A Silent Prayer
A hospital call was the last thing he expected would ruin his day
Dr Tyler shuffled into the Waiting Room, accompanied by an ominous ambience. It is the kind of way doctors often come in with a grave story to tell and not knowing how to say it. The minute Dr Tyler entered, Tom sensed something was wrong. He stood motionless in front of Tom, draped in solemnity and resignation. Tom looked into his glassy green pupils, scanning for a glimmer of good news, but the darkness in his eyes eradicated the usual sparkle. There was nothing to suggest any hope of survival. Yet, he needed him to speak, to say something to allay his fears.
A week earlier, he met with Dr Tyler and complained about fatigue and breathlessness, which started after the gym. Dr Tyler knew his medical history and weight loss struggles as his family doctor but little about his incessant indulgencies. So Tom confided in him about his eating disorders and the constant cravings for confectionaries.
“If you don’t burn off some of that 135kg blob, you’ll soon be wearing pappy diapers at a hospice,” Dr Tyler said jokingly.
He advised about the safety of having bite-sized exercises and different ways of combatting high cholesterol. “But primarily, keep at the diet plan. If not, you’ll become Yokozuna’s tag partner at Smackdown,” Dr Tyler added humorously, poking Tom’s protruding midsection gently.
Today, unusually, Dr Tyler was a shadow of his jubilant self. He had taken Tom’s mother through a lung procedure and was finding it difficult to relay the outcome of the failed surgery. Lung cancer caused by hazardous climate effects from the chemical factory she worked at for over forty years. Then, after an agonizing silence, with bated breath and an uneasy calm, his melancholic baritone announced the tragedy.
“Sorry- Tom, we -tried all we could- but we- lost her,” he stuttered and reached for Tom’s shoulder to comfort him.
Dr Tyler’s incohesive rendition resounded through Tom’s cranial canister, tingling each nerve and leaving his entire central nervous system feeling paralyzed. Devastated by the news, Tom stiffened, unable to think clearly, riveted like a see-saw on a playground. Unresponsive spinal reflexes and synaptic inhibitions immobilized and numbed his limbs. Desperate to authenticate the truth, the apoplexy of shock denied him the impulse to move. Misery impeding him like a debilitated octogenarian at senescence.
Dr Tyler helped Tom gratefully, and inertia dissipated from his ankles. Buoyed up by this resurgence of strength, Tom plodded behind him into the operation room. It was his first time entering a death chamber. The unfamiliar setting and the repulsive smell of entrails and hypochlorite made him nauseous; Tom swallowed hard, tightened his stomach, and kept his focus. Then, staggering past a cabinet of snipping tools stained with blood to the gurney where the corpse lay, covered with a white sheet, oblivious of the mournful happenings.
Tom pulled the sheet back, and his ghost sank. Dispirited, he stared into the glazed eyes and an expressionless pale face. Helpless to this untimely departure — His loved one, gone forever; feeling the bleakness of an expeditor marooned on the icy-cold swirling peaks of Mount Everest.
Dr Tyler stepped away as Tom broke into sobs. His pathetic tear-stained face provoked a surge of empathy. Tom clutched onto his mother’s corpse and shook it violently to wake her, Beleaguered by his loss like a Chibok escapee estranged in the Sambisa forest after fleeing the wiles of her abductors. His mush eyes, burdened with tears, grappled with the reality of his demise.
Tom needed his mother back at any cost. In desperation, he pushed her to the edge, lifted the sheet, and lay by her side. Then, he pressed his wet cheeks against her coldness, transmitting the warmth of his love. Softly whispering into her ears:
“I love you, mamma. Please come back to me. Your little boy is going to take care of his beautiful princess.”
He kissed her on the forehead, tears streaming down his face. But she was silent; she didn’t reply. Longing to be with his mother again, he closed his eyes momentarily to make a wish. In a cloud of subliminal haze, a genie appeared to Tom’s summons. His outstretched arms tantalizingly held the wealth of the oil sheikhs of Arabia, which was more than enough to wipe out all his financial concerns and give Tom the exotic life of his dreams. But he refused to be overtaken by these enticements; all Tom wanted was mamma back to life. Everything else was vanity, a fleeting gratification devoid of eternal value. Without hesitation, Tom beckoned on the genie to constrict the cosmic galaxies and create a vortex for him to slide through and relive the cherished moments shared with mamma. He implored the genie to make a time machine for him to go back into the future to experience a perpetual renaissance.
But, unfortunately, his ethereal fantasies were short-lived. Nothing happened; mamma remained stone dead. Then, finally, Tom awoke to the obtrusive realization that his mum’s tenure on Earth had expired. The jaws of death had taken its catch. Regardless of how hard he wished, he would never experience her love and affection again.
