Hiraeth: The Search of Life

My soul had lost its will to live. My mind no longer supported my body. The excruciating pain of chemotherapy felt like needles being pierced through my skin. I no longer had the urge to live anymore. My body wanted to escape this world.

Surrounded by all these dreadful thoughts I sighed once more as I saw myself in the bathroom mirror in my hospital room. I preferred calling it my second home. The doctors had lost all their hopes of saving me.

I washed my face with shivering hands. My arms and legs were on their own. The weakness and pain made them feel unattached from the rest of the body. My beautiful black hairs were all gone. But to be honest, I didn't think my bald head could have been that shiny. The hair oiling had paid off somehow.

I walked out from the washroom, barely standing straight and stepped into my room. My hospital bed had white sheets on it as usual. There was a small table beside it and the room was filled with lily flower bouquets.

"I definitely need some more vases for these", I said this to myself as I walked towards my bed. I laid down on the clean white sheets and started staring at the ceiling for no particular reason.

"They should hang some rocket ships or maybe planets and stars from that ceiling. It could have been much more cheerful than these stupid white walls with stupid lights. Doesn't anyone know that we old people have to gaze at this ceiling all day?" I thought about this a thousand times every day.

"How is my nicest patient doing?" and while saying this, the doctor came in with the usual grin on his face that was particularly on my 'hatred things' list.

"Then again, I hate the two specific terms: nicest and patient being put together. Why don't you try 'old girl having her peace' for once in your life doctor, I will be much pleased. " I gave my usual reply to his everyday irritating greeting.

"Yeah of course you are still just a girl Linda. 65 isn't that old for a girl like you." He says while putting extra pressure on the words old and girl.

"Isn't old, but the conditions aren't young either doctor. For you see I can barely walk on my own and I have officially started mumbling to myself." I say it in a forceful mocking way.

"That will be just fine if you relax and calm yourself. Try reading something, maybe books or novels. They will surely cheer you up."

While saying this he took out his file and started writing something on it. He clicked his pen and was going to say something when he stopped to look towards the desk. I looked at my right side and saw my Dreams' Journal placed nicely on it. He then looked towards me. I also shifted my eyes towards him. I knew what he was going to say. "Please stop writing in your 'things I could have done before dying journal', Linda. It could be really helpful for both of us."

"Doctor it's actually my crushed dreams' journal. Please could you call it that? It would be really helpful for me." I gave my usual sarcastic reply.

"Whatever you say. Just know that I am here trying to help you." He started looking through my reports that were already present on the bigger one table on the side. I saw a flash of hopelessness in his eyes.

"That bad?" I asked mockingly.

"I'm sorry Linda. I…I just…"

"It's alright doctor. The end had to come one day or another. Please tell me."

"You have only a week or two…I am really very sorry."

"Seven days!" I nearly shouted in the room. The doctor shook a little.

I tried calming myself down, but how could I? For any person knowing he had the last 7 days of his life left was nothing but dying from inner side before actually dying. I couldn't feel what last of my legs were left.

"Can you leave me alone for sometime doctor?" I asked him while I sat there staring at the front wall.

"Sure."

"Thank you." I replied with a forced smile.

"If you need anything, you know whom to call." He tried being a bit motivated but failed completely.

After saying this, the doctor walked out of my room with the file in his hands. I couldn't have hated a piece of paper that much in my life. I nearly cursed this one.

What am I going to do? This thought went like an arrow through my heart, making it bleed. But more than that I was thinking of: what have I done so far? And that people… is the thing it's all about.

This is my story of nothing but having the most miserable life. I had money, power, but what I had not was a life itself. So in this case despite having everything I actually had nothing.

At one point in the midnight of my very first day of the 7 days I had left, I wanted to cry my heart out. I wanted to scream till my throat ached. I wanted to run away from this nightmare building and live even on the road if I had to.

Feeling all these things at once my eyes rested on the scene of moonlight being reflected on the lilies I had kept in a vase on the small table beside the window. The leaves had started falling already. The lilies had started to shrivel.

In the night, I felt something in my chest. I couldn't tell what it was. Was it because of my chemotherapies or of the enormous thinking I did? I couldn't figure it out. I dragged my lower half upwards to sit straight. My journal was well placed on my side table. I switched on my lamp and picked up the journal. I rested my back with the pillow and opened it up.

I named it my crushed dreams journal for a solid reason. It did in fact have everything written inside it that I wanted to do since I was a teenager. I flicked through all the pages. The funny thing was that after all the things I had, I didn't have time to accomplish even a single dream.

"I am a dreamless puppet", I said to myself in anger and in a heartbreaking way. "I have been nothing but a puppet living for fame and money and nothing more. I am a puppet of myself. Apart from all the things I did in my life, I never noticed I didn't have a life."

These thoughts crushed me even more. Now that I had only six more days to live, I thought to myself: "All of my struggles were for what? To just lie down and see my company drown in the depths of ruins like the titanic sunk in the ocean?"

My soul just crushed into a trillion microscopic pieces. I won't get another life. Who knows what happens after death? Who knows if I'll be the queen in paradise or a prisoner of hell? A moment of realization struck upon me. Not on the most perfect day I must say. I should have lived a life and not just walked through its phases debating on what a hell it was.

The other two days passed like a flick of a finger. The same boring routine surpassed me. Waking, walking, eating, drinking, sleeping and on repeat. No, well another thing invited itself into this routine and that is thinking. So basically, I had 7 things in total to do in the whole day.

How exciting right? Could my life have been any simpler??? I think not fellas because every other person in this world wants a life of such peace and relaxation and the feeling of not having to do anything. Luckily, I was damned to spend it that way in the last 7 days of my useless life.

I said these above sentences everyday to myself in a loop so I wouldn't die practically from depression but my illness. On the fourth day… um yeah I think it was the fourth, but it could have been the fifth…anyways on either one of those days, the doctor came in my room again with his file that he carried everywhere all the time. At one point I honestly assumed he was married to that thing.

"I am feeling a lot dizzy today," I told my doctor in a nauseous state. You know this illness thing can get weird because it gets you dizzy sometimes and I was officially nauseous by that time.

There was a five-second pause from him. After that he finally spoke.

"Your condition is not good Linda...not at all good."

"What do you mean now?" I asked with an irritating tone as I was fed up of getting piled up with all those bad news.

"Your condition is getting worse every second. We don't know if you could even surpass this day or not."

"Amazing!" I said with the heaviest heart, I could ever have. I saw the lilies on my table. The last of their petals were falling.

"Life….." while trying to speak one last line my tongue lost its power. I fainted. I had several glimpses of what was happening around me in my fainted state. I was taken to the ICU ward by some nurses and doctor who were walking beside my stretcher asking for the other nurses to prepare the room.

I couldn't breathe so I was kept on the ventilator. My vision was blurred. I saw a light appear from the corner of the ward. The light blinded me completely. I could feel the light moving towards me. I could somehow sense it.

I felt something, in my heart, something went right through my body like a sword. After a moment I realized, it wasn't the feeling of entering but the feeling of leaving. I felt a heavy burden being lifted off of me.

A moment later I opened my eyes. I could see clearly now. My pain, my weakness, it was all gone. It was like I had woken up from the best sleep in a century. I moved my head on my left side and what I saw was beyond any explanation.

I saw my body lying there peacefully on the bed. I was on the floor and my body was on the bed. I shook my head to see my surroundings. I was still in the ICU ward. The doctor was standing right beside my body. He looked at the machine which showed my vitals. There was a straight line on it. The doctor then pulled up the sheet and covered my face.

"What the hell are you doing? Have you lost your mind? Why in the hell are you covering my face..?? Doctor, why are you covering my face with the sheet?" I shouted at the top of my voice.

"Answer me god damn it" and while saying this line fiercely, I stood up and pulled out my hand to reach for the doctor's arm. To my surprise my hand went right through his arm. I stood there, shocked and in dead silence.

"Wh...Wha….what." I again reached out to grab his arm. Again my hands went right through him. He stood up and started walking out of the ward.

"No, stopppp…wait" I reached out to grab him by his shoulders. All of my efforts were in vain. I had become translucent or something. The doctor couldn't hear me shouting.. He couldn't even see me. It was like I was invisible to him.

I was confused, terrified and nearly crying. What in the world was happening to me? That same moment I heard a voice.

"Don't worry, Linda."