It’s very common hearing people say, "Everything happens for a reason!"
As my shift had ended, I was sitting outside the OT pondering over all that was taking place around me. This place, outside the OT always taught me a lot and made me question God even more. Today was no different!
Sitting two rows ahead of me was a lady weeping her eyes out as her husband consoled her and just beside them was another man who silently looked on with eyes that were as good as dead. Such sights were very common through the years that I had lived here and come to take as my home!
The hospital can be a place for tears of joy as well as tears of sadness; it can be a place where an atheist becomes a theist or the other way round; where death of one can bring life to another or where one’s life had the shadow of death overlooking him. But to us, everything we see happening here is the most important lesson of our life!
As the husband tried controlling his wife who was beyond consolation something happened. The doctor came out removing his mask and his gloves. As always I prayed and hoped that the news he was going to give would be good. As he approached them, the couple and the other man seated beside them, all stood up. Having seen such scenes before, by now I could have read the doctor’s face and known his reply but today wasn’t the same. Confused, I looked in anticipation and reflexively stood up.
The doctor approached the couple saying “I’m very sorry, we did all we could but she didn’t make it!” On hearing this, the lady’s cries became louder and even her husband burst into tears. I felt bad for them and part of me wanted to give them a hug and console them but nothing could change the feeling of hearing that you had just lost a loved one. The doctor went to the man beside them and told him that his son had survived and silently walked away. That explained the look on the doctor’s face. What surprised me was that even after hearing this, the eyes of the man was as dead as before!
It was then that I understood. This man’s son was the cause of the death of the couple’s girl.
The man walked towards the couple with his expressionless face and said one word; a word that even he knew was useless, “Sorry”, a word that could change nothing and a word that gave no guarantee that this would be its last time.
I left that place for I didn’t have the heart to hear what the couple would tell the father of a son who was not at fault and who was feeling guilty as hell for a crime that his son had committed! Later when I checked their records I realized that the girl was only eight years old and was crossing the road when a speeding bike ridden by a guy in his teens, hit her.
It was extremely sad to know that an innocent life had been wasted! A girl who had her entire life ahead was mercilessly killed for no reason!
I started my questionnaire with God! I asked Him why is it that poor girl had gotten punished for no fault of hers and the guy was saved when he was the cause of all this? Why didn’t He save the girl too? Why is it that the good people always die early? It was always the same questions!
I googled and came across that according to the website of a leading automobile major, "more than a million people are injured or maimed" and "road accidents cost the country some Rs 550 billion every year". In 2009 an amendment was passed to have a stricter penalty for rash driving leading to death. It was decided to make it a non bailable offence, confiscation of the driver’s license and 10 years imprisonment. Yet we see such cases continuing every day and it is a shame. The day every individual behaves like a responsible citizen is when such cases will reduce, until then by making the law more strict is gonna do no good.
Some questions can never be answered. There are things that are beyond our understanding and it is to such things that we refer as “Everything happens for a reason!” It pacifies us sometimes and at other times it helps us keep the optimism going. So the questions that I always ask may never be answered but we move on with a scarred mind and life does continue!
Sadly, an accident is like a toss of a coin. Sometimes its heads and sometimes its tales. It is a loss for one and a gain for the other. Sometimes there may be a draw where either both sides loose or both sides win. Making sure that we don’t have to toss that coin by being responsible, is in our hands!
