Nuances

Despair:
I rushed through the long corridor of the hospital, arousing from initial lethargy, sleep still trickling in my eyes.
"Bed no. 32 is serious Sir." -was the call of the ward boy who woke me up in the duty room. ‘Serious’ in this odd hour of night, only few hours to dawn was evidently pointer of something.
Entering the ward room many of the patients and their attendants were asleep while the neighbourhood of bed no. 32 was alert and waiting for the doctor to come.
Wife of the patient looked at me anxiously between her spurts of prayers. I couldn’t read the emotions in her eyes, and didn't want to. I looked at the motionless body. It lay cold with a blatant story to tell. I heard the silence of the death deeply buried in his chest, felt the emptiness of the pulse in his arms and neck, starred at the absence of shine in his open eyes.
I uttered the official declaration of the obvious truth to the attendants, cold and raw as the night it was. The staccato prayer of the lady broke away. She knew already the fact I suppose, but was harbouring the hope of a miracle. She threw herself to my feet and screamed --
"Don't tell that Sir, Do something,..... We have two little kids..."
Chills ran into my spine as I freed myself from her hold and went on to do the official works now bestowed upon me. The cry of despair rose as the women's voice scattered behind.
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Love:
I could have recognised his swollen face anywhere. There he lies in the middle of other patients, deeply disoriented. I looked around for his brother. Yes, he was right there holding the arm of his younger one smiling at me bleakly.
"We have come again Sir..." he said. I acknowledged him with a desperate smile.
Only a week before he was discharged from our ward after a long two months hospitalisation— Liver failure with encephalopathy. Alcohol has eaten up his liver leaving him in the land of uncertainty slowly and steadily leading him in the day of doom. But never did the fact of the untreatability made his brother lose hope. Love that streamed between the two was contagious and sometimes made me believe of the impossible. The stability attained finally didn’t last long.
Back he is, in this ward, thoroughly disoriented, swollen and bleeding. The effect of the initial medication had improved him a bit when I went to examine him. He was crying firmly holding his brother’s hand , the only face he couldn’t forget even in his disoriented self.
" You will be alright my dear." His brother reassured him. " Look who has come... Did you recognize?.... Its our lambu (tall) doctor....... Did you recognize?"
The blank eyes searched for me .He gazed at me for a while and shook his head.
" Save me !" He pleaded with umpteen sadness.
"You are doing well. You are going to be alright." I proclaimed with utmost empathy.
He gripped his brother’s hand more firmly who was consoling him with the non ending love they had. As I moved to the next patient I realised once again that love was contagious.
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Negligence:
She was old and crippled.
With an uncared fracture of hip and severe bed sore all over the body, the only word that suited to describe her—neglected. " Women and old"—the perfect recipe for negligence as she was.
And now they wanted to take her away.
"Then why the hell did you bring her here?........."
An unusual voice of rage broke from me in between the emotionless working of Emergency department.
The attendants, thoroughly humble, uttered the difficulties they have to face if they get her admitted there.
Soon the environment came back to normal. The practicality came into picture. Empathy dissolved into the routine. But long after they had left, the abominable smell of her bedsore remained in the emergency room as if leaving back the trail of truth behind.
Nuances of life continue – negligence being one of them.
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