Reasons to Believe

Like an Angel

The Giver Who Was the Gift
By Elizabeth Westfall Flynn

When I was a kid, I worshipped my big brother, Kemper. He was a loyal friend, someone who always faced down a bully, a protector of his three sisters. And he was cool; he did exciting things. When my parents went out of town, he had parties so big it looked like the world had been invited. Everybody loved him -- but trouble knew where to find him too.

In 1967 he joined the Marines and fought in Vietnam. By the tender age of 20, he had witnessed the decimation of his platoon.

When he finally came home, he was different. Quiet, not interested in the homecoming party my parents wanted to throw for him. Not even excited about the '69 VW Bug they gave him tied up in a bow. He spent the next few years of his life trying to adjust.

But he never did. In 1977, he killed himself, leaving a note asking forgiveness. When his wallet was returned to us, it reeked of exhaust fumes. His death tore my family apart. My parents divorced, and my own heart was broken.

Then, on a brisk, sunny day a week before Christmas last year, I was out shopping and called home from my car to check on my son. "Mom, some woman phoned and said she was hired by the court to find you. It has to do with your brother."

An old forgotten bank account? I wondered. I called her immediately and was connected with a woman who said she was a confidential intermediary. "I have reason to believe," she said, "you are the biological relative of a female born October 21, 1965, who is seeking medical information. Were you aware your brother fathered a child in 1965? Hello?" I was so shocked I couldn't respond.

My brother's girlfriend had become pregnant when they were in high school, and neither Kemper nor my parents ever told anyone. Now his daughter was looking for us. I sat in the car with my foot on the brake and just cried.

Bonnie Jean Phoenix had a happy childhood. Her parents were loving and nurturing -- exactly the kind of adoptive parents Kemper and his frightened girlfriend would have hoped for. But throughout her life, Bonnie had a feeling of disconnectedness. At age 34, she decided it was time to solve the mystery of her origin and she began the search. It took her three years.

The day she walked into my mother's house, I was stunned. A perfect stranger who was the image of my brother -- his nose, his mouth, his blue-green eyes. She looked like an angel standing in the sunlit hallway. He sent her to us, I thought, to love in his place.

I introduced myself, and before I knew it, her arms were around me. She brought a box full of pictures of herself as a child -- playing with a pet, swinging in a hammock. A child who always stood up for others -- a cheery little girl, her face beaming.

In the days and weeks after meeting Bonnie, I realized a weight was beginning to lift. It was anger I'd had for years and never wanted to admit. I was angry at my brother for committing suicide. My parents' marriage collapsed, and my sisters and I worried that life's battles might be too much for our own sons. For the next 25 years, my brother's death and the manner of it haunted us all.

Then Bonnie found us. She is so much like him. She's reminded me of what a good guy he was. She made me believe in happy endings again. She made me forgive him.

It's a Wonderful Life
By Leandra Lynch, MD, from Medical Economics

Fresh out of residency, I moved to Woodland Hills, Calif., to take a job in a small community hospital's emergency department. As the newest member of the group, I got last dibs on shifts. No one wanted to work on Christmas Eve, so the shift went to me. I kissed my family goodbye and went off to spend the night in the hospital. It was a thankless job.

At 9 p.m., the ambulance brought in a man in his 60s who was having a heart attack. His face was pale, gray, and he was frightened. In the early '80s, clot-busting drugs weren't generally available. My patient was unstable, but I did my best and he hung in there. Eventually we were able to move him out of the ER and into the ICU. Before I left in the morning to spend Christmas with my family, I stopped by to see how he was doing. It was still touch and go, but he had survived the night and was sleeping.

Emergency physicians don't have continuing relationships with patients like other doctors. We get the suddenly sick, the wounded. Often they're scared. Sometimes they're angry at us, just because we're there. They pass through our hands and out the door. We rarely see them again. I thought no more about my heart patient. The following year, still the newest member of the group, I got Christmas Eve duty again and dragged myself off to work. At 9 p.m. sharp, the ward clerk told me there was a couple in the lobby who wanted to speak with me.

Spreading Light

When I approached them, the man introduced himself as Mr. Lee and said, "You probably don't remember me, but last Christmas Eve you saved my life. Thank you for the year you gave me." He and his wife hugged me, handed me a small gift, and left. I was more than a little surprised -- and touched.

The following year a new doctor had joined the group, and my family was delighted that I could stay home Christmas Eve. But I wanted to see if Mr. and Mrs. Lee would return. This time, I volunteered for the shift.

I kept an eye on the door. Once again, at exactly 9 p.m., the Lees appeared, carrying a snugly wrapped bundle. It was their new grandchild. We all embraced, and Mr. Lee said he'd come see me every Christmas Eve, and that if he didn't come, well, I would know that it just wasn't his year.

I worked the emergency department for the next ten Christmas Eves, and though I treated a great many trauma patients, there was never anyone quite like Mr. Lee. Each year at exactly 9 p.m. he'd appear, twice with new grandchildren. One year he came with a great-grandchild.

Mr. Lee, his family and I spent 13 Christmas Eves together. In the later years the staff all knew about the ritual and would work to give me time with him in the break room. In this small space cluttered with bulletin boards, the coffeepot, a microwave and refrigerator, we spent a half-hour each Christmas Eve.

The last year I saw him, he brought me a gift. I carefully unwrapped the package and found a crystal bell inside. It was engraved with a single word: Friendship. Mr. Lee died the next year, the year I moved to Crested Butte, Colorado. Now, my family, friends and I ring that bell every Christmas Eve at exactly 9 p.m. and offer a toast to the man who didn't forget.

Season of Miracles

Check Out
By J.R. Labbe, from Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Christmas Eve, a year ago. The Wal-Mart in Cleburne, Texas, was jammed, hectic. Dozens of people were waiting in long lines at checkout counters to purchase small appliances, jewelry, toys and clothing that would be next-morning treasures under someone's tree.

The woman standing in cashier Jeffrey Kandt's line seemed to be living on the edge of subsistence. Her clothes were worn; her hands were those of a person who'd worked hard for what she had. She held a single item in her arms as she patiently waited to move to the front of the line. Her son would get the one present he had asked for: a Sony PlayStation 2. She had saved all year for this; with tax, the total would be close to $220.

As Kandt scanned the game player's bar code into his register, the woman panicked. Where was her money? It wasn't where she remembered putting it earlier in the day. Her fear became palpable to the customers in line behind her as she started to cry.

Why my line? Kandt thought as he watched the frantic woman search through her clothes. He was going to have to call his manager to void the sale and return the game player to a locked shelf. He'd have to shut down his checkout line and wait for her to come from another part of the crowded store -- not something that any store manager or cashier wants on Christmas Eve, not with people waiting and the clock ticking down to closing time. I'm going to be late for church, Kandt thought.

And then an amazing thing happened. At the back of the line, a man took out his wallet, pulled out $100 and passed it forward. As the cash moved up the line, a twenty-dollar bill was added here, a ten-dollar bill there. Someone threw in a bunch of ones dug from the bottom of a jeans pocket.

When the collection finally reached the register, Kandt counted $220.

Strangers had fulfilled a poor woman's Christmas wish to give her son his dream gift.

And Jeffrey Kandt wasn't late for church. The people in his line in the Cleburne, Texas, Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve 2002 had become one.

Crossing Point
By Mike Redelson from Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum

It was 7:30 p.m. on December 21 last year in rural Ohio. Dark, clear and cold. Mary Obringer and her 13-year-old daughter, Hannah, were driving home in their Dodge Caravan after shopping. Obringer was on the cell phone with her husband, Mike, telling him about all the money she and Hannah had spent at the mall, when she came up behind a car sitting directly across a railroad crossing -- its front tires were stuck in the train tracks.

An elderly woman was standing next to the car, holding an infant in her arms, paralyzed with shock or fright. Warning lights were flashing and the gates were coming down.

Mary Obringer looked up into the light of the oncoming train. "I screamed for her to get out of the way. The whistle was blowing, the light getting brighter," Obringer explained. "But I don't think she knew what was happening."

Obringer jumped out and ran to the woman. That's when she realized: there was another child in the car. "The little guy looked right at me," she says, "and my heart about stopped." Frantically, she tried to pull the car seat out of the car to safety.

"I turned my head and the train's headlight was right there," Obringer said. She just wasn't able to move fast enough. The train smashed through the car, dragging it down the tracks.

Steel against screeching steel, the train finally came to a halt and the conductor ran back along the dark stretch of tracks with a flashlight.

Back at her van, Mary Obringer called 911. Then, dreading what she would find, she began walking back down the tracks. The conductor's small arc of light swept the ground as he came toward her. The old woman's car had been slashed into a jagged metal wreck. No way that anyone could have lived through that collision.

But in a season of miracles, the rules of logic and physics are sometimes suspended.

Obringer heard a baby cry. The conductor's light fell upon a battered car seat. It had flown out of the ravaged car, through a shattered window, bounced off the front of the train and landed 157 feet away. The toddler in it was alive.

Mary L. Kidd, 74, of Sandusky, Aaron Johnson, 4 months, and Aireus Johnson, 1, were taken by fire department personnel to area hospitals. All were released in time for Christmas.