WILL SAVE YOU ONE DAY, YOU WILL SEE

I WILL SAVE YOU ONE DAY, YOU WILL SEE

• • By Niyati Nilesh Vaidya

Under the unnatural sun of a homely OR,

Adorned in a green gown,

I look down,

And within me, I can feel

All the hearts that I have healed,

And all the souls that I have freed.

And wonder whether today

I will be called an Arbiter of Death,

Or a Vendor of New Breath.

I look down at my latex-covered hands

And at the still, open body

Jammed in a thousand clamps.

A faceless man,

Yet a striking motif of life;

With delicate blue and red embellishments,

Running inside is a warm, scarlet spring,

Hosting generations and generations of species within.

I have seen it a hundred times already,

And even so, I cannot keep my breath steady,

As my scalpel traverses through a pale complexion,

And cuts down 7 times an abdominal section,

Exposing the pink and the yellow and the red confetti of gut.

I must wield and mend and seal and shut.

For it is in her hands, the prodigal daughter,

To rescue, to revive and to replenish life.

In a split second that I closed my eyes,

I see not the beaming faces of those who survived,

But a crying widow, in her arms, a 2-year-old child;

I see agony of a mother whose youngest daughter succumbed to cancer.

I watch as the Angels of Death

Dance around a hapless neonate,

And wish if only I could trade my fate,

I would do so in the blink of an eye.

For I too, have died a little,

So many times

That my heart is a little broken,

And my conscience, a little shattered.

An unintentional tear slips down my face,

And a hazy, gentle, weary figure appears before me;

He holds my face, looks at me,

And in his eyes, it is but my own reflection that I can see.

He points to my hands and whispers to me –

Those are my gifts to you,

So if not for yourself, have faith in me,

For I will save you one day, you will see.