1 Life and Death

"Doctor! Please, save my baby! Hurry!"

Desperate yelling and screams of mothers filled the hospital room as doctors and nurses rushed in to try pacify them. The screaming became wailing as one baby after the other became lifeless.

The doctors had no idea what to do either. Those newborn babies who had been delivered normally were healthy but had their health condition rapidly deteriorate without any warning. Their heartbeats and breathing stopped altogether and mothers wailed for the loss of their child.

While the mourning continued, a man in a grey suit came into the room. The doctors came to him at once and stood alert for his orders.

"Bring their bodies to the lab right away and everything that happened in this room must be kept confidential. Give the mothers a form to fill out to keep their mouths shut. The corpses must arrive by five o'clock this afternoon."

Doctors frantically nodded their heads up and down and went to snatch the lifeless babies out of their mothers embrace. The women struggled hard to keep hold of their child and cried as they watched their babies taken away.

In the end, there was only the man in the grey suit, a doctor as his temporary assistant and the women who lost their children left in the room. The women all had eyes red from crying, disheveled hair but didn't care for their appearance or makeup as they sat in silence, in fear of what the man would do to them. It seemed it didn't matter if they were rich or poor, from a powerful family or not.

"Sign it." The man spoke coldly as the doctor began handing a form that would keep the women quiet about what happened. Turning his head around, the man saw a doctor cowering in the corner.

"What do you want?"

"I'm sorry for intruding, but sir, one baby has started breathing again and is now alive. May I ask what the following procedure for the baby is?"

The women's looked up with their swollen red eyes with the slightest hope; hope that the baby would have been their child. They looked expectantly at the man to reveal who's baby it was.

Disappointing them, the man left the room immediately after ordering one doctor to collect the signed forms and the other to lead him to the baby.

What was supposed to be a joyous day for celebration turned into a day of grief and sorrow. They could do nothing within their power to bring their babies back again. How and what were they meant to tell their husband, family and friends?

And perhaps due to the panic, grief and anxiety in experienced in those thirty minutes in that hospital room, no one had noticed that the pot plants ,that had been placed in the room for fresher air, had wilted and died. Of course, none of that mattered to the mothers who had lost their child, nor to the doctors and nurses frantically trying to find a way to cover up what has happened.

What was perhaps more tragic, was that the doctors didn't care about what the women felt and only cared for their own self, and the mothers who could have been comforting one another instead were going through their sorrows alone.

There was one mother though, who was certain her baby was the one who survived. It was like her sixth sense. As the first who got up and walked out of the room and while she still showed trauma and grief , there was hope shining bright in her eyes, she looked forward to the day when she could reunite with her precious baby again.