Page 36 - Till the Last Breath . . .

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I wish I could do something. I can give you some

books you can read about people who have fought the disease. They didn’t
win, but they died happy. You can’t lose to the disease.’
‘I would just wish for you to tell my parents. I don’t have the courage,’

she said and the tears came again. She tried to stifle her sobs the best she
could. Never had she thought her parents would outlive her. What greater

misfortune can there be for a parent?
‘You’re the most courageous patient I have seen in the longest time,’ he

said and added with a pause, ‘I have a daughter. She is seven.’
‘Does she want to be a doctor too?’

‘Yes. You remind me of her,’ the doctor said, looked down at the reports
in his hands and closed his eyes. Pihu wondered if he was praying for them
to be wrong. She wondered how many death sentences the forty-year-old

man had given before hers. The watery eyes of the doctor told her that he
was still not used to it.

‘Let’s tell my parents?’ Pihu said, and clutched the doctor’s hand and
slipped in some Éclairs. ‘Give this to your daughter from my side.’

‘Sure,’ he nodded and took a deep breath.
Pihu took one too. The wails of her mother and silent groans of her father

already resonated in her head and she felt dizzy. They entered the doctor’s
chambers. Her parents’ eyes met hers and she knew they could see the
horror. Their faces fell as if they knew what the middle-aged doctor was

about to tell them. She went and sat next to her mom and held her hand.
The doctor started to explain. The world blocked out. Her mind was blank.

The denial of her parents, their shouts, their screams, their accusations
against the incompetent doctor and the irresponsible hospital, their claims

of their daughter being perfectly healthy—nothing registered in her brain.
She had just one image seared on her retina.

She was going to die, motionless on a hospital bed with a tube cut into
her throat.