Chapter 18

All alone in the chariot of time

May 26, 2009. As usual, at 11 a.m, I reached the West Chester Medical Center where Baby was admitted. I never knew that the time was running out fast and life was leaving Baby's body in the ICU slowly inch by inch. I could never adjust to that reality. I was motionless as a broken machine with an empty mind.

I could read clearly the helplessness on the face of the doctors when her heartbeats were staggering up and down in redlines in the monitor on the wall. Brain death had occurred by that time. A great chasm, which nobody could fill, was taking shape between me and Baby by then. There were no last words or a final good-bye. Two lives rotating the same axis are drifting away to two different poles.

As the time was running out very fast, the heart was begging for life to return for a minute.

I was gripping her hands begging her silently that she should not go away from me. Pastor Dr Larry Holland of the Grace Baptist Church was holding her other hand in prayer. I can see the ECG running smoothly in the monitor though she was unconscious. My hope would rekindle then and fall off the next moment. I knew that it was the last gasp of a flame about to go out, yet hope never faded out like the ember glowing in the wind.

By noon Baby had lost her breath. Doctors placed her on ventilator. I had suggested to keep her on ventilator till her brothers reach. Still her heartbeats were going on. So I had a false hope that Baby was not dead. That was only for consolation.

When all had seen her the ventilator was removed. All my prayers were futile, God had plucked away that angel from me. Now, I had to reconciliate with that truth. But I knew that Baby cannot leave me. Her heartbeats went on though her body and soul had left this world. The electrocardiograph was going on the monitor puzzling the doctors. This continued for hours together. By 5 p.m. ECG was stopped and death was confirmed.

My painfully accumulated good deeds
Of past births are burned out,
My aspirations under the canopy of sky
Were crushed into the earth of six feet.

The Chariot of Time had started rolling in its journey with Baby, and my world had become empty.