Thirty Five
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Those sounds of the HDU still haunted him, despite him spending a major part of his life in these very corridors, scuffling from one ward to another, one bed to the next. He often used to think in the beginning if these trips would ever cease to exist, if he’d ever walk out of these doors on his own two feet, if he would ever be able to run without exhausting himself and collapsing to the ground, losing all his senses. Now, it was second nature to him. He had gotten used to it but these beeping sounds; they still kept him awake at night.
These wretched beeping sounds.
It was an unusually tiring day, insomnia had kept her awake for most of the night and when her tired eyes finally embraced those fading shreds of sleep, it was time to go to the hospital. Grumbling, she woke up and went on to get dressed and rush out of the house.
Sigh. It was difficult being an underpaid overworked intern in a government hospital. She had been working here for seven months now and everything was still so… unfamiliar. Maybe she was going to be one of those interns who are always whining about the hospital being an uncharted territory and her a clueless sailor caught in a storm. Maybe not.
Shrugging all these thoughts off, she walked into the HDU, prepared for the worse. That patient was nowhere to be seen. When she last left him, yesterday afternoon, he was lying there, gazing out of the window into the hustle bustle of the city. He was unusually quiet, almost as if he knew the fate that was to befall him in less than twelve hours.
She inquired about him from the nurse on duty, asking for his file.
‘Oh, don’t you know? He was declared dead at 08:03 am this morning. You know about the DNR he signed, no?’
She went numb. Cold. There was a raging sea of thoughts inside her head at that time, all trying to comprehend what had happened; a 35 year old, male, at the prime of his years had passed away due to cardiac failure.
Thirty five.
The age at which we finally settle down, we have it all figured out (or we like to believe that we do). When you’re woken up by the kiss of that loved one, those miniature feet kicking your stomach, trying to get your attention. It is when you can afford that sedan that you’ve dreamed of driving as a kid; go eat out at that famous eatery all your friends raved about.
Thirty five and no more.
Thirty five and six feet under the ground.
Thirty five and complete and utter darkness.
How do you get over your patients’ death? How do you not let that affect you in any way whatsoever? How do you pick yourself up and go on to treat your patients with the same confidence you had in yourself as before, the same zeal as before?
You don’t.
You carry that burden on your shoulders until your very last breath, you remember all those things that went wrong, all that you did right but somehow turned into turmoil, a disaster.
You never get over a patient’s demise; you learn to live with it.
