The Vagabond. Frank Rautenbach

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СКАЧАТЬ my life, it left me with the paralysing job of trying to stay out of trouble before I died.

      Not something I was particularly good at.

      I remember one such occasion during my standard 9 year (grade 11). I had been invited to an end-of-term party. I was in the mood to have some fun, so put on my favourite shirt and jeans and got ready to party.

      My parents were hosting a church small-group at our house that night. As I was leaving, I quickly popped into the lounge to say goodbye and check what time I needed to be home. There was a good mixture of young and old people and they all greeted me warmly. They invited me to stay, to join them for some praise and worship and Bible study.

      I solemnly apologised – I’d already committed to plans for the night. Saying my goodbyes, I got out there as fast as I could.

      At the party, I quickly scanned the landscape and noticed a cute girl I’d grown up with. For some reason, our paths had never crossed in the romance department. The timing, however, seemed just right on this particular night. I made a move … Let’s just say things worked out just as I’d hoped they would. Like a thirsty monkey who’d had his fill at the water hole, I eventually rode home on my motorbike.

      It was about 10 pm when I got home. My parents and the small-group were still drinking tea and coffee as they finished up their meeting. Leaning against the wall of the big arched entrance to our lounge, I still felt pumped after a successful night.

      I struck my best James Dean/Rebel Without a Cause pose, just sans the cigarette dangling out of my mouth.

      I was about to ask them for a rundown of their meeting, when some of the women started giggling: ‘Wow, it looks like you had a pretty good night.’

      I frowned.

      ‘She kissed you properly, huh?’ one quipped.

      I had no idea what they were talking about. ‘Bed time for me. Goodnight, everyone,’ I mumbled like a responsible teenager.

      I dropped my bike helmet and keys in their usual spot and made my way to the guest bathroom for some water.

      In the mirror, my whole face and part of my neck was covered in bright-red lipstick. I looked like a three-year-old who had got hold of his mother’s make-up bag. It was smeared everywhere.

      Growing up, I was excited about this new life in Christ I had received after being born again, and the ‘going to heaven’ status that came with the deal. Kind of like Christmas, someone else was born and I got presents. I also loved the idea of Jesus’ victory on the cross. That He ruled and reigned from his heavenly throne. I wanted to take part in that victory or, more to the point, I wanted to share in the benefits. There clearly was space for Christmas and Easter in my theology.

      But I didn’t pay much attention to the messy bit in the middle, the actual life I would live from the cradle to the grave, where the Bible talks about, ‘Even though Jesus was God’s Son, He learned obedience from the things He suffered’ (Hebrews 5:8, NLT).

      I’VE COME TO TELL YOU THAT YOU’RE GOING TO LIVE

      A few months after lipstick-gate I arrived home late from yet another party. My genius seventeen-year-old self had already concocted my ‘Sorry, I am late’ speech in my head. I opened the front door and, as I stepped in, my brother grabbed me by the chest and shook me around: ‘Where were you! We couldn’t get hold of you!’

      My mother was there, too, speaking animatedly and repeating my brother’s frustrations. I was freaked out and told them to calm down. I had been at a friend’s house, I said. Playing snooker. It took longer than expected.

      ‘Dad’s had a heart attack,’ my mother said.

      It wasn’t possible. He was too young. I stumbled into the lounge and dropped my head into my arms and onto the sideboard. My mother put her arm around me and apologised for shouting. They did not know where I was. Getting home late made matters worse. It was 1989, after all, phone communication was limited to landlines.

      It was a very serious heart attack. He was in the local hospital’s intensive-care unit. There were major complications. He was only 48 years old and his life was hanging in the balance.

      The next two weeks at home were mayhem. Apart from praying up a storm each day, my mother’s biggest priority was arranging for my father to be transported to the National Hospital in Bloemfontein. Our hometown, East London, did not have the medical facilities to treat my father’s condition.

      First, they needed to stabilise him before he could travel. Apart from the heart attack, he was battling pulmonary edema, otherwise known as water in the lungs.

      He could not be flown by commercial airline – it was against the law and too dangerous.

      My aunt, based in Bloemfontein and legendary for her resourcefulness, managed to arrange a small private plane to fetch him.

      In the meantime, my mother pulled out every Psalm she could find containing the word ‘wings’ and prayed up yet another storm.

      My grandmother would fly from Bloemfontein to look after us kids, allowing my mother to be at my father’s side. They had no idea how long they would be gone. Whether the operation would end in a lengthy period of rehabilitation, or a funeral.

      Despite their fears, my father arrived safely. Later that afternoon, he started experiencing another angina attack. The medical team was extremely concerned, immediately performing a cardiac catheterisation, including an angiogram. The results were not good. One coronary artery was completely blocked; the other two had both narrowed by more than 70%. The cardiologist in charge knew there was only one possible treatment: an emergency bypass operation.

      After wheeling my father from the catheterisation theatre back into intensive care, his heart stopped beating within minutes. He had to be defibrillated.

      They were running out of time.

      The operating theatre was prepped by the seven medical professionals on the operating team.

      As they were getting ready for my father’s operation, a new patient arrived at the hospital. It was a 31-year-old preacher who had collapsed on a tennis court earlier that day after suffering a heart attack. My father, also being a doctor, was aware of the established rule of thumb in a hospital: the younger patient gets priority. This was a major setback for him.

      His life was hanging on a thread.

      Fortunately, for the young preacher and his family, the doctors were able to stabilise his condition without needing to operate.

      They shifted their focus back to my father.

      Now all they needed was for the blood to arrive from the blood bank so that they could start the operation. By 1 am, the blood had not yet arrived. It later came to light that the blood bank had somehow mixed up my father’s order with the preacher’s cancelled order, causing a delay … and another frustrating setback.

      By 3:30 am everything had been resolved. The general anaesthetic was administered. Opening my father’s chest, they exposed his heart and attached the necessary pipes to continue blood circulation during the bypass procedure. At the same time, a second surgeon was removing veins from my father’s leg to complete the bypass procedure. At 5 am, they had sufficiently cooled down his heart and it stopped СКАЧАТЬ