Second Chances

Seema couldn’t make herself move. Her baby, Smruti, was lying on the hospital bed, fighting for her life. How can she leave her baby to fight alone when she was the one to bring her in this world in the first place? She didn’t want to listen to her husband, Manoj, who was trying to convince her to go home and get rest for few hours. It’s wasn’t as if she didn’t trust Manoj, but how can he understand what pain Smruti was going through when he didn’t carry her inside his body for nine months. Every time Smruti struggled to breathe, Seema fought to control the turbulent emotions ransacking her body. No matter what, she was going to stay strong. She won’t give in to despair. If she moved away from the bed, Smruti might sense that her mother was not there and she might feel alone. And come hell or high water, Seema wasn’t going to leave her baby at the mercy of those dark shadows.

 She still could see Smruti, her 11 year old baby, giggling and playing in the backyard with her favorite doll, climbing over the mango tree to reach the top branch and running around the flower bed to catch those elusive butterflies.
She even loved playing with used bottles caps and empty boxes of matchsticks. In fact, she had a huge collection of those caps and boxes. Just thinking about all her toys, Seema again started getting agitated. She just wanted to scream out her lungs; wanted to pull out her hair; wanted to break into tiny slivers. But she knew she couldn’t do it because she had to stay strong for Seema. Right now Seema needed her mother the most, and she wouldn’t disappoint her.   

Smruti had been complaining about getting headaches since last couple of weeks but those headaches were very rare, and they lasted for only few minutes. After those spells of headache, she would be again normal. She would again jump, skip and run without any problem, and so Seema didn’t take it seriously. And then suddenly yesterday everything changed. Seema still remembered that fateful moment when she saw her baby suddenly stopping from her dead run and fainting away. Seema and Smruti had gone to the park in the evening as Smruti loved playing in the park with other kids. Smruti was participating in some race with other kids, while Seema was talking with Anjana, the mother of Seema’s best friend. Seema and Anjana were discussing their daughters study load when Seema saw Smruti stopping from her run with a red face, gulping down couple of deep breathes with her hands over her head and then fainting away. Thinking that Smruti might be feeling weak and hot from all the running around she was doing, Seema had ran to her with her bottle of glucose. But when she reached Smruti and saw her face, her blood went cold. She knew something was seriously wrong. Immediately she called 108 for an ambulance. After that she couldn’t remember anything. Everything became a blur. She didn’t even know who called Manoj.  She just knew one thing, her baby had air embolism in her brain. Although she didn’t understand the medical language, she just understood one thing: if Smruti didn’t come out of the coma in 48 hours after lapsing into it, there were high chances that she might not survive. Seema did understand what doctor meant: if Smruti didn’t come out of coma, she will be dead. Already 36 hours had passed with 12 hours remaining. 

Seema was channeling all her energy into praying for Smruti. She was willing Smruti to give a valiant fight to death. Smruti still had to celebrate her 12^th birthday next month. She wanted PlayStation as her gift. Seema would give her 10 such PlayStations right now to just see her open her eyes and smile at her mother. If only she had paid more attention to her complaints about headaches. Doctor had told her that those headaches were signals of this problem. Had she taken Smruti to the hospital earlier, this could have been averted simply by medication. If Smruti dies, Seema won’t hold anyone but herself responsible. How could she murder her own baby like this? Wasn’t she the one who had vowed to protect her when she had taken in her arms her the first time? Wasn’t she the one whom Smruti sought for protection when she was scared of monsters under the bed? Seema, who had taken the vow to be the best mother possible, had failed today.

Just when Seema was on the verge of falling apart, the hand clasped in her hands jerked. Seema started staring hard at Smruti. She was willing Smruti to open her eyes and look at her mother, and right at that moment, it seemed that God was in the mood to grant her wish. Smruti opened her eyes albeit slowly and painfully. Although there was lot of confusion in those innocent eyes, Seema had never loved the sight more. She ran to the doctor’s cubicle to call him. Doctors and nurses rushed to Smruti’s bed and a flurry of activity started. Seema was pushed outside the room so as to not to hamper the treatment but Seema was not concerned. She just couldn’t think beyond the fact that her baby got a second chance at life. When she felt a pair of arms around her, she looked up in the eyes of Manoj, who too was silently crying with tears rolling down his cheeks. Seema just hugged him and cried the tears of happiness and joy. Their baby was alive. She just got second chance at life.

This post has been written for Colgate Total’s ‘The Moral of the Storyis…!’ competition on IndiBlogger. Find out more at My Healthy Speak Blog. 

Photo Courtesy: http://vimeo.com/57253680