The doctors aren’t too positive about her condition. She barely survived the gruelling 8 hour emergency surgery. Nobody is hopeful for anything now. She’s at the verge of life and death.
After all, it doesn’t take a specialist with a long list of doctorates to understand how serious her ailment is. She suffered third degree burns over 70% of her body. It is a miracle that she is still fighting, struggling with her strong will to live. Too bad that her body doesn’t match her strength; she is fading away by the second.
Everybody is sad, depressed for her. What she did was really brave. But Grandma is taking is very badly. She fainted when the doctor announced the degree of her condition to the family. She thinks that it is all her fault.
“Had I been more careful, this would not have happened”, Grandma lamented. “Had I been more careful…It should be me in there…”
“No one blames you that this…come on,” her middle-age son takes her by the arm, gently put her onto the seat. “It can’t be helped.”
“Of course it can!! She didn’t have to return…not for me, on top of everything!!” Grandma is starting to lose control again, arms covering her head, swinging wildly on her seat.
Fearing that Grandma might just faint and fall, he swiftly took hold of her. He tries not to be forceful, because he understands her need to vent her pent up guilt. He remain quiet. His wife, visibly shaken, sobs quietly a few seats next to her.
“She needs that too,” he thinks, and he is going to give her that.
The fire department couldn’t determine the cause of that tragedy yet, amidst all the rubble. Nothing was left, everything charred into ashes. And now, he is losing his previous daughter to her act of chivalry. But he understood her. She has been a strong, kind and brave girl. It is hard and would take a long time to accept this loss, but he respected her decision to risk her life for their beloved Grandma.
Holding his daughter’s heavily bandaged hand in his, silent sobs hidden deep inside, he sits next to her. It seems that she redeemed her Grandma’s fading life with her life of vigour and youth. If he really tried, he could have stopped her, withheld her back. He should have gone in her stead.
She opens her eyes, now visible as small shiny marbles through her heavily bandaged face. Her eyes tell him that she wants to say something, but she is too weak. He attempts a smile, interjected by little sobs of his. Droplets fall onto her bandages. At that moment, he feels her hand tightens her grip, a sudden outburst of strength from her failing body.
Then there is this long flat tone of the ECG machine attached to her. Her pulse stops beating, and a nurse arrived almost immediately trying to restore life in her. Several doctors and nurses come to her aid, trying very hard. He is hounded out of the room, as the medical experts tries to revive her.
It will be a terrible loss, for anybody who love her, he thinks, to lose a person of her quality, but it is a loss that she readily accepted, a price she readily pay. The least he could do for her who sacrificed all, in honour of her memory, and her brave, determined soul, is to let her go.
The doctors and nurses then exit the room several moments later. She is proclaimed dead. Grandma wails as if she’s going into a fit. The nurses have to administer her sedatives to keep her calm. One life has ended, to prolong another.
One lays it down, that another may pick it up again, and live.
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