The death

The entire corridor was stinking. The elevators were stinking even more. It took me to the second floor with a screeching noise all along as elevator looked like a death trap for me. Two guys dressed in whites were carrying a person on a stretcher in the same elevator. So, there was this person trying to avoid death by taking a ride in the deathtrap. As soon as the elevator opened in the second floor, the smell of all medicines used in the hospital hit my nostrils. The stench had “Welcome to Government general hospital, Chennai!” written all over it.

I turned left to the ward I wanted to visit. Patients were waiting for the duty doctor in big queues. The corridor was filled with people who were ill, and people who accompanied them. It clearly looked like the infrastructure was not enough as the patient nurse ratio was more than thirty to one.

I went to ward 13 to see my dad’s friend who was in the hospital after a surgery. He was recovering well after the surgery and was about to be discharged.

The next bed had a new patient. He looked very ill and was on oxygen. A huge oxygen cylinder was kept next to his bed.

“Good morning uncle!” I said “how are you now?”

“I am fine son. Thanks!”

I couldn’t control myself from asking this question. “The place is full of medicine smell and is full of people like a market. How are you coping up?” I asked with a frustrated face.

“Well! I am not feeling that anymore. Got used to it!”

While I was chatting with him about a few things, the person in the next bed started breathing heavily. There was no one to attend him. No nurse could be seen in the vicinity. No doctor could be seen in the entire floor. I started running from the ward. I was running for help. All I could do was to run for help. I was looking for anyone dressed in white.

I couldn’t find anyone. I came back running to his bed to check on him. His breathing got worse. I ran back out again. Finally I found a ward boy smoking bedi near the end of the corridor.

I waved towards him while running. I was gasping for breath. I couldn’t talk for a moment. I didn’t talk, but pulled him by his hand and took him towards the patient’s bed.

The level of breathing was coming down. I knew for sure that he was dying. I pointed my finger at him to the ward boy. He threw his bedi in one corner and checked on the oxygen cylinder. It was empty.

He ran away from the bed the same way I did. He came back after a minute empty handed.

“There are no more cylinders here and this one is empty” he said, wiping the sweat off this forehead.

“What? Do something” I screamed, on top of my voice.

Everyone looked at me. I stared at the ward boy. He was helpless. There was no one in the entire floor who could help him; no one who could help the patient from dying.

The ward boy tried to prolong the supply of oxygen a bit by shaking the cylinder as much as he can.

Then suddenly the patient took a deep breath. Then the breathing stopped.

He died. He just died. Right in front of my eyes.

I was helpless. I couldn’t do anything to stop it. What could I do? The ward boy was still shaking the cylinder. I asked him to stop it and asked him to look out for a doctor nearby.

I went around to see the patient’s name from the chart attached to his bed.

It read “Kumaran, age 8 years”

I held the chart and stood there still. Someone had just died there; someone who did nothing wrong to deserve this kind of a death, and I couldn’t even come to terms with what I just saw.

Where were the duty doctors? Where were the nurses? I wondered

The hospital could say a thousand reasons for his death. Non availability of oxygen cylinder could be the silliest.

Whatever the reason might have been... he should have lived.