Twelve counts of Murder

Where corruption is the norm, funds for basic human right like safe roads line the pockets of those in power, who take no responsibility for the heinous crime of devaluing life.

It was a beautiful day, sunny blue skies, a mild breeze to thwart the august heat and I was going back home. It's been ages since I've been home, at least the 3 weeks away felt like forever. It being my very first job after the internship there really was no other choice than to go work 200km away for a good job or try and stay as close to home with a job that sucked.

Being unattached as I was it was everybody's opinion that there was much to gain leaving the nest for a new life. Well there wasn't much of a life to be found in a rural town going to work and sleeping when there was no work and eating if I felt like it. Of course there are those in the same boat as me to hang out with, which we do, and it is fun, but there is that niggling feeling that there was something missing.

So... I was going back home, waiting for a bus really. It was the middle of the day, the station was filled with school children going home and with those who came to the market.

There was this middle aged man, tall and thin, sunken dark rimmed eyes, stained mouth boasting a lifetime of beetal chewing in a checkered sarong wearing a button down, standing against a wall out of the way of rowdy kids. He was carrying a faded backpack, those outdated ones made of cloth with metal zippers and tags, very clearly not something he would have bought for himself. He was staring into space with unseeing eyes and I couldn't help but notice the desperation in his eyes.

He is most likely a farmer, like most of the people here. Here being an agricultural town boasting a very proud history of kings that never let a drop of rain go to waste during the monsoon and built massive tanks that were aptly likened to oceans. However most people looks to be living day by day and have this world-weary look.

The locals say the people look livelier after the harvest which was still a few months away when they earn a chunk of money from months of hard work. They say there would be more hospital admissions of drunken people after fights or road traffic accidents, which I was dreading as a doctor.

He was probably one of those people living on the last bit of money he had saved, waiting for the harvest, helpless as to what to do to survive in the meantime. How to pay for his food , how to pay his bills, how to feed his children or afford the stationary and the thousand other things a house with kids would need. Hence, the bag; old, reused, probably once used by his children.
That was the first time that I saw him.

A week later, there I was going out of my mind at work because of how hectic it was. I was on the night shift praying for a sedate night when suddenly the news came that there has been an accident, mass casualties. A bus had fallen from a poorly built bridge into a river. A bus, full of passengers, those going home from work or a day of running errands about town, has fallen into the river trying to evade a three-wheeler because the bridge was too narrow. According to the grapevine seven were found dead and the rest were being taken to the hospital.
So the waiting began.

Of those that would survive some were bound to be in critical condition, drowning victims start deteriorating with time. So the ICU began getting ready to take in a patient.
This usually includes getting a bed ready, when you say bed it means getting ready the ventilator and the tubes, the emergency medications, emergency intubation and procedure equipment and all the other machines and monitors. It is getting ready to deal with any eventuality that we can anticipate when getting in an unstable patient.
11.30 pm we get the only patient in critical condition who survived that long, lungs in very poor condition, intubated, very poor prognosis. But a 38 year old, mother of three, going back home from the market in the 6.30 bus. The rest of the drowned people were not lucky enough, eleven dead by the end of the night.
The bus had apparently fallen in and rolled along down the river a few times, the water was deep and muddy. Imagine, stuck inside a bus, in the pitch black dark, not knowing up from down, slowly suffocating.

So there we were, trying our best to hold on to a life, not add her life into that pile. Nothing much we could really do though, except try our best.
She held on...

6am, the visiting hour. Most difficult time to deal with, you need to put on armour, keep a distance and be sympathetic at the same time. So many desperate eyes, yet you have to chip away at their hope sometimes. Because sometimes there is no hope, no matter how badly you wish for it.

So, I meet him for the second time that morning.

Desperate eyes, stained mouth. Her husband, father of three... He was away the next town over working at a building site for daily wages when he got the call that night. There were no buses out so he waited in the bus stand and came in the first bus back to town, how was she?!

Critical, lungs very bad, ? infection, serious condition. She might not hold on for long...
She didn't hold on for long.

Leaving work, outside the ICU, I see three little girls huddled together with an old lady, him sitting in a hard plastic chair, staring at something unseeing, eyes void, this time.

Downstairs, a news crew, recording against the backdrop of the mortuary, twelve dead from the accident, unsafe bridge. Third such accident at the bridge in two years, funds released three years back to widen the bridge and install safety railings, two protests demanding repair after each accident to no avial. So many lives lost over the years. Something that could easily be fixed. This is for the attention of relevant authorities!

Reviews

[Tom]

So, so sad to read in the concluding lines that this terrible accident could have avoided if the relevent authorities had heeded the warnings of the everyday public and used the funds they had accrued to fix and repair that weaken bridge!

A harrowing account, yet I commend you and your colleagues for doing your duty, willfully helping those in dire need, sadly many did not live to see a new day!

[Senu Jayasinghe]

Thank you for reading. This is a story that needed to be told.