Vigil held for hospitalized sheriff's deputy

A prayer gathering for Ben Fisher, a Lincoln County Sheriff's Office deputy in critical condition with COVID-19, drew just over a dozen family members and friends to Troy Christian Fellowship.

Three days before the Saturday evening vigil, Fisher went to the emergency room in Libby with low oxygen levels. By the time community members met to pray, he was battling for his life on a ventilator at the Boise Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Idaho.

Along with COVID-19, Fisher was fighting suspected bacterial pneumonia and asbestosis, according to Christina Fisher, his wife. His stout six-foot-four frame complicated his condition.

“The thing about COVID is that it’s really affecting the heavier people,” said Christina Fisher. “It’s harder to breathe, there’s more mass to move.”

Nurses at the Boise hospital haven’t been able to prone Ben Fisher, or turn him on his stomach to help distribute oxygen throughout his lungs, owing to his size. At the time of the gathering, the medical staff was planning to lower Ben Fisher’s sedation levels. Were his condition to improve, his release date would be Oct. 6, said Christina Fisher.

To rouse support for the Fishers, Eric Myers, pastor at Troy Christian Fellowship, organized the prayer gathering.

“We need to rally around Ben and Christina and their family,” said Myers at the start of the meeting. “We need to be together over this because Ben is such an instrumental figure piece to our community, to this county.”

The service began quietly with congregants offering private prayers and singing along to soft worship music. As passions built, some supplicants stood and raised their hands above their heads. One inspired member took up the microphone at the base of the chancel and urged the darkness to flee in Jesus' name.

The ceremony crescendoed with the group huddling together and putting their hands on Christina Fisher. One woman called on God to use his bioengineering to defeat the virus, which she described as a human-engineered sin. A man said regardless of the virus's origin, the group stood confident knowing God was in control.

Along with prayers, community members offered financial support to the Fishers. After a rough count, Myers said those at the gathering gave around $230. Some community members are donating firewood to the family. Myers said his church was committed to keeping the family supplied with food.

To show support for the staff taking care of her husband, Christina Fisher said she had organized her own fundraiser.

Despite the severity of Ben Fisher’s bout of COVID-19, several friends in attendance said afterward that their outlook on the pandemic had not significantly changed.

“This country is going down the toilet,” said Dan Williams. “They have to put God first and forget about what the president is doing and what Congress is doing. They need to get on their knees.”

Travis Miller, a Troy police officer, went to school with Ben Fisher and later worked with him in law enforcement. Miller said he came to the prayer gathering after attending a similar assembly at the Troy Community Baptist Church.

“Our church got hit really hard with this. There were some folks who were in a really bad way,” he said. “We got together and we did exactly what we did here tonight and — I kid you not — next week they were in church. Some of them were and some of them got out of the hospital.”

Miller and his wife Kristen Miller believe in the power of prayer. They also acknowledged that taking small public health measures, like hand washing, could help mitigate the virus.

Kristen Miller said she researched homeopathic measures for treating the virus, but recognized that hospitalization was the best course for patients in critical condition.

“Obviously, it is dangerous,” she said.

Christina Fisher said she sometimes struggled, even with her background as a nurse at Boundary Community Hospital, to parse through all the opinions and misinformation circulating about the virus. When her hospital opened a COVID-19 unit two weeks ago, she said she was nevertheless careful to sleep in a camper set apart from her house and regularly disinfect with Lysol to protect her family.

Local public health officials have pointed to vaccines as one of the most effective means of preventing the spread of the virus. The state Department of Public Health and Human Services reports 41 percent of the population eligible to receive shots in Lincoln County is vaccinated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention list 34 percent of the population aged 12 and above as vaccinated.

In closing the assembly, Myers made a final supplication to God and urged Ben Fisher to keep up the fight.

“Ben, if you can hear me now brother, fight, physically fight and do not give up,” he said.