Green! Yellow! Red!

Beep… beep… beep… beep…

The only sound which was audible in the eerily silent white chamber was that of the flickering yellow line on the green screen. It seemed like a dry, humourless metaphor; green and yellow – 2 colours on a screen to show that life was still left, that the sun hadn’t settled for one final time yet. Green and yellow, two colours which are always followed by Red – the colour of danger, the colour of the devil, the colour of blood, and the colour which denotes cessation. And red there was aplenty; in bottles hanging from metal hooks; in the tubes connecting the bottles to the body; in the roses decorating the side table; in the eyes of the nurses. 

Everyone you know wants you to come out of the hospital after a point of time, one way or the other. The doctors are tired of treating you; the nurses are fed up of feeding you; the family is heartbroken seeing you suffer; you are tired of waiting for death to slowly crawl by your bedside and hold you with the grip of its cold fingers. The waiting game is the devil’s most ingenious ploy. Death does not strike when you are least expecting it; it does not strike when you want it to; it does not strike when you have given-up on life itself. It strikes when you become hopeful again; when you think that since you have not died yet, the ailment might be treated. 

Hospital gives you a lot of time to think, to introspect, to recall all your regrets, to relive all the heartbreaks, to start considering your whole life an utter failure. When they have replaced all the blood that flowed in your body with bottled fluids; when they have sapped you of all the energy left in your muscles; when they have taken out all the positivity from inside you, you are left for death to come and claim what remains of your body. 

The beeps were starting to come less frequently with the passage of every second. The silence between two beeps becoming unbearable. Silence so long, that you can do anything to hear a noise; but you cannot make any noise on your own. The air was starting to choke in the throat; the head was becoming lighter; the spit in the back of the mouth which I could not swallow, no matter how hard I tried; the uneasiness in the stomach. I wanted to cry, to call for help, to ask the doctor if this was it. I wanted to be held in the embrace of the love of my life. I wanted someone to sing me the hymn of Gods. All I could manage to do was smile. 

And then the final beep!