LAST HOPE
There I stood. Still in my white surgery dress, watching the young baby being put on ventilator. For three hours that never passed, we tried our best to save him. Now, we hoped, we had done enough. For me to save him was very important. He was not just another patient; he was my best friend’s son. And I would not let her down.
Angela, my friend and confidant since school days, had very few reasons to live. She had always felt that God was playing a dirty game with her. But that was till little James’ birth. From that day on, she had a reason to live, to see a new day, to actually feel the pleasure of getting up in the morning to look some one in the eye. For she never felt like she had a family. For her family were just the 4 friends she had, Andrew, Natasha, Victor and me.
The five of us were inseparable in school and we still were. Today also, here in the middle of the night, in this hospital the five of us just stood holding each other. Hoping that things would turn. Turn for good.
In my heart I knew, if anything happened to James, Angela would be devastated. She always was very fragile. In school I remembered the day Angela’s cat died. She was a wreck. Like a glass shattered on white marble. Couldn’t be seen but hurting if one walked on it. I gave her a kitty stuff toy, “Here, just to make you smile,” I said. She looked at it with an unending gaze and then replied, “Matt, if only we could replace one life with another with that ease.”
Angela’s sadness arose from the fact that her childhood had the traumas of her parents hatred toward each other stamped all over. Even when she grew up and fell in love, her parents didn’t support her. She wanted and loved Noel from all her heart for he was everything that her parents were not. She wanted to marry her, but her parents, ironically enough agreed to disagree with him. But she went ahead with her decision and married Noel. “My family was never there for me, nor is it now,” she spoke to us, “today; all I ask from you is to be my family, all of you, Natasha, Andrew, Victor and Matt. Will you be my family and stand by me when I marry Noel?”
“Of course Angela,” Andrew said. “You don’t have to ask us that, in fact if you didn’t ask us that, then you would have been in trouble.”
What a lovely wedding it was. Beautiful. White and blue, harmony and peace, finally, Angela seemed destined for happiness. But alas, it was not to be.
Hardly a month after their wedding, Noel died in a car crash. That day is edged in minds of all of us.
It was early morning, when my phone rang. “Matt you have to rush here,” Natasha shouted, “And get Andrew and Victor too.”
“What is wrong, Natasha?” I asked. But she had hung up already. I called up Andrew to ask him to come over. “I don’t know but Natasha sounded terribly panicked,” I told him, “just be there mate, and pick Victor up on your way.”
I stood in the lobby looking over the table with photos from Angela’s wedding. Across the room Natasha tried hard to control her. But in vain. Angela would not live. Angela without Noel was not possible.
“You can’t do this to yourself,” Victor reasoned, “You have to hold yourself baby.”
“My life is a joke. God knows when to do what to hurt me the most. He is just playing tricks with me,” Angela said.
“You have to keep the faith Angela,” Andrew consoled, “He tries those who are capable of his test.”
“And you know what Angela,” Natasha said, “you are the strongest to have faced all this and yet be so successful.”
Angela, in her wild commotion, looked up. And looked straight into my eyes with a million questions. And I tried to shrug. I wanted to hide from those questions. What to say, what to tell a girl who lost everything she had.
I tried putting myself in her place and find solution. What would have I done if I were faced with losing my most precious person.
And then it stuck me. I had already lost the most precious person in my life. I had lost Angela. The girl I loved like crazy. I still remembered the day she called us and told us about Noel. “He is perfect for me,” she gleamed, “no one could have made m so happy.”
Those words pierced me like rapiers. “God bless you Angela,” I said. “I am so happy, I can’t stop crying.” I gave her a huge tight hug and left. That night I had the worst of time I had ever faced. No one knew why. Andrew just told me, “Believe in him Matt. If you lost something you treasured, you will find it back one day.”
After Noel’s death, as a doctor, I tried hard to keep her occupied. Always tried spending time with her. It was in the next spring that we finally decided to marry each other. How we fell in love, all over again was a question both could not answer. But we were happy.
Till this night. James was dying. My son was dying. And I couldn’t do anything as he left us, quietly.
