LONG COPY
Twenty three months and eight days ago, I was in an outpatient ward, waiting, with nothing but anxiety. I had no pain. I showed no symptoms. I was under no medication. I had no idea. I just visited the hospital because a Radiologist asked me to see a specialist as he saw something unusual in my abdomen. This was when I got my abdomen scanned, when I complained of stomach ache. The ache was due to a minor infection and it subsided with just three days of medication.
I was redirected to a doctor and then another doctor, who’s a specialist. Only then, I don’t know why, I started sensing the sickening Iodoform smell of the hospital. A week later, I was in the hospital again, to see the specialist. I came out of the doctor’s room in about twenty minutes. The only thing I remember of the whole conversation between us is that I have cancer. I came out and desperately wanted to talk to someone who’s not a doctor.
“Who cares?”, I said to the person who sat beside me holding a bunch of reports and
X-ray films.
“Everybody does”,he said.
“This man in there..just threw the words at me...that I have cancer...as if the devil may care!”.
The man replied, “They care for you. They care for us. Actually the whole world cares for you. People care little when they know less. Like you. You don’t care about yourself, do you realize?”.
I said, “I’m dying. Don’t enlighten me about the world. And I’m not interested in joining your cry crowd”.
After two sunsets, I met the doctor. We discussed.
At the end, the doctor said, “Even if nobody cares, we do for you. And your future. Would you care to join us?”.
I did. I’m happy now.
But, after all the bad days and difficult moments people forgot my name.
They call me the survivor now.
