Sticking With One Another

Robert Wuthnow told a story about a man named Jack Casey, who worked as a member of an ambulance rescue squad. When he was a child, Jack had oral surgery - five teeth pulled. The little guy was terrified. What he remembered most, though, is the operating room nurse who recognized the boy’s terror and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be right here beside you no matter what happens.” When Jack woke up after the surgery, she kept her word, and was standing right there next to him.

Twenty years later, Jack’s ambulance team is called out to an accident. A truck has overturned, the driver is pinned in the cab, and they’re using power tools to cut him out of the cab. But gasoline is leaking everywhere and the driver is terrified it’s going to catch fire and incinerate him. So Jack crawls into the cab next to him and says, “Look, don’t worry, I’m right here with you; I’m not going anywhere.” And Jack stayed with the man until they removed him from the wreckage.

Later the truck driver told Jack, “You were an idiot; you know that the whole thing could have exploded and we’d both (have died)!” Jack told him that he just couldn’t leave him.