Three 100-Word Short Stories on Solidarity and Resilience
COVID-19 separated humans, bur drew them closer to humanity
Sacrifice
“I can’t let my daughters become orphans! I have to live!” Ramona almost hallucinated.
Her thirty-one days of extreme resilience finally collapsed in despair. She knew COVID was devouring the human race like a tsunami, corpses were denied respectful interment, oxygen cylinders and remdesivir were in short supply.
A prick of the needle and a mask of oxygen woke her up. A small note in her hand read:
“Accept these as an homage from a son to his mother dying of cancer. She wished you luck!”
“Solidarity and resilience only can resuscitate hopes, thaaanks..!” She murmured. Tears of gratitude moistened her cheeks.
The Stranger
“Oh God, he is alive, he moved! Stop! Somebody help me, please!” She shouted insanely.
A large pit was ready to gobble ten bodies lined up on the ground while ten relatives were allowed to witness the burial from the over-bridge.
“Sit in the car! Call the ambulance!” The stranger drove furiously with honking horns, straight to the pit.
“They sacked my comatose father with corpses!” The glitch infuriated her.
“I told you I wouldn’t go!” Father smiled in the ICU.
The stranger had disappeared quietly. She was going to miss him, maybe forever.
She genuinely pardoned the over-stressed staff.
Acceptance
After losing everything to COVID, Stella was home from the hospital. She was already childless, now a lonely widow too. Before getting into the ambulance, her neighbor Gina’s eyes were pleading something to her. Stella hesitatingly accepted the request. She always maintained a distance with that family, but now..! Luxury of grieving over her own loss felt mean.
“Hello ma’am, Gina departed. Kindly inform…”
She hugged the boy tightly. In the last twenty days, she never tried to know his real diagnosis — Down’s syndrome or autism or…whatever. Now she would, she decided. She had found purpose in her life.
Kindly let me know which one you liked most.
