Dating : A Rude Awakening

My eyelids are heavy, but I slowly manage to lift them up. I think I am on a bed. My legs are sore. I can’t really even feel them.

“Doctor, Doctor!”, shouted someone as they whizzed past the foot of my bed.

Am I in a hospital? The last thing I remember is walking down the old dusty lane; the one flanked by the old barracks. I was crossing the road to get to the old part of the town, and then suddenly out of nowhere, I saw a speeding car just a few meters away from me. I guess I was in an accident. I had read that your head is supposed to be in pain and on touching the bandages you are to realize you are in a hospital. That didn’t happen. I can feel no bandages. I can feel no pain.

I sat up. I am as fit as a fiddle. I can feel my legs again, I guess my stand-up comedian days are not that far off. Then again, given the quality of this joke, maybe it is.

I can hear someone crying behind me. Oh, I see. The person in the bed next to me has passed away. His wife and his young girl are sitting next to him, crying. I will have no such luck. A wry smile came upon my face. You don’t want to see tears in the eyes of your dear ones, but then you expect them to cry when you die. I find it funny. Funny. Yes, a recurring theme in all things life. Probably searching for a meaning in life is the biggest joke. My eyes fell on a cute nurse. Perhaps it’s not so funny after all. Perhaps it’s even more. Who cares? Why am I like this? I just survived a near-death experience and instead of rejoicing, I am contemplating the futility of it all. Why? I became even sadder. Perhaps I like being sad. I guess I get a kick out of it.

Why isn’t a doctor coming to my bed? Here I am sitting up probably after months and not a doctor notices. What kind of hospital is this? I started to look around trying to get someone’s attention. People turned towards me but didn’t bother to come. They just gave me the blank expression and went on their way. Bewildered, my eyes darted around, and finally, it rested upon a poster on the wall. It was one with a flower in the tricolor. That was on top of another poster which was mostly red in color. Political party posters! I was in a public hospital. What else could I expect? Such is the state of government-run hospitals. A patient wakes up and no one cares. Oh! Well, at least I can now breathe easy. I had seen a film or read a story sometime back where a man dies in the hospital and his soul thinks he is still alive, only to realize he has died by failing to see his own reflection in a mirror.

What would I have done if that were me? But can that even happen? Are there souls or is death the end? Rebirth or judgment day or just erased? I don’t know. I wish I knew. Without an amicable conclusion, no film is good. Maybe there is no climax in life. Funny how without an afterlife, life seems meaningless and yet it becomes so much more precious.

A doctor finally came to me. He looked straight through me. Maybe I was dead and he was looking at my dead body which was still lying on the bed. I wish I was in an expensive private hospital. I would be able to see the machine that shows the heart-beat rate and become sure of my fate. Any minute now he would pull up the bed cover over my… the face. I wonder, what do I look like now? Do I weigh anything? Do I occupy space? What am I made of? Still a blob of Carbon? Or, maybe I am now a ‘Nobone’ based creature. Maybe we ghosts have our own periodic tables and struggle to solve what these alive people are made of? Maybe to us, we are alive and they are dead. I guess our elements are not reflected by the standard waves and so they can’t see us. Funny. Two minutes ago, there was a different them, there was a different us.

“Let me check your pulse,” The doctor said.

I was woken from my stupor. So I was alive. I was both happy and sad or maybe I am confused and don’t know how I am feeling.

“Let me check your pulse” He repeated.

I forwarded my hand. He checked it lackadaisically. “It’s alright. You are fine and very lucky. The driver had pressed the brakes. You happened to be struck when the car had almost slowed down. You have no wounds. Don’t walk absent-mindedly like that”, he said blankly. He was right. Many times I had walked buried in my own thoughts so much so that I bumped into walls and doors. . He turned towards the cute nurse. “Discharge this man, will you,” he said with a smile.

I was discharged. I paid the bills and found the exit. I stepped out of the hospital, and then I stopped dead in my tracks. Wait. What just happened? I turned back. The door behind me was closed. I was again engrossed in my own thoughts, but how did I… Suddenly the door opened. The man who was my hospital bed neighbor was walking out, aided by his wife and daughter.