Life #1

I’m sorry.

My breathing collapsed with each heartbeat that was wasted—yeah, wasted—as I heard the doctor say those simple words over and over again, my mother’s whimpers becoming louder. I wasn’t... ready to die. But to continue living? Yeah... right.

Everything smelt of immaculacy—the air, the cloths wrapped around my frail form, the sheets coating my body, the oxygen mask covering half my face, the oxygen itself. I was trying not to let the tears slip, but I couldn’t... I just couldn’t. I never ever had the strength to do anything except surviving. Yeah, I had been surviving for quite some time now. One could say that survival was the very air that I breathed.

I could fairly make out the blurred, white form of the doctor, the expression he held as he kept on saying those words to my mother. I couldn’t also make out my mother’s shaking form; everything was so blurry and faraway, like my life and my existence and will to live. I just listened as my mother begged the doctor with a ghastly voice, the sound of his shoes scraping the floor—yeah, I knew it was his because my mother always magically lost her foot wears and cloth items whenever she received bad news—as he shuffled out of the room, my mother hot on his heels. Or should I say cold on his heels because she was not wearing any foot wear? I never really had a good amount of school experience. My mother was too poor, my dad had died before my mother had even realized that she was pregnant, and her family had disowned her because she was pregnant with the child of a dead man. It was abomination in itself.

“Please!” she begged desperately. “Please! Doctor... My son! He—”

“I’m sorry Mrs. Aloma. There’s little chance that he would make it if we were to actually do the surgery. But that aside, his only chance of survival is immediate treatment. But...” The doctor left the word hanging with a sigh. I heard more shuffling. “I’m sorry.”

My mother, as usual, started wailing like a banshee. Finally. I got to use the word after so many years of just binge listening—not watching, listening—to reruns of the movie Teen Wolf. Where was I? Yeah, my mother started wailing like a banshee, yelling away the truth. I couldn’t stand it because my head started pounding. I was grateful as the doctor cautioned her and shut the door behind them, finally leaving me to die in silence.

What can I say, I’m leaving life. I’m not going to say, like a clichéd first person narrator, “Note the sarcasm?”—or is it pun? Like I said, I hardly attended school. I snorted, more like gibbered like a choking horse, as I felt something in my fingers, flexed them a little bit, then froze my motions.

I wanted to open my eyes, but the bright light... Hold on, hold on. Is there even a bulb in this room? Because I could still hear the faint sounds of my mother’s wails. And to top it off, this is a mediocre—remember, poor mother—hospital. I’m supposed to be the one to tell the doctor sorry because the government hadn’t really provided him with good facilities to showcase his knowledge.

What can I say to conclude the prologue of my end: I survived life, I never lived it. And now? Now I’ve promised myself that life is a challenge that I needed to meet. And then I decided that if I was going to die, I’ll die my own way. Thus says I, Sotonye Aloma. Ha, sucks to be me.