Social Issue Short Story – Noble Punishment
Photo credit: clarita from morguefile.com
I felt stabbing pain all over my body. I don’t know when I fell unconscious, I saw my watch, it was 4.15 am. I, then searched through the room. Its kinda weird, it seemed to be a hospital. I tried to remember what happened yesterday night and why was I here. But I couldn’t remember much. I stepped out from that room to look for anyone so I could actually ask.
I walked over a long corridor, I saw some crowd surrounded by, I passed by the huge door. I accidentally bump with someone who was actually taking the stretcher to some other area. I stood there for a minute to see who was the person in the stretcher. I saw her beautiful face, a girl who was about 29. I knew her. I was so irrelevant to remember everything. She was badly injured almost everywhere.
One of the doctor approached me and said, “sorry, we had made everything to bring her back, but your wife was dead.
I looked at him strangely and asked, ” how could it be?”.
He said, “it’s due to her severe blood loss and multiple injuries to her body, she couldn’t withstand it, you could get her body after regular investigations”.
A memory stroke me and bring back my conscious. A striking pain hit me. I couldn’t bear that pain. My loveable Sarah had gone. No one would ever love me like her. She was like my second mother, though I don’t have one. I wanted to die, then I suddenly remembered about my daughter. I ran back to him and asked, ” where is my daughter?”.He directed some room to go there and ask. I ran towards the room.
A nurse was outside the door. I asked about my daughter, ” where is my daughter? I want to see her please” saying that I tried to enter the room. She restricted me to go inside, ” sir, don’t you see, she’s in ICU, you could see her once she had been shifted to ward”. I stood there silently. Tears started to roll over my eyes. I couldn’t control myself. I burst out my heaviness by crying loudly. The crowd stared at me. Some one tried to console me. But I cried till almost my energy faded out.
One of the doctor who visited my daughter said, “sorry raghav, she ran into coma, I couldn’t tell you when she might recover back to normal, she might not be”.
I was shocked to hear that. Saira was only 12 years old, she was so young to get through this. I was the one who being sole responsible for what had happened to Sarah and Saira. If I would have heard what Sarah said, this didn’t happened. It was all my fault. Thinking that, I hardly hit the glass window with my bare hands. My hands were bleeding heavily.
The doctor and nurses were running towards me and brought me to a room to put something to stop my blood.
I wasn’t concern about that now. All that matter now was Sarah and saira to me. If i weren’t stupid husband, i still had my wife with me. I was thinking about the incident. We were happily getting ready for my best friend’s birthday party. His wife was also my Sarah’s friend. So I planned to go with my family. We enjoyed the party like anything as usual. But my friends wanted me to give company for a drink and Sundar also compelled me, so I started to drink. But I eventually started to drink more.
When Sarah came and saw, I was totally drunken. I promised her that I would not take alcohol today. She was angry and I tried to console her. But after sometime, she wanted to go home soon. So she asked me to stay here. But I didn’t want to leave her like that at that nighttime. I went along with her. It was almost 2 hours to travel from my friend’s house. So I was driving slowly, though its not necessary to go fast, even if the traffic wasn’t much. After sometime, I felt thristy, so I leaned down to take out the bottle. In that few seconds, a dog has crossed, I couldn’t control over the car. After a huge loud, my car crashed into tree. That was it. Its all because of me. I couldn’t move to take them to hospital. After that, I woke up in the hospital only.
It was my punishment being without her. Its been 2 years, Sarah had gone alone without me. I wiped out my tears and turned out to see my saira in a wheelchair. At least I have her now, otherwise my guilty would have killed me anytime before. I came back to my senses, when I heard a ring from my phone. I attended the call and it was from an alcohol addict who needed a counselling to get rid of that. It took my wife’s life and almost my daughter to change myself into normal person. I returned back with Saira to my counselings centre from graveyard.
–END–
