DISILLUSIONMENT
“Doctor, some casualties have been brought to the ward” a nurse rushed in the rest room saying so.
“What has happened?” Dr. Samantha asked while looking at the wrist watch. The time was 5.00 a.m. “An Accident.”
Dr. Samantha wiped his face with a towel, combed his hair and hurried towards the ward.
There were four patients moaning in pain. He went to one by one with the nurse and examined them. Three were having minor injuries. He wrote prescriptions and turned to the fourth one. She was a grey haired elderly woman. It seemed that she was in great pain. Her left leg had broken at the knee. He thoroughly examined her instructing the nurse to give her some pain killers. He ordered the attendants to take her to the operation theatre and gave necessary treatments.
As he finished the work he noticed that there wasn’t the big toe in her right leg.
A chill passed down Dr. Samantha’s spine.In his childhood he was living with his mother in a thatched hut in a remote village in Kandy. His father who was a drunkard had deserted them. His mother worked as a domestic helper at a rich house and provided for him.
He was very clever in his studies. His teachers loved and helped him a lot. He passed the grade five scholarship examination and entered a leading Boys’ College in Kandy. He was successful both at O/L and A/L examinations for to mothers’ tremendous joy. He entered the medical faculty of Peradeniya University and was one of the brightest students there too. During that time little by little he was drawn away from his mother and home. At the same time he fell in love with Menaka, a colleague. He told her that he had no family and he was raised in a Children’s Home. She believed him. Her parents were not much affluent, so she could get their consent for the affair. By that time he had totally given up contact with home.
Both of them got their appointments in two hospitals close to Katharagama. They got married. But Samantha invited neither his mother nor anybody else his from Village. After marriage they settled down in that area. Dr. Samantha recalled how one day he came home very thirsty after school. His mother was weaving cadjans squatting on the ground. There was a young coconut near her. Samantha dashed it with a curved knife. The coconut bumped and fell on the mother’s right foot crushing the big toe. The damage was beyond repair and the toe had to be cut off.
Dr. Samantha looked at the patient’s face. Though thinned, wrinkled and sun-burnt he could recognize it.
He dragged his feet to the rest room as if walking in a dream. He asked from the nurse about the accident.
“They had been on their way to Katharagama in a van. The driver had fallen asleep and the van had thrown off the road knocking against a ‘mara’ tree. The patient who had broken her leg had been sitting on that side” she answered.
Dr. Samantha went home. Menaka was at home that day. She noticed his worried mood and thoughtful nature. She inquired about it two or three times. He could not longer hide his agony and finally revealed everything. Menaka was greatly shocked at the revelation. A tinge of dislike emerged in her heart against her husband.
She saw in her mind the drudgeries his mother might have undergone to educate him and her mental agony when she was so cruelly deserted by her one and only relative on this earth. Her heart was filled with sympathy for her unseen mother-in-law. She could understand his mental torture too. “Samantha we shall go and see her now. We shall do everything possible to make her life comfortable.”
Dr. Samantha looked at her. It was only a look, a look of self realization.
Kumari Weerasooriya,
Mahaweli National College of Education,Polgolla.