Conversation with Death

Hospital tales 1.0

Ward C. 2:35 am.

The starless night was black, frigid and quiet. The silence was only broken by occasional snores of sleeping patients and squeaking beds. Chilly winds blew softly, causing window drapes to float and dance in the nude of the pitch dark. 

I had stepped out of the nursing station to do a final check on the patients in my care before going on my nightbreak when I noticed a shadow moved towards the bed of Mr A. 

Mr A was being managed for end-stage metastatic liver disease, he was in agony and lots of pain; he had taken sleeping pills the previous evening to be able to sleep. The prognosis was gloomy; at this point, everyone knew that was a matter of time before the inevitable happens, so the care given to Mr A was to make his transition as dignifying and painless as possible. And when I saw that shadow moved toward that particular bed, I instinctively knew who it was.

I called out softly, "Death"

"Yes, Marvellous, what do you want?" came the reply.

Fear gripped me from head to toe, I felt shivers run down my spine, my hand and leg trembled as I tumble backwards almost falling to the floor, I quickly grabbed the table in the nursing station for stamina. This isn’t the kind of visitor you are expecting in the middle of the night.

I quickly regained my stamina, the first thought that popped into my brain was to go on the defensive and tell him that he couldn't take Mr A on my shift, but I quickly realised that it was an exercise in futility, Mr A time was up. So I decided to ask him the first question that popped into my head.  

"Why did it take you so long to come for him, why allow him to suffer so much before coming?"

In a clear yet malefic voice, he replied.

"I don't decide when a human dies, the body does"

He looked up from preparing his tools and saw my confused face before continuing.

“I do not have the permission to come for anybody if the person’s body does not send for me”

He took out a prong-like tool from a bag he brought along with him and cleaned the sharp edges before continuing.

“Most of you humans don’t realise that your body is like a machine, that runs throughout your life, sometimes the machine malfunctions when some part of it gets faulty, you people call it illness or diseases, you go to the hospital, it gets fixed or patched and you can carry on with your life, then at the end, due to one reason severe malfunction of one part or the other, the machine can’t just keep up anymore, it can’t continue to function again. When it gets to this stage, the body sends for me to do the final rites, to release the soul from the body, signalling the end of that person”

I sighed and nodded in understanding. By now, the terror I fought off at the initial encounter was back in full swing as my brain couldn’t quite comprehend the kind of person I was having a conversation.

Seeing the expression on my face, he said,

"I don't understand why humans are terrified of me, most of you are aware from a young age that you won't be here forever, you humans beings do a good job in remembering yourself of your mortality; I have seen it in your songs, movies, proverbs, stories. but when I come for the last act, most of you act shocked, surprised and terrified, seldom ready to leave, one would have thought after thousands of years, your species will have gotten used to me and the event of the end”

He stopped cleaning his tool, looked toward the sleeping man, and said "it's time".

Using the prong-like tools he cleaned earlier, he reached for the heart of Mr A, whispered some words that sounded like ancient chants, after which he removed a fluffy whitish thing that had the shape of an apple which he took it in his hand, examined it and released it into the air. Upon release, it exploded into a mini-supernova, leaving a very colourful and glowing scene; one of the most beautiful I have seen. He turned to me and said, “The better the life-lived, the more colourful this is”. The sight faded after a few seconds and the leftover particles scattered into the cold night. As we watch the particles disappear, he said,

Nature gives, nature takes. All the parts of a human were formed from different atoms, molecules and elements gotten from the earth; your bones are made of calcium and proteins, your muscles - proteins and when humans die, those atoms, molecule and element shall return to the earth, ready to be part of another organism.

He started cleaning the instrument he used, seem to take the hygiene of his tools serious

“The part of this job I hate the most is that I get all the blame for the end of an individual. I have heard the term “Death why” over and over again that I get irritated when I hear it. I do get the fact that a lot of you and your loved ones aren’t prepared whenever your body says it can’t continue anymore, but I shouldn’t be getting the blame for that, and the way some of you live your life in recklessness, it’s as if you’ve got multiple lives.

As he said these next words, for the first time that evening, he had this quite remorseful face and his voice quaked.

“I understand that some departures are very painful, especially the ones involving good people and little children - cute little souls. The tears after those events can be very emotional, it’s one of the most genuine I have seen among your species, I must confess I get misty-eyes sometimes. I find no pleasure in coming for little one at all especially if it was shutting down of their body was due to something that was very preventable, I also acknowledge that some of them were born with congenital diseases and defects that makes surviving almost impossible but one can’t really blame nature and evolution. If you crank out millions of products as in new human bodies every year, some are definitely bound to be defective and faulty from the production line and it is my job to remove those defective bodies once they can’t continue their jobs anymore. It is a very painful and uncolourful process, but it’s my job I must do it.

He packed all he had cleaned into his bag, slung it across his shoulder.

“I have to leave now, my work here is done, I have other places to get to”

As he turned to leave, I asked my second question of the day, 

“Do you rest at all?”

He looked at me, then let out a loud and eerie laugh

Marvellous, rather than ask me that, you’d better enjoy your life and live to the fullest because I'll be back for you and when I do, I hope you are ready.

After he said that, he simply faded out of sight.

2.50 am - Mr A went into Cardiac Arrest.

2.51 am - Cardiopulmonary resuscitation had begun

3:12 am - The Medical Officer had called it

Time of Death - 3:11 am 7/8/2021