FAITH AND HOPE

FAITH AND HOPE

Layla made her way unsteadily from the washroom to the bed, her hand desperately clinging to the IV pole for support. She paused for a few moments as a wave of pain drenched her body leaving her depleted.

The short respite from her journey across the hospital ward enabled her to continue her barefoot trek. She knew she was supposed to put on the slippers by the side of the bed, but truthfully, she didn’t have the stamina for it.

 Reaching the side of the bed she turned and positioned the IV pole the way the nurses had taught her, she carefully turned and sat on the bed then slowly swung her legs, one at a time onto the bed. Reaching to her side she grasped the sheet and the thinly woven blanket and pulled it over her quivering limbs. The warmth felt good. To be safe and steady again in her bed felt good.

She pulled her bedside hospital table across the bed, picked up the spoon, and choked down a few globs of congealed oatmeal. The nurses had threatened her with more tubes if she didn’t start consuming more food. She had already determined, to her detriment, that they did not threaten lightly, their word was their bond. It really made no difference if she ate or not, nausea was usually followed by vomiting until any nutrients left in her body were expelled. Then of course, there was the diarrhea, so if it didn’t go out one way it went out the other way.

 She hadn’t stood on a scale for weeks but she knew from the hang of her hospital gown that she had lost a great deal of weight. She felt the frequent pang, that it had taken this illness to finally get to the weight she had always wanted. She had spent some of her precious time in the washroom staring at herself in the mirror. Snatching the nightgown in the back to reveal the now slender form in the mirror. She used the last of her physical reserves turning this way and that before the mirror posing, primping, and pouting like a teenager. She finally collected her thoughts, misquoting to herself, ‘Vanity thy name is Layla.’ Giving one last resigned sigh, she slowly turned to navigate her way back to her hospital bed. 

 It was early and the doctors usually did their rounds first thing in the morning, Dr. Ellis would probably be here soon. She checked the clock in the room to see the time and then watched as the minute hand went around, and around, and around. There was very little else to do and the clock had become her best friend as well as her worst enemy. She couldn’t help but remember the old song she had learned as a child,  My Grandfather's Clock. She remembered the words, “but it stopped, - short,- never to go again - when the old man died. Its life seconds numbered, but it stopped - short never to go again, - when the old man died”. 

She wondered if when her time came the clock on her wall would stop, short, never to go again,  just like the Grandfather’s clock in the song. It was a moot point she knew but all the drugs they were pouring into her made her not only lethargic but wondering the craziest things.

She knew the vampires would be here soon as well. They seemed to come all the time, with their long skinny needles and carefully labeled vials of red blood. Their vampire hands were ensconced in baby blue latex gloves that perfectly matched their baby blue gowns and their baby blue masks. She knew that behind the masks lurked their feral teeth and that as soon as they left her room they would feast on her blood. They would talk of low white blood cell counts and low platelet counts but she knew that behind all that baby blue, they were really sizing her up for a meal. She had told Dr. Ellis this in confidence and he had immediately had a whispered conversation with the head nurse about changes to her medications.

Layla reached over and picked up her water bottle and took a gentle swig. The open sores in her mouth were painful, and eating and swallowing became a challenge. Everything tasted gross, the chicken, which used to be one of her favourite meals, now tasted metallic. Even her favourite hospital desserts ( if hospital food could be considered a favourite) were now either increasingly bland or tasted like someone's gym socks. 

 Her Inflamed mucous membranes, blurry vision, dry itchy skin, and rashes were other side effects that she dealt with daily.

Oh and don’t forget the pain, the shooting pains that ran up and down her arms and legs. Sometimes a numbing pain and sometimes a burning pain. It was always a game as to what new form of hell the day would bring.

 Layla rolled her head to one side. The study of the clock was becoming tedious, and the wait for Dr. Ellis was becoming monotonous and life often seemed dull, dull, dull. She tried to be upbeat, positive, and perky. She loved it when the nurses called her a “trooper” and when she had visitors, which wasn’t all that often, she pasted on a smile and kept it there for the duration of the visit. No reason to bring her poor visitors down.

 She opened her bedside table and pulled out her brush and started to brush her hair. It was always a good thing to look your best for a hot-looking doctor. After a few strokes, she noticed large chunks of hair attached to the brush. She had every symptom of the disease known to mankind except for hair loss, why couldn’t she be given this small boone? Just one small favour, one insignificant, in the big scheme of things, benefit.

She reached up and felt her head, a large clump of dark tresses came away in her hand. Her mother and grandmother had always called her waist-length thick wavy hair her crowning glory, and now it lay tangled in her fingers.

 If there is a straw that breaks the camel's back, that break came to Layla now.  Months of keeping a firm upper lip and believing there is always a silver lining and all the other truisms she had learned as a child, were nothing but cheap cliches. She clenched her raven locks in her hand and with tears coursing down her face, her thin chest heaved with deep despair. Any hope that she had for a recovery from her illness was dashed away. Her treatments and the medications that she had been enduring had given her hope.  Hope for a future, hope for a tomorrow. But the absence of hope is utter despair, and a deep sadness engulfed her, and the emotional pain became so much more pronounced than any of the physical pain she had ever experienced. A feeling of despondency fell over her and she cried till she was exhausted and fell into a rare trance-like sleep. A sleep like she had not experienced for many months.

It was hours later that she awoke. A man was sitting by her bed, eyes closed,  at first she thought he was asleep until she saw his lips moving ever so slightly. She blinked and looked again, she recognized him from several other visits. They were duty visits, part of his job, but a visitor was a visitor. It was Reverend Stevens.

 She stirred and he opened his eyes and smiled.“ I can't stay but a minute, the nurse was just in and told me that they are taking you down for more treatments now,  but I just wanted to leave you with a verse. He fumbled with the book in his hand. Clearing his throat and adjusting his glasses he read, ‘We are hard pressed on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted, but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. Do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.’  And here’s another. ‘God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.’

The door opened and the orderly came in with the gurney and Layla was whisked away. As she was being wheeled down corridors and hallways, and in and out of elevators, an inexplicable feeling of peace and acceptance came over Layla and she knew that whatever the outcome was, she could face it. She had regained what she had temporarily lost. Faith and Hope.