The last thing Alice had heard the patient say was, “I need more time.” The next day the patient was put on life support, unresponsive, tubed and plugged into her only remaining family.
“Why would someone divulge something so personal to a stranger?” Alice wondered after the fact. “What could it mean?” Everybody has regrets at the end of their lives, after all, but faced with their end people either embraced it or were terrified of it. “I don’t want to die,” or “My time has come.” These were usually what they said. More time was not something you asked for when you were ninety-two.
The woman in the room didn’t appear to have any family. She had been brought in after she collapsed in the market, and nobody had come to see her since. The Police had made enquiries and confirmed that she was alone, a spinster, with no close relatives or next of kin. Why would that person need more time?
“Funny,” Alice thought, “she’s ninety-two and I’m twenty-nine.”
Alice never asked for more time for herself, rather that she could turn back time. She could be a better student and become a doctor. That would make her parents proud. Or, even better, she could have married well. Then again, maybe turning back time wasn’t the answer. More time with her parents now, supporting them in their old age instead of being so far away from them. Maybe more time was the correct thing to ask for.
Hadn’t Alice also said, “I need more time,” to her father when she failed to qualify in the medical qualification exam? More time to study, or more time to be convinced? “You don’t get these many retakes ever again in life,” her father had replied. “Don’t get used to having time. Treat the next time as your last chance.”
Her mother didn’t say anything, but Alice knew she held the same opinion. So many hours each day her mother worked at home, as much as her father did at the shop. Sleep was the only elastic commodity in her parents’ lives. She slept till late on days when she didn’t have school. “I need more time,” she would grumble and turn away when they tried to wake her.
And now things had caught up with her. She wasn’t happy, and nor were her parents. The poorest of all situations. She didn’t have time for herself, but what really wracked her with guilt was that she no longer had time to go home to her parents. She had already lost one hospital job because she overextended her leave and lied to her parents about it. The disappointment of her losing a job would probably be greater than the disappointment of her parents losing their daughter’s presence in their lives.
She knew they were no longer the unbreakable parents from her younger days. Now, they needed medicines everyday just to keep the blood flowing smoothly in their veins. She took care of dozens of patients in her hospital, but her parents had to fend for themselves. Alice could never be sure if she was doing right by them. So she chose to follow convention and leave the thinking out of it. “If I’d been married, or been a doctor, I couldn’t have given them any more time than I do now,” she reasoned occasionally, before altogether dropping the chain of thoughts she couldn’t control.
After the patient had slipped into a coma, she was moved to an ICU, out of Alice’s jurisdiction. And with her went all her files and pills, cutting Alice off entirely. So she was left with no option but to start sneaking down to the ICU before her shift began and during breaks. There was never any change in her condition, time had stopped for this woman.
Though there was no resemblance between the lady and anyone on Alice’s family, not even remotely, yet Alice felt a sense of kindred towards her. Maybe her wrinkles, the desperation with which she had tried to hold the nurses’ hands, all of that had left a mark on Alice. She could look after her, check in on her, and give her more time, not as a nurse, but as a dutiful daughter should.
But, a truly dutiful daughter didn’t keep a half-written letter to her parents on her bedside table for weeks, covering it with magazines and bus tickets till it was comfortably out-of-sight.
Alice’s father had been unwell, again. His psoriasis was not getting any better, and the hours of sleep he was managing were fewer with each letter she got. They wouldn’t call her, except for on her birthday, because of her late hours at work. Every letter came with blessings from them, but these had stopped feeling heartfelt long ago. Now they were just the formalities of addressment from parents to their child.
There was an unspoken plea in the words of the letters asking Alice to visit home, and maybe even take her father to her hospital and get him checked by specialists. They needed her experience of the city, her familiarity with the doctors, her loving care to see them through their old age. But, she didn’t think she could do well enough by them. A lot of what ifs kept her from committing herself to their care. What if the bosses frown upon her request for leave? And what if they didn’t think it was appropriate for her to expect favours at work? What if they didn’t waive any fees for her and she couldn’t pay her way?
About six days after the old lady slipped into her coma, the Police were able to track down a next of kin, who took another two days to arrive. He was middle-aged, bald, and quite uncomfortable in this situation. His only task, right away, was to decide on her life-or-death matters.
She saw him speaking to the attending doctor through the glass on the door. He avoided looking at the old woman as much as he could, kept his eyes on the floor and nodded as the doctor explained the details of what was happening with her medically and the bases for his eventual decision. She could see him mouth the words, “I need more time,” at the end of it.
“Poor chap, shouldn’t have come,” Alice overheard someone say. “He’s going to be well and truly broke paying the hospital fees. Every extra day would cost me a month’s salary.”
A month’s salary each day? Really? But surely this man was well to do, flying in on short notice. He could afford it easily. Surely, he wouldn’t base his decision on the cost of keeping her alive, but only on the lady’s last wish. She should tell him that, tell him those last words.
“Give her more time, no matter what it costs,” she wanted to say.
But, what it costs sure seemed like a lot. Maybe he could afford it, but she surely couldn’t if she was in his position. If he hadn’t come would she have been able to keep her alive? If it wasn’t this old lady, could she keep her own parents alive? She was doing what she could. She’s earning more than her father already. But the buck stretches much farther back home than in the city.
He spent another fifteen minutes in the ICU before beating a retreat. He didn’t return the next day. Or the next few days after that. Alice was relieved. The status quo suited her, nothing was improving, but at least nothing was getting worse. This was just as she liked it. No more difficult choices for anyone, especially her.
By the end of the week, however, he was back, and stood by the woman for some time keenly looking at her frail body. Did he even remember her from his childhood? Was it as difficult for him to trace his memories of her as it had been for the Police to trace him? Was he feeling like the next of kin respecting her final wishes, or just a stranger deciding whether to murder her? Alice couldn’t decipher his expression, and she couldn’t loiter too long either. She went straight home after her shift ended.
The next day she shuddered at the thought of learning what had happened, of living with the decisions of others, and her own. After avoiding it all day, she took the elevator to the ICU. As she walked to the ICU doors, she panicked and changed her direction. She ran all the way down the stairs.
After very little sleep, but a lot of deep breathing, she decided to rip off the band-aid the next day and went to the ICU as soon as she arrived.
The bed was empty. It was done. The lady was gone. No more time.
Alice asked another nurse there, “When did they finally do it?”
“Do what?” the other one replied.
“Unplug her.”
“It wasn’t my shift then. I don’t know if they unplugged her or she revived. Her papers aren’t here. Ask the chief.”
“Or she revived?” Was that even possible after so many days? She could ask the head nurse, or the attending doctor. They’d know for certain. But, for now she had received a few moments of hope. A little time when both outcomes seemed possible, and that was more than she had hoped for yesterday.
Alice smiled for the first time in days. She went up to her floor with a sense of lightness. She wanted to call her parents and talk to them for hours that night. She wanted to find a better job, closer to home so she could have everything she wanted for herself and her family. She decided not to actively seek out what happened to the lady.
Alice set herself and the lady free, and thought to herself, “I’m, going to enjoy this … for a little more time.”