Giving In

 

The hospital is a place of hope. Although walking through the wards I see no relief or comfort in the faces of the men and women who lie in wait for their release, it is a place of hope. I see it in their submission of their bodies to another in good faith that they will be returned repaired. It is in their uncritical assent to being pricked, prodded, cut, insufflated and drugged, and it is in their abandonment of total body authority to another they trust more knowing. 

Occasionally I’d find a man surrendering to the will of his body, a sailor staying on his sinking ship. He’d smile at you, like the rest: forcibly, but sincerely. There could be a spark in his eye, or there could be a cloud. Nothing you say will ever reach them. They are now two gems reflecting only one view. Watching him, you would wonder if the pain bothered him the way it used to, or if the loud beeping of the monitors unsettled him more. As his moment draws closer, you’d see a strange sense of calmness – so bizarre in a place of hope- come over him. You understand then that he had also been hoping.

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There is something almost maniacal in the way we hold on to life, for it is dear, and yet so much zeal in allowing it to take its course. Because it is dear.