, so young, so untroubled, so on the cusp of life--and while I am proud, it also makes me feel tired, and uninterested in my own life. I'm not envious: good God, I wouldn't be 22 again for love or money. But the knowledge that I'm probably 2/3 done with this life is more than a little sobering.

Then there is the nagging memory I cannot put behind me. In my work, I have seen birth, death, trauma, medical mayhem, miracles, and just about everything in between. Most of it I brush away, or perhaps save for when I need a story as a cautionary tale: don't smoke, do you know what cancerous lungs look like? I do! But a couple of weeks ago, I saw something I cannot dismiss.

A four year old girl was airlifted into my hospital for emergency surgery. She had been horrifically, satanically, sadistically abused. She needed an immediate craniectomy because she had subdural bleeding. When the surgeon took off the skull plate to relieve the pressure and evacuate the hematoma, her brain swelled so much he was unable to reattach the skull flap. In short: not a survivable injury. Which is good, because the rest of her poor little body bore witness to the suffering she had sustained. There were bites around the perimeter of each of her nipples--it looked like someone had attempted to bite them off. She bore laceration marks that the pediatric surgeon said were from ligatures--she had been tied to something. Her body was so bruised it was hard to tell she was a white girl. Part of her earlobe had been nibbled away, possibly by vermin. She had burns. She had been sexually violated. FOUR YEARS OLD.

What kind of human does this to an innocent child? What kind of society puts up with it? There was a lot of coverage in the press, and a lot of outrage expressed by law enforcement personnel, child protection agencies, and the like, but her case is neither the first nor the last this month, or possibly even this week. How can anyone believe in a loving and all-embracing God, if he lets things like this happen?

None of these are new questions. Philosophers, clerics, and wise men of all stripes have been wrestling with them for ages. I'm old enough, and cynical enough, to know that there are no answers except that evil is here in the world. I'm just tired--tired of reading about it, tired of people who have power who do nothing about it, tired of people who tolerate it, tired of people who incite it, tired of everything.

In fact, the only thing I'm not tired of is being tired, because I can't sleep. Her face haunts me--especially the face in the photograph that was published in all the papers when, after three days in the ICU, this little angel was mercifully taken off life support, and allowed to die. The sweet face with the pigtails and the shy smile so little resembled the visage I saw that night in the O.R. that it cuts to my soul.

There's a quote by Lily Tomlin: "No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up." God help us all, it's true. I have lost some joy, gained some years, and exponentially upped my cynicism quotient after this experience. Ironically, though, I may have acquired a smidge more religion than I had before, because I would so very much like to believe that there is a heaven, and this child is in it. Rest her tortured soul, she'll never feel pain or fear, or cry, ever again.