THE ADJUDICATOR

I watched how he was pushed through, on the wheelchair, into the hospital. Can’t tell what ward he was being driven to. He didn’t look like a victim of any kind of accident, domestic or wild. Sweat drops were clustered on his forehead, with that I could tell he was in severe agony. No sound came forth from him, he wasn’t groaning or crying. The three behind him were pushing gently and all they could see, I could tell, was a sick man who needed a doctor’s attention. But I saw something different; a somewhat despairing, gloomy darkness around him. Though he wasn’t shaky or talking or even moving his eyeballs, the quick glance I took at him returned me an ounce of information. He alone knew what he was going through, and no one else. He smelt to me like the aura of court whose adjudicator was judging over Death and Life. He, like the court, was inanimate but conscious of the happenings in his body. As through the window of a court one could see what was going on, I, too, through his eyes saw how it was happening in him. I have no idea how long he has been going through this inexpressible pain. Such a torment is as dangerous as death and that was why death was winning the case in him. He too knew his death was close and had already given up on life. The choking stink of death in him had impaired his ability to speak, thus no sound could he make, and had obstructed the adequate flow of blood around his body. He was paralyzed, the reason for his non-locomotion. At the moment he could see death doing away with his soul into hades, and he smiled. Smiled maybe because he would soon be free of the bearable, seeming unending anguish. Perhaps, because his soul was going into the actual unending suffering that’d be quite unbearable, and he couldn’t cry instead so he smiled. The struggle between Death and Life in him had gone a long way and at last his spirit would be torn away from his soul, and his body be rested beneath the soil. All or one or two of these caused his suffering smile, perhaps.

I thought about all this after the quick look I took at him before he was driven out of my sight. In the next moment, I saw the wheelchair, now empty, driven back by one of the three that were with the paralyzed patient a moment ago. Anything else that would go on around this sick man would now be out of my knowledge. But he might live! He mightn’t pass away even after I’ve seen Death winning the case in him. His morphology seems to be of one who could fight and win. Though he has given up on life, Life might raise some grain of hope in him that he’d want to live fully well again.

*Fiction*

—GMK