"He’ll die! I just know he’ll die!”

The tear-filled exclamation came from an older woman who had been brought in by ambulance during the night. Her medical situation required surgery, and now she was on Nurse Brenda’s care list. And, because one of the other nurses had called in sick, Brenda’s list was eight patients long.

“This is going to be a stressful day!” Brenda mumbled to herself as she knocked on the door to Mrs. Martin’s room. All went well until Brenda was ready to leave the room. Following her normal procedure, she sat beside the bed, took a deep breath, and said, “Is there anything else I can do for you? I have some time.” That was when Mrs. Martin began to weep for Fluffy.

“I live alone, and my dog Fluffy is my only family. No one thought about him when the ambulance came to get me last night, and I know he’s still locked in the bathroom. He’ll die! I just know he’ll die!”

Brenda’s mind raced from the eight patients on her care list to the charting she needed to do, to the shopping she had to do on the way home, to the cleaning that needed to be picked up, to the transporter she knew was waiting in the hall to take one of the other patients to imaging … to Fluffy howling in the bathroom. How important is Fluffy in Brenda’s job today?

When Brenda told me the story later that afternoon she was laughing, still energized by the Fluffy challenge. “I realized,” she said, “that Mrs. Martin wasn’t going to heal until we had Fluffy out of the bathroom and devouring a bowl of Alpo.”

Finding the right neighbor who then located the spare key under the yellow hibiscus, finding Fluffy, watering Fluffy, cleaning up the bathroom, and feeding the Alpo had become a major part of Brenda’s day. The transporter got involved. The Health Unit coordinator got involved. Seemed like the whole team worried about Fluffy. And everyone was there to celebrate when the neighbor checked in to say Fluffy was living at her home for the duration. “Today was a great day. A Fluffy day!” Brenda said.

The healing ministry of Christ includes far more than just physical healing. In fact, it stretches all the way to Fluffy’s howls, and to a bowl of Alpo.

Dick Duerksen is an assistant vice president for mission development at Florida Hospital.