"Experience, feel, and confront your fears so that you can heal and grow. In the end, you won't remember the bad moments in your life, only the silence that existed between the good ones. Now leave so I can talk to your mother". Those were the last words I heard from my father, accompanied by a small note he handed me, a note with the same words written on it.
I remember that everything outside his shared room in the hospital seemed very clean, as a hospital should be. It smelled like floor disinfectant, and there was a constant stream of sounds, from people talking to beeping electrocardiograms. While my parents were talking inside, nurses would come in and out of the room, likely to attend to the other people who were admitted in the same room as my father.
At that moment, I didn't pay much attention to what my father had said. He was dying from a cause no one understood, and I was angry with him because, to my immature self, it seemed like he didn't care about dying or finding out why he was dying. I was furious with the doctors because I thought they weren't trying to find the cause of my father's inability to walk due to the pain in his body. He looked so different from the memories I had of him, emaciated, thin, looking like a dead man before dying. I grabbed the note, which I had unknowingly clenched in my hands, and threw it onto one of the chairs beside me.
As time passed, I started drifting off until the next thing I remember is being in the back of a taxi, lying on my mother's lap. It was raining outside, one of the worst storms in Los Angeles that I can recall experiencing.
My mother noticed that I had woken up. Her eyes were red, tear stains on her face, and her heart was undoubtedly broken. She did what any mother would do. She looked into my eyes and forced a smile, probably trying to cheer me up. Once again, this enraged me.
My father's funeral took place a few days later. Seeing my mother crying made me cry, and together we cried for a long time until I grew tired and fell asleep again, leaving my mother alone in her mourning.
From there, everything happened very quickly. We moved from home because Mom couldn't afford the mortgage and the debts from a hospital that did nothing to solve my father's illness. She got a second job and then a third. As a child, I didn't understand the difficulties she was going through, so I didn't do anything to support her in our small apartment. I isolated myself both literally and metaphorically from the outside world. At school, I stopped talking to my friends, playing video games, and watching television. I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but I made a promise to myself. I would be a better doctor than those at that hospital. I would show them how the work should be done, how lives should be saved, how they could have saved Dad.
I started studying day and night. My second home was the public library a few blocks from my school. With the little money Mom gave me for lunches, I bought second-hand books that gradually filled boxes I kept under my bed. I achieved the best grades, won awards, competed for my school against other schools, and won every time. Some small newspapers in the city wrote articles about me, but none of it mattered to me. They weren't my goal; they were just small achievements on my path to becoming the best doctor.
When the time came to go to medical school, I applied to the best schools in the country. I was accepted by all of them with full scholarships, thanks to my impressive academic records and my achievements in various competitions I participated in.
In the end, I decided on Harvard because being in Boston, on the other side of the country, would distance me from so many painful memories with my father in California.
What I didn't think about at that moment was that I would also be distancing myself from a very tired mother who was still paying off hospital debts.
"I'm so proud of you," my mother said as she hugged me goodbye outside the airport, "I know you'll be an incredible doctor who will save many lives."
"Thank you, Mom," I replied, squeezing her tightly, "I'll call you every day and come back during the vacation period," I promised before letting go, "so don't be sad." We shared a final silent embrace, and I left to fulfill the promise I had made.
Medical school was relatively easy for me. I had studied daily since my father's death for this purpose. All those years of seclusion were paying off. My academic life didn't change much from the past. I didn't make friends or seek to make any. The only people I talked to were the professors and assistants, with various questions related to disease diagnosis and medical findings.
At the end of my first year, I returned home. My mother was ecstatic with happiness, so proud of me. She called me her favorite doctor, showing me off to the elderly neighbors. She made my favorite meal as a celebration before leaving for her third job.
My mother was tired, worn out, with gray hair and old clothes that she surely wore to be able to send me the little money she sent for my school supplies.
I hadn't noticed it at that moment. I returned home with a lot of study material, but despite being at home, I secluded myself in my room to continue studying. I only came out to eat the food my mother had prepared because she wasn't there when I left.
The years went by like this until, four years later, my mother fell ill. Being so close to graduating, I decided, with my mother's help and her insistence, to stay and not visit her in the same hospital where my father had died many years before.
After the attacks on September 11, 2001, there were interruptions in telephone services in some areas of the country. One of the calls that couldn't be received that day came from the hospital; my mother was very ill.
Mom died on September 14, 2001, and I didn't find out until two days later.
I packed my whole life into a few boxes and moved to an even cheaper apartment. Now I had two debts to pay. I dropped out of medical school and applied for many different jobs. I easily obtained some certifications and became a paramedic. Now I worked in an ambulance, taking hundreds of injured people to the same hospital where I had lost my parents. I worked alongside doctors who were blinded by their hierarchical positions, envying those who had achieved what I had not.
Every day I felt worse. I started drinking and neglecting myself.
Years later, finishing my shift, my boss asked me and my colleague to follow him to a room. Inside, there was a family—a woman with a little boy by her side and a man on a bandaged stretcher, asleep but stable.
The child turned to his mother, asking for some kind of permission, and when he received a nod, he thanked us with a small hug for saving his father. It seemed that we had been the first responders when he had an accident a few days ago. I didn't remember it, but apparently, the mother had insisted on meeting us to express her gratitude, and she was given the opportunity later on.
I still remember her words: "Thank you for saving my husband's life," she said while giving me a hug.
I had forgotten. All those years thinking that I hadn't achieved my dreams, and there I was, depressed for not being a doctor, for not being recognized, for feeling lesser. I had forgotten that my promise was to become a doctor to save lives. It was the main point of it all. That child could see his father again because we saved his life. What did it matter if I didn't have a degree hanging in a beautiful office? I could still save lives.
I don't remember how I got home that day, or if I said goodbye to anyone. I remember arriving with chest pain, gasping for air. I possibly ran from the hospital to my house. The apartment was a mess, cheap alcohol bottles scattered everywhere, trash all around, mold in some parts of the ceiling, leaking faucets, and the shower had no showerhead—water flowing directly from the pipe. Everything was horrible. How had I not realized my way of life? For some reason, I desperately wanted to see myself in a mirror, but I realized I didn't have one. I remembered that my mother had her purse in one of the boxes. Surely she had a handheld mirror. I took out all the boxes from a closet and started unpacking everything. In one of the boxes, I found the purse and emptied its contents on the floor. It had many things, especially paper clippings, but there was no mirror. As I gathered everything, I realized the clippings were newspaper pieces, all with my achievements. I had collected them all. There were pictures of me as a child, laughing with Dad, the day I won a math competition, the day I got into medical school. I had the grade reports she received every year without my knowledge. Tears began to fall from my eyes onto the papers in my hands. My mother had years of accomplishments saved in her purse.
In the end, there was an envelope with my name on it. Inside, there was a letter clearly written by my mother.
"Son, I'm writing this letter not knowing if they will give it to you someday. I sincerely hope it doesn't happen. I asked you not to come back this year because I didn't want you to see me the way I am right now. I remember how it was with your father; I didn't want you to experience something like that again.
At that moment, you isolated yourself and started studying as if everything that happened with your father was your fault, or maybe as if you wanted to take it upon yourself to ensure that something similar never happened again. It was never your responsibility; it was something that couldn't be controlled in any way. But seeing you so focused, I never had the courage to tell you to stop. I'm sorry if you felt burdened with the responsibility of doing what you do.
Have I ever told you how proud I am of you? I know you'll be a great doctor someday, saving lives and diagnosing any disease you come across. You have a bright future ahead of you. I love you with all my heart.
Mom.
P.S.: There's something for you inside the envelope."
Once again, with more tears than I could control, I pulled out a carefully folded piece of paper from the envelope. As I unfolded it, I couldn't contain my tears and, for some reason, a hysterical laughter of happiness combined with a tinge of melancholy. Everything turned dark.
The next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital bed. I had fainted, and they hadn't found me until the next day because my colleague reported me missing.
A nurse entered the room, surprised to see me awake. She immediately called my doctor.
The doctor who treated me informed me that I had terminal cancer. I never saw it coming. I didn't feel well, obviously, but I attributed it to my depression and lifestyle. I never imagined it was cancer. I ignored all the symptoms.
I started treatment to prolong my life as much as possible. My oncologist gave me three months.
Two months later, lying in a hospital bed by the doctor's orders, I smiled at the small note of paper that I had asked the nurse in charge of me to bring from my apartment. Finally, I understood.
I remembered those very few happy moments of my life.
"If there's a second chance, I'll make sure to be happy. This time, I'll become a doctor, enjoy life, experience new things, make friends, and form a family that I'll cherish above all," I said as I closed my eyes and stopped breathing.
I died.
Nurses and doctors rushed in when the alarm sounded, but they couldn't do anything. On the floor, the nurse in charge of the recently deceased found the small note, picked it up, and smiled as she read its content.
"Experience, feel, and confront your fears so that you can heal and grow. In the end, you won't remember the bad moments in your life, only the silence that existed between the good ones."
Death feels good...
Or at least, that's what I should think. For some reason, my head hurts, and there's a frantic blonde woman in front of me.
"PJ!" the woman shouted. "Are you okay?"
------------------------------------------------------------------
Author's thoughts
I'm not a doctor nor am I American, therefore I don't know how the American educational system works 100%. If you find an error, I would appreciate it if you let me know. Please leave a review, and I will update accordingly if everything goes well in a few days.