The red light of the OT was turned on. Through my almost- blurred eyesight, I could see a bunch of people emerging into the corridor of the hospital wing. My hands were numb with an unnatural sense of fear.
This hospital has been my home for the last 10 years. This place has given me individuality, fame and everything that a doctor wants to accomplish in his life. I am a brain surgeon- Mrs. Aditi Sharma, working at the neurological department of India’s most renowned medical institute, AIIMS. To the world I appear to be as a strict feminist figure, scarred with the impression of grievances and roughness of a roller coaster experience of life, overcastting the softness of my skin; but deep inside, I was more like the first vulnerable rough sketch of an artist, with many unexpressive feelings buried deep within.
Till that day, I was never nervous about performing a surgery. I could easily carry out 2-3 surgeries per day with perfect precision. But that day, a strange fear worked inside me; I was afraid to enter the OT. The thought of operating the patient lying inside made me feel sick. I was defeated at last by the weak emotions that I had been fighting all those years. All the thoughts of past seemed to come back to me at once, like the hurling of the thunderbolt over my head. I was taken 15 years back at an instant, with a lightning speed and my mind was overcast with nostalgic thoughts like ink-dark clouds covering the monsoon sky.
“Mrs. Sharma, we have to begin the surgery, everyone is waiting for you,” called out an intern from inside the OT.
I was standing outside the door like a dumb idiot. All the senior doctors were waiting for me inside and the operation was being delayed because of me.
“Mrs. Sharma, are you alright?” asked the intern coming out of the OT, with concern in her voice.
“Radhika, I can’t do this surgery,” I merely uttered.
“What? Have you gone crazy ma’am?”
“You won’t understand Radhika, I can’t do this,” I said with an act of urgency in my motion, and handing my mask and coat to the intern, I ran away from the place
“But ma’am, everybody is waiting….” Her voice became fainter and fainter as I was running at the top of my breath with the maximum speed that my adrenaline could supply. Within 10 seconds I was out of the hospital.
All the doctors, relatives of the patients and the hospital faculty stared at me in utter disbelief as I ran out like a psycho through the corridor.
Within 15 minutes, I was in the room of my apartment; locked away from the outside world.
My husband was out of station for his business purpose and my younger daughter, Gia, was at college. That left only me alone in the apartment. All was dark inside my house and I didn’t even make an attempt of switching the light on. Slowly, I paced towards the right little room just beside my kitchen. It was strange that how I could always easily find my way into that room even in pitch darkness; I never forgot my way in there. I slowly turned the knob of the door, trying at the same time to fight back my tears rolling down my stone-hard cheeks. And at the moment I stepped into the room, I once again could feel the presence of my elder son everywhere; Aryan- the child whom I had lost 15 years ago.
He died of leukaemia at the age of 14. He was one of the toughest kids I have ever known. In spite of the terrible disease he was suffering from, he never showed his pain and sufferings to others. He was so jovial and lively that no one would be able to guess what a rough time he went through all the time.
That was the tragedy of my life, I had to see my own son slowly and painfully succumb to death as the cancer spread the poison throughout his body, killing him like a merciless poacher at an age when most children start to discover the colours of life.
And maybe that was the reason of what happened to me at the hospital. I had often visited the boy prior to the surgery, whom I was going to operate that day but each time I went near him, he reminded me of Aryan. The same face, the exact unquestionable spirit to battle his life like Aryan had and the very familiar pain in his helpless eyes, as if asking his life to give him a second chance. The boy was suffering from brain tumour, and there was very little chance of his survival. He resembled my Aryan so much that even the thought of entering into the OT to perform his surgery scared me.
I turned on the light of his room and recollected Aryan’s memories by looking at the action figure toys lying on his shelf. I remembered how crazy he was about those stuffs and how his face brightened up each time I brought one for him. I opened the drawer of his closet and looked at the comic books which he loved to read and because of which he got scoldings from me many a times as he would hide it inside his school books and read during his study hours, pretending to do his homework. I smiled.
As I was going to close the door of the closet, my eyes rested on a black box, almost hidden by his clothes. After he died, nothing was removed from his room. My husband loved him so much that he had kept it in the exact way how it was before he left. I had been in this room so many times but had never come across this box. I took it out of the closet and sat on the bed. I opened the box and discovered a leather diary
As I turned on the first page of it, I was taken away with bewilderment! Aryan used to write a personal diary. I had no idea at all! I thought that I knew my son perfectly well. But I didn’t. There was a part of him, hidden under his happy-go-lucky attitude which I was unaware of; I discovered.
The first page of the diary had a poem written in it. The lines of the poem were simply amazing that caught my attention at the very first reading-
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced or cried aloud
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade
And yet in the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
----- W.E. Henley
I was shocked. I had no idea when he wrote his personal journal. The poem was so appealing that it felt as if it was his inner voice speaking those words. His matured outlook on life at such a tender age made me a proud mom that day.
With eager interest, I flipped over the pages of the old diary. I found that he had noted down each eventful l memory of his short life with perfect precision. I was amazed.
Turning over the pages, I came across a passage where he had written about me. I literally jumped out of excitement. It said---- “I to feel so proud have a mum who is so strong and tough. She manages every one of us so well. Even after spending whole day at the hospital, she spends sleepless nights beside my bed. I wish I could repay her the love she gave me. She is my inspiration. Her tireless struggle will continue to inspire me to battle with cancer till my last breath. My mom is a champ, and so am I.”
My eyes were completely soaked with tears when I reached the last line of the passage. I felt like a loser that time, I felt as if I had let Aryan down by running out of the surgery. At that moment, I somehow felt as if I was getting back my lost confidence. All at once, I wanted to get back to the hospital and save that child. It seemed as if Aryan was urging me to go forward and perform the surgery. I was ready to go back to the hospital.
With the newly gathered confidence, I collected my mobile from the shelf and stepped outside the room. There had been 10 missed calls from the hospital ever since I had left. I was so absorbed in reading Aryan’s diary that I hardly noticed the ring of the phone. I got into my car and rushed to the hospital at the highest speed.
I rushed into the corridor of the hospital and once again everyone stared at me as if I had gone crazy. I ran into the OT and erupted in the middle of the surgery like the eruption of lava of a volcano. Everyone gave me a look of disbelief.
“Thank god you came dear, I was really getting worried about the boy,” spoke Dr. Desai with a tone of relief in her voice.
“Don’t worry ma’am, I will handle this surgery,” I said.
After putting my best effort in the operation, finally after 2 long hours, the light of the OT was turned off. As I stepped out of the surgery, the boy’s relatives surrounded me with anxious looks and queries. I cleared my voice and putting on a smile, said, “Your child is safe; surgery is successful.”
As I stepped out of the hospital that day after an eventful morning, my colleagues asked me why I had ran away that time. At that moment, I recollected the quote that Aryan had written in the last page of his diary. I put on simple smile and said, “We cannot always choose the music that life plays for us, but we can certainly choose how to dance to it.” And leaving my colleagues in deep and confused thoughts, I got into my car.
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