By Rabbi Yitzchok Aryeh Epstein
David, a computer scientist living in Petach Tikvah, received a call one day from his boss, who asked that he come into the office on a particular day and time. An informal hearing would be held, he explained. This wasn’t good news, David knew as much. Most likely, they would ask him some questions, deliberate together, and then fire him. The most that he’d get would be severance pay.
Although David was naturally anxious about life, when he heard this, he knew that it was the beginning of the end. He was sixty years old at the time, and he wouldn’t be able to land another job if he’d be let go. Feeling sick to his stomach with nerves, he decided to call it a day and head home early. He couldn’t handle it. Once he arrived home, he went to sleep.
A Threatening Message from His Company
The next day, he didn’t even go to work. But that’s when things compounded. He received a message from the company noting that if he chose to not attend the hearing, they would proceed without him and make the decision as to his position without him. If David was out of sorts before, this tripled it. His heart raced with palpations and he felt physically sick. Worried for his health, he decided to head to his doctor to make sure the news he had received was not endangering his well-being.
“You need to go to a cardiologist,” David’s general practitioner said. Making the referral, the next day David was having his heart monitored. “We can administer a stress test,” explained the doctor, “but if you’d like, we can do an angiogram, and that will give us a better indication of what’s going on with your heart.” David had been leaning toward a stress test, and informed the doctor that he’d think about it for a few minutes. In the meantime, he’d call his wife and see her thoughts.
Agrees to Go with the Doctor’s Recommendation for an Angiogram
But she didn’t pick up. Left to his own thoughts and decision, he finally decided that he’d go along with the doctor’s suggestion. An angiogram it would be. Soon enough, the results came in: one artery was totally gone, and the other artery was almost entirely blocked. When the doctor saw this, he looked at David as if he was a walking dead man. “I have no idea how you’re alive. You need emergency open heart surgery.” David agreed, but added that he wanted to first consult with Rabbi Elimelech Firer, the medical expert in Israel.
After giving the name of a certain specialist, a phone call was put in to see when the surgery could be scheduled. “Three months” was the reply. But that was not possible. “Well, if you come into the hospital tomorrow, the doctor has a few surgeries lined up. I can put you on schedule for surgery after those are completed, and you should be able to be seen. Come today and take care of the pre-ops.” David did just that.
David would have died within days if he hadn’t undergone that open heart surgery as soon as he did.
How was David’s Life Saved
How did this all come about? We need to look back to the beginning. Hashem orchestrated that a difficult situation would come about—David would be called to a hearing. But David couldn’t deal with the hearing, so he experienced heart pain. From there, he went to his doctor who recommended an angiogram, despite David being inclined to take a stress test.
Thankfully, his wife didn’t pick up the phone, for she might have led him to decline the angiogram in deference to the stress test. Thankfully there also, he didn’t take the stress test, because that would have caused too much trauma to the heart and might have killed him. And then, based upon the guidance of Rabbi Firer, the surgery was scheduled for the very next day at the hospital.
Hashem wanted to give David life. He was a good man and had his heart in the right place, and Hashem wanted to save his heart.
There is always a plan in life. Hashem sees it. Just sometimes it takes time until we see it.
Reprinted from the Parshat Pekudei 5784 email of the Torahanytime Newsletter as edited and compiled by Elan Perchik.
