IT"S JUST A LITTLE RAIN

I love rainy days as much as I love sunny days. There is something about rain however that is so unique. There is stillness with the hushed sound of rain on the leaves. The sound surrounds you. The leaves move to the rain drops, tap, tap, tap. The puddles grow ever so slowly as the raindrops fall and the expanding rings of water collide on the surface with each other. The breeze blows gently forcing the raindrops sideways, Except for raindrops and the breeze, there is very little movement from nature.

My fascination with rain, stems back to my childhood. When I was little, my family and I along with three other families went on a vacation to this remote destination where an old mansion stood. We were in three separate vehicles, ours was third in the caravan. The hundred mile journey that started late in the evening marched into the night as we came to the last five miles of road that was all dirt. Steady rain had been falling most of the drive as I kept counting the rivulets on the windshield. 

The road became treacherous with deep puddles filled with earthy brown water that splashed sideways as the tires traversed through them. On and on the bumpy ride continued making me nauseous. We suddenly hit a large puddle that was deeper than anticipated and I heard my father groan.

He was out immediately looking at the problem and I saw him carry the spare from the trunk and in the driving rain with the wind blowing the trees on to their sides, carry on the necessary work to get us back into a mobile state. My mother kept telling him to come in the car. He finished the job and got back in soaked to the bone. “you’re gonna catch a cold! She said. He smiled back at her and looked over at me and said, “Its just a little rain.”

Many years later, I was awakened by the phone and was asked to go to the hospital for a sick patient. Upon arriving, I was asked to scrub and go into the operating room. My surgeon friend was there with a grim look on his eyes. About all I could see between the mask and his head cover was his concern. The dilemma was pretty obvious too. The patient was bleeding from small blood vessels everywhere. He was in a full blown DIC (If you know what that is good for you, otherwise, just know, it’s a real bad thing) From one o’clock that morning till the dawn broke, both of us did everything we could. I, with my monitoring and recommending blood products and medications and he with his cauterizing abilities. Finally the storm broke. The pressures stabilized, the blood thickened and the bleeding stopped.

Exhausted we sat in the recovery room sweat poring out and little to say to each other. After a while as the outside hum of the morning grew louder, he looked up and still no words came. I looked at him patted him on his shoulder and said, “Its just a little rain.”

The next day as I was passing by that patient’s ICU room door, I heard my friend speaking to the patient who was awake with his family by the side. I slowed my pace and distinctly heard him chuckle, “Its was just a little rain.”