The unappreciated Hiemlich
Jan 13 '08
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The busy lunchroom of the large office where I worked rumbled with the chatter of a couple hundred employees. The din of voices faded away quickly as a man sitting at a table by himself began coughing loudly. All eyes turned as his hacking cut through the conversations like a giant phlegmy knife.
I turned to see what was amiss and instantly recognized him. He was widely regarded for his lack of hygiene and below average conversational skills. As we watched him, he was in that horrible state of coughing up some improperly chewed morsel and then sucking it back into his windpipe when he gasped for air. His eyes were bulging in fear and his face reddened as the piece of offending food slipped forward with a cough then rushed back in with each gasp.
Aside from his wheezing and hacking, the room became deadly silent. All eyes were upon the man. I was three tables away hoping that I didn’t need to perform the Hiemlich maneuver. He was obviously in trouble. The coughing became weaker, fading to a whine like a piece of paper caught in a heat vent. Despite not having any real friends that I knew of among his peers, I was certain that someone closer than me would save him. Wouldn’t they?
He stood up from the table. His face was a horrific shade of red now. A girl at the next table had leapt to her feet moving to aid him. She reached about him and pulled. A mighty cough freed the guilty portion of food. The first rush of air to his lungs expelled in an angry explicative punctuating his raspy yell, “Don’t touch me!”
She moved away, terrified and baffled by the man’s reaction. For him, it had obviously been embarrassing to become the center of attention for a couple hundred co-workers simply by failing to eat his food in a safe manner. However, none could have predicted such violent compensation for saving a man’s life.
I hadn’t thought of this event for a long time since witnessing it about ten years ago. I was one of those odd things, both frightening and perversely amusing, that sticks in my head with great detail. Today it seems important to me.
There are two types of people in the world, those who lump people into two groups and those who don’t (My apologies to Robert Benchley for my barbarization of his quote). Regardless of your take on that, there were two types of people watching this event, those who took action and those who didn’t. I sat at my table hoping that someone else would save him. Heck, I was three tables away. It wasn’t my responsibility.
I imagine there were a number of excuses people made in the room. Perhaps the most valid of them was the assumption that he didn’t want anyone to help him. Indeed, he proved that by his violent and angry reaction to the girl who ultimately did. Still, his belief that he didn’t need help was obviously incorrect. He would have choked to death on a bite of his microwave meal without help.
I’m ashamed to admit that a part of me didn’t want to go over to save him simply because I didn’t like him. That isn’t to say that I wanted to watch him die by any means. That’s the last thing that I wanted. It was more of a case of me thinking, why should I have to be the one to help him when I don’t even like him? All the while I hoped that someone would take care of him.
There may have been a person or two on the reverse side of this equation. Perhaps there were a few people in the room who did have some sort of affection for this man. If so, maybe they knew him well enough to know that he would be offended and embarrassed by any action to save his life. In this event, might they have delayed an act of charity in order to save their friendship with a dead man? It doesn’t seem very effective to me.
A more likely excuse was that someone closer would take care of him. In this case it was a valid assumption. However if the girl who eventually dislodged the food had made the same assumption, I might have been writing a much different story here. It’s easy to expect someone else to do the work, but it certainly doesn’t remove us from the responsibility of it. If we fail from lack of action, we still fail.
Yet another explanation is that none of us moved to help him since we weren’t certain that he needed help. Certainly the victim here didn’t seem to think he needed help even though it was apparent to all of us that he did. The end result of such an assumption could have easily resulted in the choking death of the man as well. As we all watched him nearly expectorating the scrap assuming he was fine, he was turning a bright shade of red.
Maybe a few in the room believed that he somehow deserved the indignity of choking on his food simply for chewing it poorly. Perhaps some chalked it up to karmic revenge believing maybe he was going to die for not having the decency to shower before coming to work. Still others might have not cared if he died since he never said hello when they passed him in the hall. I think we can all agree that these people, if they existed, had issues of their own.
There was one last person—the girl who saved him. Despite the rebuke rewarded for her act, she showed one thing that no one else in the room had. She showed compassion. She was the only one there that not only cared if he lived, but put her compassion into action.
What’s the point of all this? It’s something of a portrait of the Christian Church of today. There are people in the church who live in belief, but lack love. Without love, Christian faith is meaningless. I’ve been there and done that. Christ said, ”You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:43) Maybe that should be my first New Year’s resolution. It’s hard to love everyone, but I’m going to try.
There are those who live with one foot in the church and the other in the world. They want to please God, but not at the expense of upsetting their friends. They won’t speak what they believe or share their faith in love. Perhaps they are waiting for someone else to do it. Maybe they don’t know who to help or how. If I resolve to love others and pray for my enemies, I should resolve to speak God’s Truth as well.
There are those in the church who point fingers saying, “You sinned, you’re going to burn in hell.” They might well join you there since they don’t seem to get the point of Christianity. Everyone’s fallen short of perfection. It’s like Pastor Jim Bergen says, I always picture a couple people getting to heaven at the same time. The first one asks, ‘What did you do to get in here?’ The second shrugs and says, ‘I screwed up and God forgave me.’ The first replies, ‘Hey me too!’ Yep, I’ve judged people—measured them and found them to come up short. That’s not my job though. Judgment is for God alone. Make that resolution number three since it pretty well goes in hand with number one.
Then there was the girl who saved the choking man. She represents those who took the great commission to heart. And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Amen. (Matthew 28:18-20) She loved. She put aside her fear of rebuke. She acted without judgment. She did what Christ would have done and saved a man’s life.
Lastly, there’s the guy who was choking. He seemed to think he was going to be fine. I’m pretty sure he would have been unconscious in a mater of moments. I suspect he later felt some remorse for his outburst. His attitude had to change once he was apart from his embarrassing situation with time to reflect on his mortality. He represents those people outside the church. Maybe that’s you.
If it is, you have every right to be angry at the people pointing fingers at you and telling you that you’re going to hell. Tell them that if you do end up in hell, you’ll be sure to see them there. People that aren’t a good enough friend to share God’s truth are questionable as well. But the next time someone shares Christ’s love with you, keep in mind they might just be trying to save you from choking. You can yell at them if you’d like to, but in my book yelling at someone trying to save you makes you look a little foolish.
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