I got off the bus, considering it a normal day. On an ordinary day I have to cross two main roads and then walk for two minutes to get to my home. Well who knew that a bike would hit me half way on cross road and leave me disheveled? No one thinks that before getting out of the house in the morning. It’s just another day. Every day passes like just another 24 hours making life shorter. But it is only if you start losing vision after a vehicle hits you and you roll down lying at the center of the road, wondering, is this the end?
The black outs make me nervous as I try to get up, or rather wait for someone to come and pick me up. Because my body failed to react to my mind. I command it to get up; it wants to wait in the moment. Abstract images from my dreams flip through my eyes, though the blinding sun is shining right onto my eyes, I cannot see. I cannot see what’s going around. I try to gain sense and get up. I reach out my hand towards my bag which has been thrown away by the hit too. But I can’t feel my wrists. I want some passer-by to come and help me get up, but all in vain. Was I forgetting that I live in Karachi, and people’s own lives are more important than others? Why would someone stop for a girl who has blood all over her shirt and trousers? Why was I forgetting that my country, my people are not really mine. In a nation where people kill their own family, why was someone going to stop and help a stranger? Had I lost my mind? NO! I couldn’t lose my mind. I am abandoned in the middle of a road with swiftly passing cars, motorbikes and buses. It would be a lie if I did not admit that for a moment I did think these were my last breaths and some huge machine would just drive over me and crush me up.
But somehow I manage to sit up and crawl to the edge of the footpath. As my shock starts to fade, I realize I still have one more road to cross in this crooked condition. My fear returns back as I limp across the road I had left. I realize something wetting up my sandals. I feel my feet getting slippery, as I look down to identify the reason to it, I see a pool of blood forming into the little depths of my sandal. I know it is the injury that is worsened by exerting the pressure of my body weight.
As I get closer towards the end of those crossroads, I see faces passing by. I see more and more human traces revolving around my eyes . . . or wait. It was my head that was spinning faster now. I think my body was still in a shock and was taking time to register all those different kinds of pains and aches I was experiencing. I wanted to sit down and sip down water through my throat. Which is strange because; I don’t remember screaming loud enough for help, because no one really helped me up?
Walking, I was just a few steps away from home when I started losing sight again. I couldn’t even hear much now. Home is so close; I just have to drag my feet for a few more minutes now. In the moment, I realized I was standing in front of the hospital we are neighbors with. Aah . . the irony was impeccable.
Upon reaching home, I was trembling with pain and was welcomed by various voices of cries and moans of how did this happen to me. But my head hurt. And I had to shout loud to shut those cries of worry.
As I was rushed to the emergency ward of the huge private Memon Hospital, my dad couldn’t find a wheelchair to locate me in. Upon asking for it from one of the nurses, she hoarsely replied that they didn’t have any and I would have to walk till bed No. 8 or my father would have to lift me up. To which, I preferred limping across the long hallway with shiny polished tiles and an anti-septic fragrance.
The gigantic hall was separated by curtains declaring the different bed numbers. It was horrific how so many patients were being handled by one doctor and several nurses only. As the lady doctor walks up to me and asks about my injury, someone shouts from a far off bed calling for her, “CARDIAC ARREST, BED NO.3”. She runs at her fastest pace away from my wounds to a woman who has been tortured by one of her in-laws. All of my pains go blur in a moment when I start empathizing with the cries of her mother. I could hear but not see through the curtains. With my new found respect for living, I wanted to get up, go closer to that woman, struggling with life. I do not remember when I passed out, but when I woke up, they were carrying the woman away. I could hear her family howling over the incident. I could hear their cries while I lay helpless on a bed quite away from hers, forgetting my pains, embracing the worlds’.
