What the Doctor Said

I woke up from what felt like an eternal dream of nonsense and wildness. My eyelids had never been so heavy before; they felt like lifting an iron rusted with erosion and mold. But I managed and was immediately deafened by beeping machines keeping me alive. The light was dimmed, but the sun splashed on my feet, covered with thick white sheets. I slowly peered at the huge window on my right. “This is Boston,” I told myself, and that almost drew a smile on my freckles face. “I don’t know how you made it, but you’ re lucky,” said a gruff male voice in an Americanized Indian accent. He was standing in front of the bed, arms crossed, as if bracing against the cold, or perhaps intellectual arrogance. He had the air of a doctor needing to prove himself superior by bettering anyone else. Maybe: he stood around 5’8, with features modern standards might call plain. A red long- sleeved red bottomed shirt, armored with a hospital-issued fleece jacket, gave me the impression of a man desperate to belong somewhere. Only if he knew how much we could relate, but ego got in the way.

“What do you mean?” I asked, questions boiling in my head while wondering why my legs wouldn’t move. “You have been unconscious for over three weeks, my friend. We wanted to disconnect you from the ECMO,” he said calmly, still hugging his arms. “ECMO? ¿Qué carajo es eso?” I asked myself but could not find the term in my memories. The doctor introduced himself with a name I immediately forgot. Shock and fear shot through my already paralyzed

body. These people had been ready to let me die before giving me a chance to fight for it; my mind kept spiralling in an endless loop.

The malaria still swam in my blood, and the drugs were making me see the man in front of me upside down, as if he was a bat hanging from the ceiling. “ What carajo is going on?” I continued to ask myself. “ Thank you for saving my life,” my tongue uttered in an act of treason that my heart still hasn’t forgiven. My life as I knew it was over, and all that remained was an ugly doctor reminding me of the universe’s fleeting compassion. My eyes wept without reason. The arms and fingers were on strike, making it impossible to scratch my itchy head or call a nurse. To beg for help. The doctor said nothing else, just stared at the miracle of my survival. Silence thickened the room, filtered with negative pressure and adorned with cards and news clippings about my coma. These five minutes stretched eternal. The pillows were damped with unreasonable tears, malaria coursing through my veins like ink. Was it a rebirth? Did I deserve to be alive one more time? Had I earned the time of this overworked doctor, the man I only

resented, yet the only one who had ever seen me cry? The view of his body in front of me blurred like a bad photograph. My eyes were heavy again and closing in. Another eternity in the darkness of the unmemorable passed and I woke up again. This time, milky arms adjusted an IV while my attention locked into her honey-eyed smile. My chest puffed like a pigeon’s and I had to ask, “What’s your name?” “Andrea,” she said. A name I could never forget.