You stand by Miss Potter’s bed, hoping to make her transition from this life to the next as easy as possible. If you get too attached, you won’t be able to sleep tonight. The dreaded nightmare of that damn cat from your childhood will emerge to haunt you. When you were six, your family went to visit your grandparents. They were old and weak, leaving it up to the newer generation to help them when they could no longer help themselves. As we finished our business, Father began to back out of the driveway, only to find that he had driven over something that wasn’t there before. As it turned out, it was a black-and-white spotted cat that had taken rest under Father’s car. It began to hop on its side, gasping for air as it slowly and painfully died. In your dreams, you’ve imagined trying to persuade your father to look underneath the car, to not drive in reverse. No matter what you did, however, he wouldn’t listen, comforted by his blissful ignorance. Every time, history would repeat itself, resulting in the unbearable suffering of that poor cat. It’s what made you want to become a doctor.
You can’t be around Miss Potter anymore, it’s too painful. Thankfully, it is the end of your shift. You decide that it would be best to go to church to pray, in order to best revive your spirits. As you sit in the first row, gazing at the amazing statue of Christ in front of you, you become overwhelmed with the bitter pain of lost and dread, knowing that everything that you had tried to do to stave off Miss Potter’s demise was all for not. It is in this state of helplessness that Father Rodrigo comes up to you and says, “Alfonso my child, what is it that bothers you so?”
“Oh Father, I feel that I have made a mistake. I’m not strong enough to be a doctor – it bothers me knowing that every patient I get will die someday soon. Please pray for me that God will make my life better, so that I may better enjoy the love He gives us.”
“Oh, my child,” Father Rodrigo says, “that is not for God to do. That’s your job. All He can provide is to make the transition from this life to the next as easy as possible.”
You take a deep breath, disappointed at the answer given to you. Nevertheless, you get up, forcing yourself to prepare for the ugliest of this world why to bombard you with. As you walk out of the church, you get a message from your pager. It’s Miss Potter, she’s in critical condition.
As you make it to her bed, you hear the sound of metal clattering, and the alarms from the life support beeping a thousand times a second throughout the halls. Nurses try to strap her down and inject medication into her system, while she convulsively hops on her side, as if she is gasping for air. She slowly and painfully dies. There was nothing else we could do. She passes, and in the most painful way possible. You failed her. You think that while you couldn’t have saved her, you could have spared her that agony.
As you reflect on how the world will change in her absence, you notice the rest of the staff already tending to their other patients, blissfully unaware at the loss the world had just suffered. You aren’t God (no matter how much you want to be), and Death wins another cat. You turn off her machine, and go to bed, preparing for the next person you were doomed to fail.
---------- The Shady Side of the Mile ---------- 