A Mother's Prayer

The hospital recliner is brown and big.

It swallows me up, much as the machines have swallowed my baby.

The sign on the door says R&R lounge, reminding me of an airport. An illusion created to try and make me forget that my two year old lies in the ICU just above.

The hospital has started feeling like home, guards smile at me in recognition behind masks. Strangers ask me how Aarav is now. The billing guy gives me a cheery hello. The guy behind the counter at Haldirams asks "two cokes ma'am?" What could be more surreal?

People walk by briskly, day after day, some with babies in their arms. I look at them enviously; I haven't held my baby since days. Why me, I ask? Why not you, replies the cosmos.

My fingers manage to find an inch of skin and I stroke it gently as I talk to him. The rest is covered with a variety of tapes and tubes; innocuous looking things winding like snakes into machines. Breathing for him, eating for him.

I force the images from my exhausted mind as I try to remember him as he was just days ago, mischief stamped all over his face from the moment he woke up. I long to hear his voice, I ache to gather him in my arms. The pain of not being able to is almost physical.

I pray. I pray like I never have before. I pray for his life, I pray for his health. I imagine my prayers reaching inside him and mending what is broken. I visualize each prayer winding itself around him, supporting him, healing him, protecting him.

I sit by his side and imagine him at four and eight and twenty. I visualize him growing up, falling in love, arguing with his Ayanu didi, traveling, playing sports, going to school. I imagine the life I had imagined when he was growing within me. And I pray that this time too I have the power to give him life.

A Mother's prayer, for her son, to come back to her as he was. A Father's plea, to the universe, to spare his child. A grandmother's fervent wish, to have both her grandchildren by her side. A Sister's innocent desire, to have her brother back where he belongs.

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