My Broken China Doll

The first thing that I thought when I got the phone call was, "Was it the stress that caused it all? Was I the reason for it?" For an instance I could not make out what the mother was trying to say. I was clearly and above all stunned. How could this be happening to one of the promising student? The cheerful bubbly one in class who used to write her feelings in a journal to me?

Perhaps I was mistaken. I wrote down her ward number and together with my BOSSES went to pay her a visit this afternoon. Throughout the car ride, my boss was asking me if there were any signs of stroke that she had experienced before the incident. I thought hard, recalling the incidents I have chided the class for performing not up to their potential. I wondered if any of my words had erupted the blood clot in her brains. After a while I was not even paying attention to the conversation and my mind was away visualizing what she would look like now.

Upon arrival at the children's ward, I saw her. Like the Great OZ I was and like the fragile porcelain doll she was, broken, Tubes all over. Reminded me of my dying grandmother. Her mother recognized me and filled me with the details of the incident. It was a rare case for a teenager to get stroke and she was one of the rarest accommodate. The sting had began in my eyes.

Another way, hit me when her mother said, " She cries a lot because her throat hurts because of the thing they have inserted in her thorax and she whines because of the tubes in her nose." She lay semi motionless, paralyzed in her left, managing a small wave in her right, acknowledging our presence. "When I did not show her a mirror, she asked if her face was that ugly" continued her mother. To me she was the same doll I know. Only her self esteem had become her iron mask.

I had no idea how to react. I did not know what to say when everyone was comforting her.Then in the MRI scan room I said, "Hey, I can't believe it, that room looks like the ones you enter in Star Wars you never know you may just meet Obi Canobi and Yoda." At that moment, a short stout nurse wearing green walked out. She smiled.

It was warm. I guess the saying is true, humor helps to mend a broken self.