We All Want a Sweet, Neat Package
by John Wessells
One afternoon I picked up an issue of Time magazine. The cover photo grabbed my attention immediately: a disfigured young woman lay comatose in a hospital bed. A feeding tube protruded from her stomach. Her father sat forlornly at her side. The headline on the cover read in stark letters: “The Right to Die.”

The picture startled me. This girl looked like the kind of people I sang to every day. On the other hand, she looked as if she were on a much higher functioning level than most of my patients. Many of them lay in low-level comas, showing little or no physical response to stimulus.

This girl’s name was Christine Busalacchi. Something immediately told me that Gail and I would be meeting her. I dove into the cover story, which mentioned her father’s legal battle to have Christine’s feeding tube removed. It also mentioned that she and another comatose girl, Nancy Cruzan, were in the same rehabilitation center somewhere in Missouri.

As it happened, Gail and I had been invited to speak the following spring at several churches in the Midwest, including Missouri. I knew we had to make a trip to that hospital.

On December 17, we finally arrived in Mountain Grove, Missouri, at the home of our close friends, Clyde and Diana Dale. The Dales lived only an hour and a half from the hospital in Mount Vernon. As soon as our bags were unpacked, Clyde showed me that morning’s newspaper. It was filled with accounts of the protest, which was growing larger by the day. Pictures showed protesters and police surrounding the hospital. Now I wondered if we would ever see Nancy or Christine at all. Then I noticed a quote in the newspaper by a chaplain from the hospital: I wrote down his name as a possible contact.

The next morning we all decided that only the Dales’ adult son, Martin, and I should make the drive to Mount Vernon. We thought it wise to check out the scene at the hospital because of the news accounts. Yet, as Martin and I pulled up to the Missouri Rehabilitation Center, I realized nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.

Helicopters circled overhead. Television crews lit up the grounds. Police stood blocking the hospital’s entrances. And protesters swarmed everywhere. They had set up a tent village. And they were marching in front of the hospital, holding up signs and placards. The whole scene was a mass of confusion.

Martin and I parked the van and made our way through the crowds to the hospital’s front entrance. We were greeted by a half-dozen state troopers. I asked if we could talk to the chaplain. The officers examined us, then looked at one another, stepped aside, and opened the door. We walked inside and quickly were pulled aside by an officer. Another trooper went to get the chaplain for us.

A few moments later, the head chaplain walked up to us. His name was Ted Coleman. I introduced myself and gave him a brochure describing what we do.

“This is what we’re about,” I explained. “I feel strongly that God wants us to spend some time with Nancy Cruzan and Christine Busalacchi.”

The chaplain laughed under his breath and shook his head. “You’re about the three-hundredth person here today who’s been sent by God,” he said. He then began reeling off some disturbing stories about the bizarre characters who’d shown up as God’s emissaries.

My heart sank. I hadn’t been prepared for any of this. I thought I’d come to Missouri to sing to a dying girl and tell her about Jesus. But obviously that wasn’t going to happen. It all seemed tragically ironic: I’d never had any trouble getting in to see head-injury patients before, because no one else ever bothered to visit them. But now, because believers had banded together to “fight for life,” I might not get a chance to share the love of God with a dying girl. It made me sad.

There was nothing more we could do. Martin and I thanked the chaplain and drove back home to Mountain Grove. That night our families gathered and prayed for Nancy, as we would every night for the rest of the trip.

When Christmas Day arrived, Martin came in with the morning newspaper. His face was heavy.

“Nancy died this morning,” he said.

All the way home to New York, Gail and I wondered aloud why we’d gone there. The hospital experience had been so chaotic. We had been dazed by the whole ordeal.

Three weeks later, in late January, we still hadn’t shaken off our confusion when I received a phone call from someone named Peggy Cooper, one of the chaplains of the Missouri Rehabilitation Center. She had learned about us through a brochure we’d given Ted Coleman. She was wondering if we’d be interested in coming back to Missouri. She wanted us to visit Christine.

I couldn’t believe my ears. Suddenly, I was flooded with the feelings I’d had when I first saw Christine’s picture on the cover of Time.

“There’s only one catch,” Peggy noted. “You have only fourteen days to get here. Christine’s father wants to move her to a different hospital. Right now the Rehabilitation Center has legal guardianship over her, but that’s only for two more weeks.”

Immediately I told Peggy we’d come, and hung up. Within three days, Gail, John Samuel, and I were in Missouri again, driving with the Dales to the Rehabilitation Center.

This time, the hospital grounds lay so bare it was eerie. There were no tents, no protesters, no media crews. And the doors were wide open, with no state troopers to greet us. Instead, we were met inside by several of the chaplains—Ted Coleman, Peggy Cooper, and George Wilson—each of them grinning.

“We’re behind you,” Ted told us. “We want you to feel free to do whatever it is you do.”

The room they led us to could have been that of any other comatose person. Greeting cards, old and new, hung from a bulletin board. Pictures of family and friends stood on a bed stand. And lying in bed was an almost motionless figure, facing the window. A nurse called her name—and Christine turned her head and looked at us.

When I first saw her gaze, I couldn’t believe this was the same girl as pictured on the cover of Time. She looked so alive! And she was all dressed up instead of left lying in bed with her stomach and feeding tube exposed. She was wearing makeup; her hair was styled. And she was smiling from ear to ear. Every person in the room was struck by the strong sense of life exuding from this girl. She obviously was much higher-functioning than the magazine cover had portrayed.

As we gathered around her bed, Christine saw little John Samuel in my arms. Immediately, her eyes brightened. She exhaled in a long wheeze—a laugh! John Sammy cooed back at her, and Christine gave an awkward giggle. She seemed to enjoy it all.

I took my guitar out of the case. Someone began to pray, and I picked out the opening chords of “There is None Holy as the Lord.” As we sang, a peaceful presence filled the room. Christine remained focused in on us—she was absorbing everything. A few moments later, as we sang “As the Deer Panteth for the Water,” she was still right alongside us.

We continued worshiping a while, and Christine simply seemed to melt. Her entire body relaxed, as many patients do when Gail and I worship with them. At one point, I stopped and explained to Christine what was going on. I spoke very simply to her about salvation and how Jesus had died for her sins. I told her about forgiveness—that all she had to do was open her heart to Jesus, and she could enjoy new life right where she was. She seemed to understand everything I said.

When we finished our time with Christine, the chaplains told us they fully approved of everything we’d done.

“You’ve got blanket permission to come in here anytime,” Ted said.

The next day, the sound of our worship spread throughout the entire floor. One high-level patient wheeled himself over, then another. Nurses maneuvered wheelchairs holding low-level patients. Soon a small crowd had gathered. Everyone, it seemed, could sense more than just music.

Before we left that day, we all turned to say goodbye to Christine. She answered with a long, loud gasp—“Uuuuhhh”—the sound head-injured people often make when they want to speak. We knew it was her “goodbye.” Then, unbelievably, Christine lifted an arm about fifteen inches above the tray on her wheelchair. It was a wave.

The next day, as we filed from the elevator onto the third floor, Christine spotted us from some thirty feet away. She saw me carrying my guitar—and instantly she began to smile “Uuuuhhh,” she gasped, and she raised her arm again in a wave. She recognized us.

One afternoon, Gail, the Dales, and I sat with Christine in the hallway. I opened my Bible and read aloud from Isaiah 55:1 (ESV): “Come everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.”

I turned to our new friend. “Christine, God says if you’re thirsty, you can drink in his Spirit,” I said. “Are you thirsty?”

Christine turned to look at me, then opened her mouth. Lifting her arm, she pointed her index finger to her tongue. Then she made a low noise: “Nnnhhh...”

We were astonished. “Yes, you’re thirsty,” I said. “Christine, Jesus’ Spirit in you will never run dry.”

In our nine days at the hospital, we saw many such people—voiceless yet fully alive—touched by the love of God. Gail and I truly were sad when the day came to go home. Yet we were reassured by the care and concern that the hospital staff had for the patients and, especially, for Christine.

In the months immediately following, Gail and I heard occasional news reports on court decisions regarding her father’s legal battle to remove Christine’s feeding tube. For over a year we heard nothing more. Then, one February, we learned that Christine’s feeding tube had finally been removed. She was deprived of all food and water.

I was incredulous when I read the New York Times’ report that the tube “was removed...after a team of neurologists at Barnes [hospital in Saint Louis] confirmed that Miss Busalacchi was in a persistent vegetative state...The diagnosis...was consistent with diagnoses made by other physicians since Miss Busalacchi was injured [in 1987]. Persistent vegetative state...is characterized by the incapacity to speak, think, or move voluntarily.”

Christine died the next month. Her obituary in the Times stated that “the cause of death was cardiac arrest due to dehydration...The medial team at Barnes said Miss Busalacchi did not feel pain or suffering as her body dehydrated...The team said it was impossible for people in her condition ‘to feel thirst, hunger, pain, or suffering.’”

Needless to say, the Times’ coverage of the ordeal, like Time magazine’s cover photo, didn’t reflect our experience with this vibrant young woman. During that week in March when Christine was without food and water, Gail enlisted all our friends to pray for her as she was starving. We couldn’t bear to think about her in such agony.

What did these two women say to me?

Here’s what I learned from Nancy Cruzan: The hospital chaplains at the Rehabilitation Center told us something very revealing. Despite all the protesters who had once shown concern for her, no one had ever returned to show similar concern for the other forty or more brain-injured patients who remained there after Nancy died.

And it makes me wonder: Why is it so much easier to care about causes than about people?

In this case, I’m talking about both sides of the issue. We all want a sweet, neat package. On one side, we want to believe the news accounts that those two young women didn’t suffer when they were no longer given food. On the other hand, we want to believe that caring means protesting outside hospitals.

I’m not sure I have any answers anymore. I just know that Christine Busalacchi once pointed to her tongue to let me know she was thirsty for the love of God.

From Conversations with the Voiceless: Finding God’s Love in Life’s Hardest Questions by John Wessells