Sairam

[ANKITA]

The Last Patient

By Ivan Mattson

 

As a young child I had the honor to spend a great deal of time with my father.  He was a young Orthopedic Doctor and made house calls.  As I recall we would visit his patients once a week.  I'm sure they were all important, but; the one I remember was a young girl Jill, that was my age and lived in an iron lung.  She had polio.  We became friends; I think my first one.  All the other patients were older and it seemed more like work when we visited.


I remember Jill's house as square and sitting in the middle of a double lot with large pecan trees around it, very symmetrical.  It was cool during the hot Texas summers we didn't have air conditioners then.  I remember that it was pleasant to go to her house, it was cool and it didn't smell like some of the other "houses".  Patients in casts and traction don't get to bathe very well.  Let's just say it didn't smell pleasant and neither does infection.  

 

I liked to go to Jill's house.  As were drove up I anticipated the feel of the cool air as we walked up the walk to the large front porch.  You couldn't tell from the outside what you would find as you opened the front door.  In the middle of the front room was an iron lung.  I think it was placed there not so much because it wouldn't fit in the other room's, but that Jill's parents wanted her to have chance to meet everyone that visited.  They had a chair beside her for me to sit and talk to her when we came.

It was always nice to talk with Jill.  She was my age.  I would tell her about what I was doing.  She would tell me about what she could remember doing and what she wished she could do.  Kid's stuff.  It seems as though the visit was all about us.  I would talk to Jill and my Dad would talk to her parents.  They would check on us once in a while.  


I guess when they got finished we would go; but I didn't want to, our conversations were never over.  Jill was my first friend/patient.  I liked being there.  I looked forward to our visits and so did she.  We always had unfinished things to talk about.  It seemed as though I was important then.

One day we were on our visits.  As we left the "last" patient and were driving down the road, my Dad didn't make the turn to Jill's house.  "Dad you missed the turn to Jill's house."


He said "Jill's not with us anymore".  I didn't understand.  I hadn't finished our last conversation.  We had things to talk about.  It was "my job".

I wonder why people need to hear "everything happens to us for a reason, and it serves us", or, "ponder what you want people to say at your funeral", or many others sayings.


I was given the gift of "knowing" that every moment could be my last since I was six.  It might not be what you want, you may not like it but please don't waste it.  Jill never made me feel like some day we wouldn't talk.  Thank you Jill.