Short Story
Rise and fall . . . . . . .
She lies in her mother's arms wearing nothing but a pair of tan trousers. Her stomach rises and falls as her flesh expands and contracts with each gasp of life. A golden-brown child with a blue oxygen mask held over her mouth and nose. I sit in a corner with my elbows resting on my knees, hands clasped together in contemplation and eyebrows heavy with sleep. My mother sits next to me in a purple salwar kameez with light red marks around her neck and eyes. She says they burn. We are hypnotised by the baby's struggle to live. Her mother helplessly cradles the child while sitting in a plastic chair next to a black and white oxygen tank. She is not much older than I am. Her head and body are covered in a deep purple hijab. Her baby may not live.
"Ammu," my sister says, carrying a light green folder in one hand and a cellphone in the other, "they have an empty bed. Can you walk?"
My mother sleepily nods and has to be helped to her feet.
"Stay here," my sister says to me, as she leads our mother into a room tucked away in the corner.
I nod and sit back down.
"Keep your phone with you, I'll call if we need anything," she says as her head and the end of her sky blue kameez disappears behind a transparent door.
I imagine a flask made of animal skin being emptied of water. A man rides his horse to the edge of a lake and removes it from his side. He stands with his boots in the mud and takes in the cool air of an early morning. With one swift motion, he opens the cap and turns the flask upside down. The golden-brown skin expands and contracts, fattens and thins, rises and falls as its contents are emptied. Life pours out to be joined with the stream and its unyielding ebb and flow. The rider watches the water dance along the reeds and pebbles by the shore into an unknowable distance shrouded in fog. He returns the flask to his side and mounts his horse. The flask is empty. The child will die.
The phone in my hand does not buzz to life. It rests between the palms of my hands, quiet and lifeless. The baby girl kicks and screams as her mother tries to keep the mask on her mouth.
"Allah," the mother suddenly says in a low voice that seems to fill the busy room with its urgency, "Allah, I cannot save my child. Please, forgive me Allah. Please forgive me."
Tears stream down the young woman's face as she looks pleadingly at the nurses and orderlies who pass by. No one can do anything for her. No one seems to want to. Allah, please forgive them. The child will die. The baby breathes into the mask. Her mother stares into her closed eyes trying to pray her back to health.
The phone in my hand quietly vibrates. The bright display announces a summons from "IshtiGP."
"Stay with Ammu. I'll go and pay the bill."
I leave my place and push open the transparent door, the howls of a mother in pain drowned by thick glass. A small air-conditioned room with a bed hidden behind a light blue curtain. My mother lies in it with a blanket pulled up to her neck. I take a seat beside her, the tough mattress refusing to soften. She shivers.
"I'm cold."
"Do you want me to tuck you in?"
She nods in the affirmative.
I remove the coarse white blanket from her body and run my fingers along the side to find its edges. It opens and briefly hangs in the air above my mother's body, her limbs close to her torso to keep the heat from escaping. She continues to shake as I place my hand on her shoulder. I feel my mouth moving, trying to force a smile of some kind. My mother does not notice this. I feel her breathe in deeply. The blanket moves beneath me as she inhales and curls into a mess against my body as she lets the air out. I close my eyes and imagine a plane flying above the building. A wing or one of the engines explodes and its screws come loose. It plummets to earth and crashes through the roofs and floors of the hospital, descending on my mother, sister, doctors, patients, the baby girl and me. We all burn and die in a fiery explosion. The baby does not breathe. Allah, please forgive the baby who does not know how to breathe.
After a few minutes of waiting, we are asked to step outside. I remove my mother's blanket and hold her hands as she finds her sandals on the floor. We leave the cold air-conditioned room and return to the waiting area. An empty plastic chair sits beside a lonely oxygen tank, a blue mask carelessly draped over a pipe. My sister smiles at us and leads my mother out of the hospital. I linger for a moment or two and look around, hoping to spot a purple shroud or golden-brown baby girl somewhere in the room. There is no one. My mother and sister shuffle into the backseat of our car as I take the front.
"Did the injection help?" my sister asks.
"I don't know."
"We'll have to take you to a doctor tomorrow morning."
She nods.
"I wonder what happened to that baby," my mother suddenly says.
"A nurse came and said there was an ambulance outside. They're taking her to another hospital."
"Another hospital?"
"She wasn't getting any oxygen. The time it takes the mother to get from here to there, she isn't carrying the oxygen tank with her. What will happen to the baby then?"
Forgive her.
I lie on a mattress on the floor and watch the fan spin above me. The television glows and makes indistinct chatter at a low volume as my mother and sister try to sleep. I spread my arms like an eagle taking flight and close my eyes. I inhale deeply and keep the air from leaving. The hum of the overhead fan seems to grow louder. I imagine myself lying on a tough mattress with a coarse white blanket over my body. My grip on the blanket loosens and my hand falls to my side with a soft thud. My eyes close peacefully and there is no more oxygen left in my lungs. I have died without air.
The moment passes. I open my eyes and begin to breathe again heavily. The television glows. A spider walks across the wall and hides behind the mirror of my mother's vanity. Life goes on. The child will die. I hypnotically watch my own stomach rise and fall as the world lulls me to sleep.
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