Tears

19

It felt like days, yet hours passed by. Her lungs easily carrying out their job. Her heart was beating at a normally acceptable pace. I shuffled back to my ward, collectively studying the file of my patients.

It was all quiet, even with the occasional screaming of infants, even with excessive chattering of nurses. Everything was quiet.

A specific ringtone sliced the silence into two. I hurried to pick my phone. 'Dr Park' my voice was barely audible. 'Doctor, you are needed here. She is asking for you' for a few heartbeat of seconds, I didn't know what was happening. My body too lazy to comply to the recent request. Better late than never is what I thought when I dashed across the floor, down the flight of stairs.

From a distance I could see doctors shuffling around her bed. The small distance felt like it was expanding, as I jogged my way to her.

There she was feeble and week, gasping for air as she tried contacting. Ventilator reconnected to her, her eyes collecting information around the barely lit room. 99% don't survive that is what the doctor said. She was the 1%, she was the fighter.

Her eyes landed on me, a week smile plastered on her lips. The oxygen mask was decorating her nose and mouth. I looked at her, taking in my luck. She was looking at me, she was breathing and she was alive. My feet were unacceptably slow as I stepped towards her. She stretched out her shaky hand. An invitation. An invitation to walk by her and accept her again.

2 steps felt like a thousand. Yet a second felt like a millennia, a heart beating in laps of hours.

Within a blink of an eye, her body was quivering into relentless breathlessness. Her eyes rolling to the back of her head, her arm dropped by her side, her smile dropped into a haunting shadow, her heart slowing, breathing too calm and skin paling as her life was drained of her. With no mercy or kindness, a single and final touch burnt her hollow soul into nothing and turn minds into a damp cold cave of morbid nothingness; the odious faceless shadow had one name: death. Death came to her with the slow rattling gasps that had taken her father years before. Her breathing would stop for a time only to reemerge like a drowning victim coming up for one last breath.

My breath hitched in my chest. My head lightheaded. What happened? Was the question floating around my head. One moment I was walking towards my smiling life, and within a fraction of second, reality kicked me square in the stomach knocking out the last ounces of oxygen from within me. I was shaking, shaking with need and self control.

My body burnt with sudden loss of oxygen. I felt like my mind was constricting into almost nothingness. I wanted to resuscitate her, I wanted to kiss oxygen into her, I wanted to give her all my heartbeats. But just like that, she was gone.

She was about to say something, something I would smile at. She wanted to hold me, yet I was late. I missed her last words, I missed my chance to kiss her one last time. I lost my chance once again, for the last time ever.

The rain now pattering on the ground, nourishing your new home. I sat by her grave, smiling at her in hopes she would forgive me and smile. I talked to my daughter too, wishing she would know, I loved her .