Breaching the Great Divide

I was lucky enough to witness this example of pure, unrequited love, due to being unlucky enough to be in hospital in the first place.God bless our nurses and that little boy wherever he is now.

The little boy across the room is very sick. I hear the nurses who stay by his bedside night and day whisper and sigh. I can see the shock of black hair juxtaposed against the clinical white of the pillow. Above his head a yellow paper football with coloured spots is pinned to the ceiling and sways in the cool breeze which flows from the fan. The nurse who sits in the corner makes a quilt for her baby grand-daughter. Meanwhile he lies in his bed, suspended between life and death. I am hypnotized by his unblinking black lashes as his sightless eyes stare down the opposite wall. Where is he now? What is he experiencing , this child? As the world bustles around him, as cleaners mop and chat to the nurses about their kids and husbands, as busy young doctors stroll smiling past his door! Parents hurry by with their heads down, child's hand in theirs, glad to get out, go home, get back to normality, whatever that is?

They whisper that he was very bad last night, very sick yesterday! His monitors go off at regular intervals and they run to check his oxygen levels, pulse.  His heart rate is dropping now, dropping fast. They're worried. There are five in there now. He's here two years. He was perfect one minute, broken the next ! Now it's stabilized again but he convulses every four minutes they say. I watch their eyes stare at the monitors, one has tears waiting to escape, but prevented by a knowing of things just being what they are. No crying for this boy who is lost in his dreams, wandering through unimagined places. But he must feel the nurse's hands in his as he journeys through, their hands reaching across both worlds, breaching the great divide between the here and there - their love for him lighting his way in the dark. 

Reviews

[wordman]

touching write,sad but reality for a lot of people