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.