Arturo G. Azurdia III recounts this story of Kent & Barbara Hughes:
[S]ome years ago [now] … Barbara checked into the local hospital for the purpose of undergoing a very simple surgical procedure. And while she was in surgery, Kent waited patiently in the lobby. During that time, much to his surprise, he was greeted by a friend of his wife’s niece, a young girl by the name of Suzanne. Suzanne hardly knew Barbara, had no idea that Barbara was undergoing surgery that afternoon. She was a lab technician in the hospital who rarely, if ever by the way, walked through the waiting area of the hospital. After a brief conversation, she wished Kent and Barbara the best and went on her way. A little while later, the doctor came into the waiting area and told Kent that the surgery had gone well and that he would be able to see Barbara in about an hour and a half. And so, Kent decided to run home and get some things and come back to the hospital. When he arrived back at the hospital, he found his daughter there totally distraught, only to discover that Barbara had been rushed back into surgery. She had started to haemorrhage and the doctors didn’t know why. This went on for five and a half hours, late into the night. Finally, after doing everything they could to stop the bleeding, without success, the doctors closed Barbara back up. At two in the morning, the entire pastoral staff from the church showed up at the hospital to pray and uphold the family. Barbara continued to haemorrhage, however, throughout the night. They continued to replace her blood but they couldn’t find a way to make the bleeding stop.
On the morning of the next day, with the family still gathered in the waiting room, Suzanne walked by, altogether unaware of what had transpired through the night. She decided to bring Barbara some magazines to read. And while she notices the family gathered together in crisis, it dawns on her, it probably is inappropriate for me to be here and so she very quietly turns around and begins to walk away when she hears Kent’s associate pastor say to him, “You need to go in to encourage Barbara, Kent. She knows her blood will not clot. She knows she’s dying.” Suzanne hears that little phrase, “her blood will not clot,” and her memory immediately goes back to an occasion ten years earlier when she was in med school with Barbara’s niece. One evening, while they were in the lab, with nothing else to do, out of sheer boredom, they decide to take each other’s blood test. And, in so doing, they found out that Barbara’s niece had a rare condition that prevented her blood from clotting properly. She runs back to her lab, looks up the data on Barbara’s niece, prints it out, and runs it to the nurse overseeing Barbara’s care. The nurse looks at it, takes it to the surgeon. He, in turn, has it immediately sent to a pathologist who compares Barbara’s blood to the blood condition of her niece. He determines that they have the very same problem and thus orders a course of treatment that proves to save Barbara’s life.
It just so happened that ten years earlier two medical students were so bored with their day that they decided to do blood work on each other? It just so happened that one of these same lab technicians would walk through a part of the hospital that she very rarely frequented on the very same day that Kent and Barbara happened to be there? It just so happened that this same young girl returned the next morning only to overhear the words, “her blood isn’t clotting”? It just so happened that her memory was sufficiently jogged to remember the apparently meaningless event ten years before?
Story recounted by Arturo G. Azurdia III in a sermon entitled “It Just So Happened…?” available online.
Reforming the City of Roses 