Miracle in the mirror

Nita Edwards and Mark Buntain

WITH

Ron Hembree and Doug Brendel

CONTENTS

Prologue

1 Faces on a Wall

2 The Accident

3 Homecoming

4 The Creeping Death

5 Guinea Pig

6 Fatherless

7 In the Pit

8 Window on the World

9 The Eighth Face

10 Emergency Call

11 Deathwatch

12 I'll Celebrate

13 Exit

14 "Flush that Stuff"

15 Voice in an Empty Room

16 Circle of the Sacred Trust

17 Hail and Farewell

18 The Divine Touch

19 Celebration

20 Reminders

Afterword

Magnificent Obsession

by Ron Hembree

Faith on the Line

by Brother Andrew

Faith on Fire

by Syvelle Phillips

PROLOGUE

Our tiny apartment, perched three floors over the suffering city of Calcutta, was silent. The helpers had long since returned to their homes in the sultry tropical night. Those we had taken into our own home to help and love, had all gone to bed.

But for me, sleep would not come. Nita was still not back. She was out at an area church, ministering again, sharing her testimony again, as she had so many times.

Ever since she arrived in Calcutta, I had felt an unusual stirring in my spirit. My mind could not settle down. It kept churning, turning over and over the stories I had heard about her - and me. What could it all mean? Was I really linked to this girl by some immense, imponderable destiny?

I paced, praying for Nita, unable to escape my thoughts of her. She was a lovely young Sri Lankan, who had come to work for a few months in our hospital before returning to school in America. I knew she had a remarkable past - an incredible healing that several people had told me about, although I had never heard her tell the story herself. Now, as I prayed in the soft darkness, I sensed, deep in my spirit, that Nita's healing was only a fraction of the larger picture - a picture that included my own future.

"Dear God," I prayed, wringing my hands, "how am I related to this girl? Does she really need me somehow? What are you trying to say to me through this person?"

It was late when Nita finally returned, but my heart was still longing to know the elusive answers to my questions. I asked her to tell me her story.

We sat in the little living room on either side of a single lamp, and in those wee hours she began to relate a fantastic tale. As she talked, we both wept and laughed and praised the Lord. Hours later, with dawn already threatening to bring in another day, Nita finished her account. There was an awesome presence of God in the room, and we knelt together before the Lord, weeping and praying and rejoicing in Him.

My eyes were opened that night. I began to see that larger picture, of how Nita's story could, and would, affect my own life's work - and, indeed, the entire continent of Asia.

I knew immediately that her story had to be told. It became an unexplainable passion with me. But, who should do it? Who could I get to capture the poignancy and power of this spiritual drama?

The burden of the telling would not leave me alone. I agonized before God and then He whispered to my spirit a name.

I contacted my dear friend Ron Hembree, pastor of Kennedy Road Tabernacle in Brampton, Ontario, and a veteran professional writer. He had written my own story, [1] and agreed to help me with this one.

Some time later, after Nina had returned to finish her education in California, I returned to Canada. Before many days had gone by, the three of us, Ron, Nita, and myself, sat together, and again I heard the nearly unbelievable story. We were swept up in it for hours, riding the ebb and flow of its grief and glory, its fury and fantasy.

As I listened again, I knew in my heart that Nita Edwards was God's vessel for touching the teeming population of the turbulent Asian continent. And my own life, my own ministry, would never be the same. This is Nita's miraculous story.

[1] Ron Hembree, Mark. (Plainfield, N.J.: Logos, 1979).

And it shall come to pass afterward,

that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh;

and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

your old men shall dream dreams,

your young men shall see visions...

Joel 2:28

1

FACES ON A WALL

Sri Lanka lies like a jewel off the southern coast of India, a beautiful bauble of unmolested natural charms, lapped by the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, cradled in her arms like a precious multicoloured opal.

She was once known as Ceylon, before the years of harsh political reality and modern world tensions. For centuries the island has been a bastion of Buddhism, a land where seventy per cent of the populace worship Buddha and the rest take care not to offend him.

Only two persons out of every thousand are Christians.

In Colombo, the capital city on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, live most of the island nation's people. It is a city approaching the modern age with its share of skyscrapers and international flights and tourism and crime.

But it was here in Colombo, in the middle 1950s, long before the advent of this modern age, when Sri Lanka was still Ceylon, when the island was still draped in its Buddhist past, that a loving God reached down through the shroud to touch a singular young man - and through him a nation, a continent, a world.

In a tough section of town there was a tiny Bible school, where a few Christians gathered to learn what they could of God's Word. They called their school the Ceylon Bible Institute, but it was hardly that; actually it was little more than a collection of old desks and chairs and tiny rooms where students studied and prayed and ate and slept.

One of the students, a firebrand named Colton Wickramaratne, had come from a village far outside Colombo and had managed to make a name for himself almost as soon as he arrived. He was a go-getter, always anxious to do more for the Lord, excited about moving forward, and ruffling feathers here and there as he went. Colton brought other problems with him too. For one thing, he was always struggling financially, and, to top it all, his English was bad. Finally the school's harried administrators put him on probation for six months and remanded him to the custody of a local missionary family.

It was here that Colton finally took time to listen to God. Captive in his room, he spent long days in prayer. There, the Holy Spirit settled in and began a maturing work in Colton's life, establishing within this diminutive dynamo the strength of character his life's work would require. Day by day, Colton determined to draw closer to the heart of God. Hour after hour, their relationship deepened, as the Bible student opened himself more and more to the Father.

One evening as Colton sat in the missionary's home, alone in prayer, he felt a shift in the air, an unusual movement of the Spirit. Something told him it was different, but he couldn't explain why. He opened his eyes -as if to see the presence of God - but everything appeared to be the same: the same skinny bed, the rickety dresser with a ragged rug in front of it and an old lamp on top of it ... an ancient mirror hanging on the wall.

The wall.

Colton felt his eyes drawn to it.

It was no longer the dull blank wall it had been. Instead he saw an arrangement of unfamiliar faces looking back at him. Colton stared at the faces, astounded, silent. He did not recognize any of them. They were all obviously Westerners, white-faced men - except for one, a girl with dark lovely features, an Asian.

"These eight people," the Spirit of God said to him silently, "will touch Asia with the gospel. These eight people will be instrumental in a great Asian revival to come."

Colton watched, wide-eyed, as God continued to speak to his heart.

"You will meet each of these people," the inner voice continued. "But you are not to tell anyone what you have seen ... until you meet the eighth and final person."

Colton squinted to remember every detail, but then the faces were gone as suddenly as they had appeared.

Deeply shaken, the young man fell to his knees and wept before the Lord, worshipping with a reverence he had never felt in his life. He knew he had been in the presence of the Almighty, and that the Almighty had deposited something so precious within him that even Colton could not yet estimate its value.

Colton Wickramaratne grew by bounds as a Bible student, taking on a small church and nurturing its growth. Over the next ten years he ascended to a place of leadership among the Full-Gospel pastors of Sri Lanka.

One by one, during a period of about ten years, the people he had seen in the vision began turning up, sometimes in unlikely places. He had never met any of the eight people before the vision, and now each new encounter filled Colton with awe. Still, he never said a word about the vision to any of them, for he had not yet met all eight.

It was after he met the seventh person that things changed. While the first seven people had appeared over the space of ten years, the eighth face did not. The young woman still did not present herself. Another ten years elapsed. Had God forgotten?

Colton's work went on, and his ministry progressed. He was now a recognized leader in the Asian religious world. But, he could not forget the face! He found himself looking for the eighth face in crowded churches, in airports, and on street corners. Still she did not appear.

Sometimes he wondered if he would recognize her at all; it had been so many years since the vision. Now, twenty years after the experience, he sometimes wondered if he would really ever be able to tell anyone about the experience.

And sometimes - in moments of weakness - he wondered if he had ever really seen the eighth face at all.

2

THE ACCIDENT

It was a silly accident, really.

For an athlete like Nita to bump her way down the entire staircase on her rear end was - well, embarrassing. And yet everyone else in St. Bede's Hall, the entire dorm, heard the thump-thump-thump and the inevitable final crash, and of course they all came running out of their rooms at the head of the stairs to see what the commotion was about.

Nita had returned the day before from an interuniversity athletic meet in India's Mandi Valley, high in the Himalayas, where she had led her team to every women's trophy but one. So it was ridiculous to fall in the first place, let alone to sit there at the foot of the stairs, and not be able to get up.

Her legs just wouldn't work and pain stabbed her spine until perspiration beaded her forehead.

In a few moments several housemates had scrambled to her aid and dragged her up to a standing position - she could tell she had hurt her leg or foot somehow, and badly - but with their help she began pulling, dragging herself back up the brass-plated stairway toward her room. She forced herself to laugh and chatter with her girlfriends, saying with a grimace that it had finally happened! (They say you can't live in St. Bede's Hall without taking a tumble down the grand staircase at least once.) Before she got to her room at least three or four of them had congratulated her again on the fabulous triumph at the meet the day before.

Behind the closed door of her room, still humiliated by the fall, Nita dumped herself in her desk chair and picked up a textbook. Final exams were only two weeks away, and she had to do well. She could just hear her mother telling her she had neglected her education in favour of the sports activities she loved, and Nita was determined to prove otherwise. After all, no one had forced her to come up to northern India from Sri Lanka for her schooling. She had wanted to travel, she still wanted to see the world, and she still wanted eventually to study psychology in a foreign land.

The pain pumped up from her big toe, through her leg and into her hip as she sat and studied, but the star athlete had been bruised dozens of times before in the combat of competitive sport, and had no time for fooling around with whatever this was. It didn't feel like torn ligaments or pulled muscles, so she didn't even peel off her white socks to take a look. This was really nothing compared to, say, how she felt after some of the hockey games her girls' team had played as practice skirmishes against men's teams. Men, the girls always said, will cheat when they fall behind, and Nita had taken her share of blows by the hockey stick. She was certainly used to a bruise now and then. It was all part of the thrill of competition, a thrill that she craved going into every game, and then savoured coming out.

The entire school, beautiful and serene as it was, generated a certain electricity in Nita. The venerable old University of H.P. (Himachal Pradesh) was situated in a cluster of lush firs and cedars in the foothills of the Himalayas in temperate northern India - far from the staggering suffering of Asia. Nita, an Anglican by birth, was one of only three Protestants on campus - and the only Spirit-filled Christian at that - among eighteen Roman Catholics, twenty or so Tibetan Buddhists, and a mixture of Hindus, agnostics, and atheists from all over the world.

In what could have been an intimidating setting, Nita decided to live her faith with excitement and drink in every moment. She was known for her zany sense of fun and her inclination for good times. She was always included when big groups of students took off to go out for dinner. She had studied speech and drama, as well as foreign languages, at Trinity College in London before coming to India, and her outgoing nature, knowledge and agility made her one of the university's most popular young people.

Among Nita's favourites were the nuns and priests who conducted the campus chapel. She attended 6:15 mass every morning and sang proudly in the Catholic church choir from the stately choir loft - to the delight of the nuns. She learned the various prayers and rituals and sincerely made each service a time of true worship with Catholic friends.

She was fond of hiking up to Eagle Mount where the head priest lived, to spar with the little old man over theology, world affairs, and politics. He took to teasing her by calling her his "faithful Catholic", a preposterous nametag for a Spirit-filled Episcopalian from the Church of England. But he could sense her deep commitment to God, and he eventually served her holy communion in the Catholic chapel - a strict taboo in Indian Catholicism.

Nita remained true to her Anglican heritage as well. Each Sunday morning she and her two Protestant friends made sandwiches and set out on foot to attend the nearest Episcopalian church some seven miles away. It was a huge old cathedral - empty and cold. The bishop's prepared sermons and somewhat pompous prayers echoed forlornly through the museum-like sanctuary each week. But even this weekly ritual somehow invigorated Nita. It was again part of the total experience, part of the adventure of life that she was inhaling so fully and deeply every day.

Still, from her first day on the campus, Nita's personal testimony as a Christian was her foremost priority. She excused herself wherever tobacco or drugs or alcohol appeared on campus, avoiding the seamy parties that are part of every secular university in the world. She was known as a Christian with practical convictions; no one challenged that, because she would never compromise her faith.

Deep within her being, Nita also resolved to live an active positive Christianity, to spend herself in the service of the Lord, by giving help to the helpless wherever and whenever she could.

An entire mission field lay just beyond the campus, where Tibetan refugees were encamped in a government settlement. Having fled their own bloodthirsty government, when the Communists crushed their gentle land, these people now suffered the menaces of refugee life - disease, hunger, and depression. It was Nita's first encounter with true starvation. She often walked with friends to the hospital near the camp and ministered there, feeding the hungry bodies, and speaking words of hope, encouragement, and love in Jesus Christ to hungry hearts. She became, true to form, a popular face in the refugee hospital. Eyes lit up in every ward she entered. She might stop to lift a lonely child to her bosom, or hold the hands of a tired old Tibetan man.

For Nita, these were the best of times.

Each day, her love affair with the entire university scene grew more impassioned - with every new tennis or cross-country victory, every hilarious storytelling session in the dorm, every exhilarating glide down the ski slopes. She was making life a blast at this formidable and fashionable old school - and both she and the school seemed to love it.

When Nita's giddy, victorious team returned to school the night before the accident, singing and shouting in the back of their huge open truck, staggering under the weight of their many trophies, and waking the entire campus, the jolly Irish principal had declared the next day a school holiday. Nita was vibrant as the heady celebration carried on, deep into a beautiful, fragrant moonlit night.

The team had slept late that morning then regrouped for a trip downtown, grateful for the unexpected holiday. They feasted on tandoori chicken and traditional Indian nan bread, and continued the exulting celebration of their victories. When finally the group decided to go to a movie, Nita headed back to campus, still brimming with delight. It was late afternoon.

As she bounded into the foyer at St. Bede's, she saw Bambi, a beautiful little two-year old girl who was staying with the nuns for a while. Bambi's mother was going through a difficult time in her life so the child spent most of her time as an unofficial ward of the dormitory.

Bambi had become the baby of St. Bede's, a precious little visitor who was welcome at every bedroom door. She would stand at the bottom of the long, wide staircase and call toward the bedrooms on the upper level: "May I come up and play?" And someone invariably responded, "Yes, Bambi, come up and play in my room."

But this day there were no takers. Everyone was busy taking advantage of the holiday with studies or more pressing diversions. As Nita crossed the foyer toward the staircase, she saw Bambi's big brown eyes blink back the tears of disappointment and rejection, her lip pouting out just a little.

Nita's heart twitched. From the moment the child appeared at St. Bede's, Bambi had touched Nita in a special way. Every time she saw the child she thought of the little girl's father, gone now, unavailable to give his little Bambi the love she would need so desperately in the coming years. Nita knew the emptiness that could mean. She had lost her own father as well ... and she could never quite get over the ache and the bitterness when she thought of how he died.

"Come on, let's go," Nita said to Bambi playfully as she got to the steps. "We'll go to my room."

Bambi smiled her fabulous tiny smile and grasped her friend's little finger. She knew that Nita kept toys and sweets for her in the room, even if she did have to get down to study.

Slowly they made their way up the stairs together, with Bambi's tiny fat legs stretching their best to make each new step. The two girls chatted excitedly all the way up, with Nita's eyes fastened on Bambi's plodding progress.

The top step somehow disappeared. Nita's legs slipped out from under her and tossed her face-down onto the upper few steps. In a split second she realized she had lost hold of the baby, and she rolled over on her back to reach for her. Bambi had fallen, and stayed put on a single step, her eyes wide open with surprise - but she was intact. Nita pushed herself with her elbows to stand up, but she never regained her footing. It all happened so suddenly, and she wound up on the floor, looking up at the beautiful architecture of the immense high ceiling in the foyer. Bambi was screaming, and the entire place was in an uproar.

Nita's vanity took the real blows. Here she was, the ranking female athlete, a model of coordination, who had just thudded down St. Bede's staircase on her behind!

Peeved and in pain she studied intently for the rest of the day in the seclusion of her room, ignoring the hurt in her legs and lower back. On a trip to the bathroom, just down the hall, she found she lost her equilibrium and fell down after every three or four steps - but her mind was fixed on her exams, and she returned to her books. Who had time for a checkup anyway?

But the creeping anguish had begun. By nightfall Nita was falling down with every step she took.

The next day she found a walking stick, and it was funny at first, how she manoeuvered herself around.

"Nita! What's this now?"

"Oh, haven't you heard? I've joined the stockbrokers in London!"

There was a bit of prestige, after all, in relying on a cane for a few days. But in her room, as she kept up her studies for final exams, the pain pounded with increasing intensity. Then a deadly numbness began to creep up her legs.

For the gruelling schedule of exams, the walking stick was worthless. Nita arranged for friends to be on hand for each excursion. They helped her out of St. Bede's and into each classroom, then back again after the exam. Each moment was more excruciating than the last. Desperately Nita clung to her mental faculties, gripping her pencil and pressing out each paragraph. She was not about to let a stupid fall down St. Bede's stairs destroy a semester of work - and open the door for Mother to make more comments.

The pain and the numbness, however, were both advancing ominously like twin terrors. Before the finals ended, Nita could no longer sit upright to take her tests. The pain stabbed her so viciously that she had to lean over on one side, stretching herself sideways in her chair, to write the tests. After three hours in that position she could not pull herself up. She looked down at her legs. She could see them, but she could neither feel them nor make them move. Two friends dragged her out of the chair and carried her back to St. Bede's, up the stairs, and into her room.

One of Nita's friends, Sister Andrew, dropped by. She was grim.

"Nonsense, Andy," Nita chided her. "It's a sprain or something. I just need to stay off my feet for a while - after finals."

"This won't do," the young nun said tersely, as if she hadn't heard a word, "You're going to see a doctor."

A car came in minutes, and Sister Andrew assembled a group of girls to carry the beautiful, awkward cargo back down the hated stairs. With some trouble they eventually stuffed her in the car, and they headed for the best orthopaedic specialist in northern India, a Jewish doctor who worked at a big Seventh Day Adventist hospital. Nita sat awkwardly as the doctor examined her legs, squeezing and kneading each joint in careful succession - toe, ankle, knee, hip. There was no response.

"But doctor, I have pain," Nita insisted. "It's drawing up my leg from my big toe."

The doctor fell silent and looked evenly at Sister Andrew for a moment. Then he gently turned the patient over, laying her flat on her stomach. Beginning at the neck, he ran his finger lightly along the length of her spine. Before he could pull away, Nita had let out a horrible scream.

"I want X-rays!" the doctor barked shortly, pointing his nervous nurse out the door. "I want the proofs immediately. Don't wait for them to dry."

The X-ray machine had turned out four pictures, and the doctor held them dripping up to the light. There was no intricate study to be done. The pictures were quite clear. Two discs in the lower lumbar region of Nita's back had been completely crushed, and broken bits of bone were floating aimlessly in her spinal fluid.

"Get her into the hospital immediately," he snapped as he bolted out of the room.

Sister Andrew raised her eyebrows. "Well, let's get to it.”

"Andy! Are you crazy?" Nita responded, incredulous. "This place is fourteen hundred rupees a day! I can't afford that! Forget it!"

They argued all the way back to campus. It's true that Nita's family, back in Sri Lanka, were wealthy, but the Sri Lanka government prohibited the export of money, and Nita's financial support had always been just adequate. A hospital stay could destroy her.

"You have no option," Sister Andrew insisted. "You heard the doctor. You have to get into a hospital. If you can't pay for medical attention here, then I'll put you on a plane back to Sri Lanka."

Within a week Nita could only move by dragging her legs behind her. Under constant pressure from her friend Andy, Nita finally acquiesced. She wearily dictated a cable for the nun to dispatch to the Edwards' residence on Alexandra Street in Colombo. It was strangely understated: "Arriving Indian Airlines March 27. Indisposed."

3

HOMECOMING

Sister Andrew saw to it that Nita was made comfortable on the plane, carefully strapped to a seat to keep her from slipping off, but the entire six-hour flight was still a physical and emotional torment for her. She could see herself being carried off the plane, a crippled martyr, and her mother collapsing in a nervous heap on the welcome deck.

Nita closed her eyes, her brow knitted. It was so degrading, this escapade! The entire thing seemed so foolish to her - as if she were some tragic clown, strapped in, dragging her legs around like so much excess baggage.

This was a far cry from the reigning princess she should have been for her homecoming ... a stellar figure, a glistening trophy of the Edwards family, worthy of her family name, worthy of her family's applause, a proud Sri Lankan returning to her homeland in triumph.

It was ironic that Sri Lanka, the beautiful island she now dreaded to see, was known in literature as "the land without sorrow, the isle of delight," an island so rich in natural beauty that legend said Adam went there from Eden! In fact, the chain of reefs and sandbanks connecting the island to India is still called Adam's Bridge.

In the days of the Sinbad stories, Arab sailors called this tropical land Serendip, from which came the wistful concept of serendipity. Indeed, countless sailors had opportunity to drink in the lush offerings of this fantasylike place, for the "jewel island" is situated strategically astride the Indian Ocean, and has been a port for the world's seafaring men since before the time of Christ.

Europeans called it Ceylon, and claimed that "from Ceylon to Paradise is a distance of forty Italian miles."

"The sound of waters calling from the fountain of Paradise is heard there," a thirteenth-century traveller wrote.

For the islanders, though, one name has always been adequate for their land: Sri Lanka, "the Resplendent Isle." It is no exaggeration. Luxuriant vegetation covers much of the island, including exotic fruits, flowers, and trees; elephants, water buffalo, sloth bears, and other beasts roam wild; a rainbow of birds make the island their home; wide beaches ring the island nation, and the coastal waters teem with tropical marine life. Warm, wonderful, and waiting are words frequently used in superlatives for the enriched land.

It was the perfect homeland for a girl like Nita Edwards, with such poise and promise. It should have been a perfect homecoming. But no - now the dream was mangled! Her track star's legs hung limply, like mud flaps on a Mercedes. And shame burned in her face when she thought of the sympathy she would be bathed in. It was certainly not how she had imagined herself returning, not even in her most disturbing dreams.

The plane landed roughly, shooting pain through Nita's fragile body, and the passenger exodus began. Nita pushed herself up away from the seat, but it was futile. She was completely lifeless from the hips down. Muscular control had vanished.

The final passenger filed past her, and Nita felt the knot tighten in her stomach.

"Lord, you've just got to get me up and walk me, somehow, off this plane," she prayed silently, fervently, her teeth clenched.

She set the cane aside and lunged forward out of the seat. The numbed legs stood straight beneath her, but atrocious pain gripped her from deep inside and wrenched her breath away.

Flooded by God's grace and pulsing with adrenalin, she shuffled up the endless ramp into the terminal and collapsed into a chair, sweating ferociously. She could not move for two hours, her lungs heaving in and out, desperate with pain. Her jaws ached from her teeth being locked together so hard. Finally she drew herself up and dragged herself step by step to a telephone to call home.

It seemed like hours, but it wasn't long before her mother and uncle arrived. Nita put on a smile and kissed and hugged them. Mrs. Edwards cried uncontrollably but her daughter shushed her with, "Oh, don't; I'll be all right." Nita was following the script she had written in her mind during the jarring aeroplane ride to Sri Lanka.

Perhaps it was pride that had made Nita set up this homecoming scenario, but, she did not want her family unduly worried. Therefore, she had insisted her family not meet her. She would call them when she arrived. She had brushed aside all offers of help from the airline personnel and refused to even consider a wheel chair. Now she was paying for her pride as the pain squeezed the breath from her. Her sheer bulldog tenacity kept her conscious on her hasty ride from the airport to the hospital.

There was a private ward waiting for Nita at Colombo General Hospital. The family had already watched her struggle to the car at the airport, so now her cousins wanted to pick her up and carry her into the building. But no, Nita insisted she could walk into the hospital!

She crossed the threshold on her feet - defiant. But she would never walk back out. Even her iron will would melt. She was becoming a living corpse.

4

THE CREEPING DEATH

A concerned doctor smeared plaster down the length of Nita's body, encasing her in a cast from hips down, effectively immobilizing her. The foot of the bed was elevated three feet, tilting her sharply. Then she was weighted with fifteen-pound ingots, to realign her damaged spine. The orthopaedic specialist Dr. Shanmugangham (or Dr. Shan as he was conveniently called) checked her every day. "Three weeks," he assured her, "and you will be all right."

Mrs. Edwards spent day after day by her daughter's bedside. She knew that Nita loved shrimp, so she took to feeding them to her one at a time. Nita could feel the fish travel upward along the crazy tilt of her body, to her stomach, but somehow the fun of munching shrimp soon disappeared.

Hospital aides sponged her every day, dressed her and undressed her, and dressed her again. Each exercise was doubly hard for Nita: each movement sent stabs of pain through her - but it was the incessant invasions of her privacy that rubbed her raw. The daughter of the late magistrate Edwards had never been a hospital patient before, and she had certainly never used a bedpan. Now her biological functions were observed and clocked and analyzed hour by hour. Again and again, Nita's pride was poked and punctured by the crass inquisitions of cold medical science.

Three weeks came and went. Dr. Shan continued his rounds, checking in faithfully every day and talking in hopeful terms.

Six weeks came and went. Dr. Shan kept visiting, but he said less.

More weights were added to the traction unit.

Nine weeks came and went. Dr. Shan missed a day occasionally.

There was no improvement.

Eventually forty-five pounds of weights pulled down on Nita's limbs.

"When am I going back to school?" she asked many times. "I still have finals to take, and they're going to select the hockey team without me if I don't get a move on!"

Beside her bed she kept a stack of fat psychology books. Every day she had her private attendant - a Buddhist girl her mother had hired - stand one of them up in front of her, just within reach of her fingers so she could turn the pages.

She also began exploring the Bible as never before, discovering the Old Testament virtually for the first time. "God is our refuge and strength," she read again and again from Psalm 46:1, "a very present help in trouble."

"Don't study so hard," the doctors would say as they passed by.

"The angle is bad," her mother warned. "You'll hurt your eyes."

Still Nita put in dozens of hours studying, eager to get out of "this stupid bed," determined to score well on tests she would never take ... dreaming of winning hockey games she would never play.

Week plodded after week, fading into a mist of timelessness. A kidney infection took hold in Nita's body, then a urinary tract infection. Elimination became painful, and she began taking medication for each new condition.

Every day she tried to wriggle her toes. She could see them down there, poking through the plaster - but they didn't move at all.

"It's just because of the traction," the doctor insisted. "You'll be all right."

Nita knew that soon the family could inevitably begin thinking of her as a commodity. This fear was amplified when they decided she could get better care in a general ward than in her private ward, because of the more consistent traffic of medical personnel - so she was moved. Hospital policy dictated that private ward patients could have their own linens - Nita's pillow case featured a pussy cat that she was very fond of -but general ward patients could not. The family had to pull strings to get an exception for Nita. By the weight of the Edwards name, and because several of the medical personnel at the hospital were relatives, she got to keep her pussy cat.

The move to the general ward also meant giving up one's private bedpan in favour of the "trolley", a cabinetlike unit stacked with a number of bedpans. It was rolled in periodically for the use of everyone on the ward. Nita was horrified. She cringed at the concept of a dozen bladders being forced to empty themselves on the same schedule, and was aghast at the corruption on the individual bedpans on the trolley. She came to call it "the gallows." But again, her prominent family connections saved her from it. The nun in charge of the ward gave her a brand-new sterilized bedpan, which she could simply turn over to the trolley each time it came around. Nita was still nauseated by the procedure, humiliated by the necessity of a bedpan in the first place!

Nita had no idea how little ground she had actually covered, nor that the worst was yet to come.

She had tremendous confidence in her doctors. After all, she came from a long line of medical people - even her mother was a top surgical nurse - and she knew she was in the competent hands of an orthopaedic gold medallist from London. All the doctors seemed keenly interested in her progress, and they were fond of telling her which of her relatives had called after hours the night before to check in on her. When a new nurse joined the staff, one of her first questions was, "Who's this Edwards in the corner that all the doctors seem so concerned about?"

And yet there were gaffes by the hospital staff. One night Nita was snapped out of her sleep by an incredible stabbing pain in her spine. The tension wire on her traction unit had broken - the technician who hooked it up had made an error - and her spine had absorbed the sudden shock.

No other traction unit on the ward ever failed, but Nita's snapped twice more. Each time she screamed with the pain.

"God!" she finally cried out in anguish after the third mistake. "Do you really care?"

Progress failed to occur. There were interminable gruelling sessions, as the medical people X-rayed and tested and counter-tested, squinting and sighing and "waiting and seeing."

But there was no improvement.

"God! Do you realise I'm suffering here in this bed?"

A vague new sensation crept in under the plaster one day, and Nita began to complain of a tingling sensation in her toes. The doctors peeled away a little of the plaster and pricked the bottom of her feet with a pin. No response. They pricked the toes, but there was no feeling. Nita's eyes searched the doctor's faces, but she saw no trace of hope.

Day after day, the pricking tests were repeated. After a time, Nita stopped watching their faces and just looked away instead. She felt distinctly like a joint being carved and sliced without care or concern, and she could not bear to look at the doctors directly without feeling angry. Her feet bled, soiling the sheets and discolouring the plaster. Nita never felt a thing, except in her heart. There, it hurt.

"God! Do you remember me?"

Three-and-a half months after her arrival at the hospital, the doctors decided that traction was not helping. The plaster could come off. Nita rejoiced. She imagined how wonderful it would feel to move her feet around again, to flex her legs and stretch and kick and exercise those long-wasted running muscles.

Aides cracked off the plaster in tiny bits. Underneath was the original sticky adhesive, which they washed off with alcohol. Nita could see that her once-brown legs were now a sickly grey-blue.

"Can I move now?" she asked them anxiously.

"Not yet," one of them said. "We have to lower your feet."

They eased the foot of the bed back down to floor level and Nita could feel the circulation of her blood swimming back down into her legs. After three-and-a-half months her body had adjusted to the awkward upside-down tilt, and now she felt a wave of nausea wash over her. Everything began to look grey, her head felt groggy ... and she blacked out.

When she woke up, she was instantly alert. Immediately she tried to lift her knees. They would not move. She tried to wiggle her toes. They lay limp.

"Why can't I move my legs?" Nita asked the nurses around her.

"Oh, you'll be all right," one of them assured her. "We have just removed the plaster."

Nita tried again - but nothing.

"The feeling will come back," another nurse told her soothingly. "It may take a little time, that's all. You just hold steady."

The nurses left, but Nita did not hold steady. She poured it on, struggling to make a single muscle move below her waist - to no avail. She lay there completely still, boiling over with frustration, trying to make even the slightest movement, until her neck ached from the tension.

Determined to get answers, she sent for her cousin Robert Benjamin, a specialist who worked one floor above her. He was in surgery at the time, but as soon as he finished he came down.

"Hey, big brother," Nita said, trying to sound lighthearted. "I can't move my legs. What's wrong?"

Robbie looked puzzled. "What do you mean, you can't move?"

Nita shrugged. "I can't move."

He grasped her leg at the knee and ankle and flexed it manually.

"Do you still have the tingling sensation in your toes?" "Yes, sometimes."

"How's the kidney infection?"

"The same, I'm still taking those pills."

Robbie turned around and walked out without another word. He walked back up to the operating room and found Dr. Shan.

"You've got Nita on that medication for a kidney infection?"

"That's right," the specialist answered, proceeding with his surgery.

"They've stopped using that stuff in England," Robbie

went on. "They think it causes loss of sensation."

Dr. Shan looked up momentarily, then back down at his work. "I'll take her off it then. Thank you, Doctor."

"Thank you, Doctor."

Nita looked at her statue-like legs and whispered Psalm 46:1 once again: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." But it was the next two verses that were so hard, "Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea: Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof." She knew it must be true, but she wondered when the strength would come, and when the trouble would end. And it was so hard not to be afraid.

The next day was a bit brighter. Nita's sister brought her husband Rex, and a few ladies to visit. They had a good time chatting - it was such a relief to see Nita out of that awful traction!

While the women talked, Rex sat at the end of the bed and impishly pinched Nita's toes. She ignored him. He was not to be denied the satisfaction of a giggle, however. As the conversation went on, he tickled the bottom of her foot. Nita continued talking. Rex's face darkened. He knew something was desperately wrong. Nita had always been ticklish. Now he squeezed her toes one at a time. There was still no response. She had no idea that he was even touching her. She was completely, undeniably numb. The tingling sensation had faded, and in its place was nothing. Nothing at all.

Nita's inquisition continued as the numbness hung on. She had several other relatives working in Colombo General and other area hospitals. Each time one of them visited her, she asked the same questions: "What's wrong with me? Why can't I move my legs?" And to the doctors: "What are you guys doing? When can I get out of here?"

No one came up with any answers.

One day Nita's doctor cousin came to rub her down. While he worked he talked.

"Look, we don't keep you here because we love you and want you near us," he said directly. "You're not doing us any favours by staying here so long. We're just trying to help you get out of here and back on your feet. So you just quit the griping, will you? Shut up, and give us a chance." His voice was flat with frustration.

Nita looked at him evenly. She realized what he was saying by his tone. She was in serious trouble. The implications suddenly occurred to her: she might never be normal again. Instinctively she rushed to stave off the inevitable.

"Please," she begged him, "don't let them send me home in a wheelchair or on crutches. I'll stay a week, a month, whatever it takes to get well... but don't send me out a cripple and have the world staring at me and calling me a `poor thing!'"

Her cousin turned away quickly so she could not see the sting of tears escaping from his helpless eyes.

Nita's fate seemed to be already sealed. She watched as her legs began to warp and bend, and her toes started curling up under her feet. Each day the deformity grew a bit more severe, a bit closer to being grotesque. It was as if she were some horrible wooden puppet being slowly, imperceptibly pulled by some sadistic showmaster.

"Doctor," she demanded fearfully, one day, "How will I run again?"

"It will all work out," he responded softly, feeling no guilt for his lie.

She could see the lights dimming as the parade of medical men dwindled. They were all baffled - she knew that. They didn't want to be reminded of that wall of frustration they could not break through.

And deep within her spirit, Nita felt the creeping dread ... the fear that she would never run again, never outrace another tennis ball, never run another 1500. She said nothing, but every day she felt her despair deepening and knew it was the "knowing" that filled her with fear.

When she could no longer feel the icy metal bedpan against her buttocks, Nita knew for sure the doctors were lying. The traction had nothing to do with her toes not moving - her toes would not move because she was paralysed, and the paralysis was moving steadily upward. She was dying part by part. She touched her legs lightly. They were cold.

Nita continued plaguing the hospital staff and her family for straight answers, maintaining a relentless facade of toughness. But inside she was grieving already for her own demise. She was attending her own funeral. She knew she was in trouble from the day the traction was removed. At night she would lie wide-eyed, straining to move her legs, and watch them lie there, lifeless. During the day she lay in the huge bed, helpless and numb, with her eyes on the door, waiting and wishing for someone to bring the good news - a magic touch - that would restore the old feelings and help her move her legs. But there was no magic lamp and no such genie appeared.

She had trusted the doctors; but medical science had spent its tokens. Dr. Shan stopped dropping by at all.

She bribed a hospital aide to steal the medical records that no doctor would show her. They confirmed the worst.

"God help me," Nita whispered, alone in the night, leaning back on Psalm 46:1. "You are my `refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.' God, you are my only hope!"

5

GUINEA PIG

Dr. Shan had generally visited the ward with an entourage of six or seven doctors and housemen tagging along to observe. Now the others began showing up in smaller groups without Shan, probably because Nita's family and friends had badgered the specialists constantly with questions, and they had no answers to give them.

The other doctors had a pattern of callousness. They could not heal her, so they seemed to use her as some human textbook to increase their knowledge. They normally tested Nita's senses with sharp probes and then stood mumbling among themselves. Whenever Nita finally grew irritated enough to ask what they were saying, they invariably ignored the question with a smile, tapped her on the shoulder or ran their fingers through her hair, and said, "You'll be all right." It was the token "concern" that angered Nita most. She could not believe they really cared about anything beyond building their own careers.

They had a way of ignoring the civilities Nita had known all her life. They would leave the curtain open as they lifted her body and pulled her clothes off, and move her numb legs into a variety of positions, as if Nita had no pride. And always, more pricking with long needles. They exposed her womanhood without as much as a casual care. She was a sexless mannequin - an object, a thing.

At eleven one morning, one of the doctors arrived with the usual long needle. He put the patient through the usual embarrassing paces, carelessly probing and poking until she was on the verge of exploding. Then, without warning, Dr. Shan strode into the room, with the rest of the group on his heels. He marched directly to Nita's bed, talking loudly, obviously in the middle of some exciting medical discourse to his elite audience. He propped her legs up, pricked her once, and said, "Huh! So you can't feel, huh?" And he continued with his speech to the others.

Nita was seething - furious.

As Shan went on talking, he picked up her foot, spreading her legs wide, and began criss-crossing the base of her foot with the long needle. She could see she had become a guinea pig to him, an object lesson for medical students. He kept on talking at full speed, never looking down at the trenches he was digging in Nita's foot. After a while he flopped her on her side and continued his cutting on her thigh, still lecturing with reckless abandon.