RanVeer One Shots

28.

RanVeer OS: While you were sleeping.

Once upon a time there lived a queen, so fair and so beautiful that people called her Snow-White. With hair as dark as ebony, skin as fair as the first snow and lips so red as two drops of blood on snow, she was the epitome of beauty.

Veer rubbed a hand over his eyes. He must've been extremely tired to have thought of those silly words at a time like this. He darted his eyes to the clock and it somberly confirmed his suspicion. It was 3:20 AM and he was at the last leg of his thirty-six hours long shift and was almost ready to drop dead. This was the last patient that he needed to check before he could leave for the day and resign into blissful oblivion called sleep. Speaking of his patient, why had he been thinking about Snow-White of all things? She was not Snow-White. If one ignored those dark circles under her eyes, or her sunken cheek bones, or those cracked lips and the paraphernalia around her, she was a queen in her own rights. She wasn't Snow-White, she was Sleeping Beauty.

'What is wrong with you Veer?' He chided himself mentally. He was looking at a patient who'd been comatose for eight weeks and he was thinking about fairy-tales and queens? Actually it was his four year old friend's daughter's fault. The kid was currently in love with Disney movies and as a result he was suffering from a severe case of overexposure to saccharine sweetness as his friend often visited him. That combined with the bone-deep fatigue and sleep-deprivation meant that he was now officially a basket case.

With a world weary sigh, he picked up the charts hanging by the foot of her bed and studied them. As per the hospital's policy, the patients in ICU were under constant observation. Besides the machines, nurses would monitor the vital stats every hour and twice a day a Doctor would come by as well. Till now he had been working in the Trauma Center but that wasn't where his heart lay and hence when the position for an In-House physician for ICU had opened up, he jumped at the opportunity. Today was his first day of ICU duty and therefore the routine check-ups were his responsibility. He'd spent the best part of his shift understanding the machinations of the unit and this was his first independent round. He tore his eyes away from the broken figure that lay on the bed and looked at the charts.

Patient's name:- Rani Singh.

Age:- 21.

Sex:- Female.

A brief history was scribbled at the bottom of the page. Eight weeks ago, she had come to the Emergency Room after complains of sharp abdominal cramps and fever. She was admitted for a routine appendectomy but then things went wrong. At the Operation Table, her blood pressure had plummeted severely and she had to be given an injection to be stabilized. But she had a rare genetic disorder that had not been detected earlier. As a result, the injection reacted in an unexpected way and she had slipped into a coma and had been in the ICU since then.

Veer quickly checked her vital stats, her nervous system's response and her other bodily functions. Assured that the machines were keeping her alive, he took a step back and looked at her. Someone had kept a framed photograph of her and another girl of same age, probably her friend on her bedside table. In the photograph, he saw a girl with a bright smile and happy eyes. She was a girl full of life. Her eyes were dancing with joy, celebrating life. Her cheeks were full and round. Her lips were stretched into an easy and genuine smile. She had been alive.

All of that had been brutally snatched from her and now she lay on the bed, a broken shell of a human being. Biologically she was alive because other than her brain, all her organs were functioning as they should. But did that constitute as life? This pale, skeletal form that had innumerable tubes and wires attached to her was living and breathing. She was considered alive because her heart was beating; the beeping heart monitor said so. She was alive because her kidneys were functioning; the little baggie that collected her urine through the catheter confirmed that. She was getting her nutrition; her arm was hooked to an IV after all. But what was the point? She couldn't feel the warmth of human touch. She couldn't listen to the birds singing, or smell the flowers blooming or see a rainbow. She couldn't enjoy the first rain, the laughter of a child nor could she be discomfited by the biting cold outside. Weren't these the things that made life worth living? And if she couldn't enjoy them, what was the point in being alive?