By: Pallavi Garg
Jenny sat under the clinic light, tapping her feet and fiddling with her blue blouse. Her forehead was beaded with sweat, her silky black hair tied up in a pony, and her brown were eyes fixed on the two pots of lucky bamboo at the entrance to the doctor’s room, longing for water and slowly dying, as if the gloomy air in the clinic was eating them too. She bit her cherry lips in nervousness.
The clinic had only one desk, where sat a receptionist reading a magazine, and a room for the doctor, and a waiting area for patients. “Ms. Jenny you can go in now, Doctor Joey is waiting for you,” the receptionist said, looking at the only patient in the clinic. “Ms. Jenny” she repeated. “Ms. Jenny!” this time in an irritated tone and Jenny looked at her with a blank face. “You have to go in now, hurry”, she said. Jenny stood from her chair with her emotionless body and went into the doctor’s room.
Joey was a renowned doctor in his forties, running the clinic for over 10 years, but looked more than his age. Losing his wife in a car accident two years ago had changed the person inside him. After his wife’s death, in addition to the clinic, he had two children to look after too. The stress was writ large on his face. The sparkle in his eyes, which his wife had once fallen in love with, had been dulled. He smiled that too half-heartedly, only when his children were around him. His face was wrinkled, and his eyes had fallen into pits of dark circles resulting from working late.
He could not remember the last time he had laughed with his full heart. Maybe when his wife was alive, for she was the most beautiful woman he ever met.
Jenny opened the door and saw Doctor Joey sitting behind his desk reading something. “Hello, Jenny”, said Joey, “Please sit down”. Jenny sat down in one of the chairs, noticing the mess on the doctor’s desk which was piled up with files of patients. ‘He is probably a busy doctor’, Jenny thought to herself. There were two frames on his desk, one of a very pretty woman shying away from the camera, and the other of two children – a boy and a girl. “So, how are you Jenny?” Joey asked. Jenny, without looking into the eyes of the doctor, nodded and said, “Fine”. “So, your results from the tests are finally here,” Joey paused, “and I regret to inform you that you have cancer.”
Jenny looked at Joey in shock and her eyes filled up with tears. Soon a stream ran down her cheeks and she buried her head in her hands. She could not believe herself. The disease that consumed her mother was now after her too! It was only a month ago that she had lost her mother who loved her mother so much, to cancer. She remembered her scent, her habits, her voice, as also her smile when she was around her plants, especially the bamboos. She loved the bamboos and believed that they brought good health.
Then Jenny remembered her mother’s face on her hospital death bed. She had become so thin that you could see her bones and trace around her veins with a pencil. In fact, she was very fragile and tired. She was tired of everything – the medicines, the chemotherapy, and the hospital with a particular scent that she hated the most. Jenny was there with her mother for three years during her fight with cancer and watched her mother gradually die with pain. Her mother was strong enough to fight cancer but Jenny wasn’t. She lost all her strength the day she lost her mother.
Jenny felt a hand on her shoulder, it was Doctor Joey’s. “I can help you Jenny if you let me, we can fight it”, he said. But Jenny did not want to fight anymore. She was tired. Jenny shrugged off Joey’s hand and stormed out of the room, and on the way out, she picked the two pots of bamboo.