Amma Rediscovered

      I got busy in my ‘high-adrenaline’ job and quietly forgot about amma. Six days after amma’s surgery, I was on night duty and we got a call that a GI case will be re-opened for a certain complication that had developed. When I reached OT, no points for guessing, it was Amma being wheeled in. She was the same since I saw her last. She still had no idea why she had come back to OT. She had the same expressionless face, same inquisitive stare, downward looking gaze and not a word to speak. The only difference was that she had become weaker. Yet, ‘the purpose of all life….first…is to preserve life.’ She was struggling hard to do the same.

      I recognized her. But she didn’t remember me. We took her into the OT again but I dare not look into her eyes. We straight away knocked her down. She was cut up once again and stitched back once again. All of this to see that she survives. This time she went to the ICU after the surgery. Few hours later, she opened her eyes. “Thank God”, I said to myself, “I think she’ll live.”
      She continues to struggle each day, to preserve that precious little life that someone told her is “God given”. Each time I go to the ICU to meet her, she gives me a blank stare. Then one day, I went close to her when she gave that look of hopelessness. She held my hand and gently squeezed it. I got the message- “Thank You” (she recognizes me now).
      Since then, she has been in and out of the ICU and ward, struggling hard to live to die another day. Each time it seems as though she wants to give up on this painful life, she is back on it saying “Not yet….not yet”. I see her regularly in the ward now, from the corner of my eyes, lying quietly.
      And then I say a silent prayer.