In the now-familiar hospital waiting room, you pretend to read, and listen to the conversations around you, of people who do not go to hospitals alone, unlike you. A multitude of languages, dialects, you cannot even figure out what some of them are. You still like to listen to the sounds, the tones, the emotions, the repetitions, the indignant recounting.
Those sounds we make just to prove to ourselves we are not alone, we have someone to talk to, someone to listen to us. Even though none of that is going to make any difference, those few cells bent on quiet destruction are way bigger than anything you have, they seep through your fortress quietly, like it never existed.
The terror of waiting for the test report filled in with stories of a life outside, a life that means absolutely nothing at all in this windowless tubelight-lit world, that little piece of paper could wipe away all your plans in a jiffy, you know? That arm around your shoulders is not going to shield you from anything, you know?
You remember the young man breaking down on the chair opposite you one morning, while his friend tries to tell him that cancer is now curable. His sudden tears, his surprise that this could happen to him.
You remember wishing you could tell him that you will exchange places with him if that was possible, that you always collect your reports alone, that you are always ready to leave, that you always believed you were living on borrowed time.
You wonder what became of him.
Those sounds we make just to prove to ourselves we are not alone, we have someone to talk to, someone to listen to us. Even though none of that is going to make any difference, those few cells bent on quiet destruction are way bigger than anything you have, they seep through your fortress quietly, like it never existed.
The terror of waiting for the test report filled in with stories of a life outside, a life that means absolutely nothing at all in this windowless tubelight-lit world, that little piece of paper could wipe away all your plans in a jiffy, you know? That arm around your shoulders is not going to shield you from anything, you know?
You remember the young man breaking down on the chair opposite you one morning, while his friend tries to tell him that cancer is now curable. His sudden tears, his surprise that this could happen to him.
You remember wishing you could tell him that you will exchange places with him if that was possible, that you always collect your reports alone, that you are always ready to leave, that you always believed you were living on borrowed time.
You wonder what became of him.
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