Against All Odds

Three

“No it wasn’t going to be okay. We don’t know if he’ll be making it alive. Matthew, I’m afraid. . . He might die.” With that thought, she cried even more loudly than ever.

“No! He’ll survive.” Matthew snapped at her. Even him, he didn’t have absolute guts to say it, he fumbled in his words.

“But he could die! Sooner or later, reality will strike! I’m just being realistic, Matthew. Everyone knows it! You know it! Right!? Did you see him before he undergo another surgery? He looked lifeless, and those monitors circling him looked dreadful. ” Janice voiced, she was in depths of despair at this moment.

Matthew’s circumspection released her. They both stared at each others broken eyes. “When that time comes, we don’t have anything to do. We just  . . . need to accept it.” The words were merely hard to say, and it poignantly hit their hearts.

Janice eyes become wide, she was crying an ocean. That was the idea she was unsuccessfully trying to fathom. And now hearing it to a person as close as her to David, seemed more horrible and near. By the time, her mom and David’s mother and father entered. Their faces cannot be paint, it was full of sorrow.

“They said they are almost done. But they don’t have the totality that David could make it. If he miraculously did, he might have complications after the operations or he’ll be totally different and broken.” There was profusion in David’s dad voice: confusion, uncertainty, rue.

There is so much painstaking news to be absorbed, and everyone seemed to be getting tougher and tougher, unnoticeably. But Janice is beyond the edge. “I don’t care if he’ll be different. David will be David! He’ll survive!” Janice shouted, she was enraged that her voice reverberated on the walls. She couldn’t bear it. She just wanted to be with him forever, ever so badly. And the time that he’s out their, in near death make her feel vulnerable and impotent. The time is ticking, it was set. Tick tock.

“Sweetie, we know you are having a very hard time this moment. We all do. But Janice, baby, in the end you should be strong.” Her mom’s voice seemed to enlighten her darkening heart.

“He is still holding on, yes it is barely. We just have to trust him.” Crissy Lykke said, she was ached more than anyone. But God knows how badly Janice is in state now.

Hope. It seemed to be a word far from everyone. Everyone is in a state of sorrowful calamity, perhaps calamity was an understatement, and devastation was indeed a more appropriate term.

“Janice, darling, you know at this very moment a thought dawned to me. Remember God doesn’t just take anyone away. He calls them home. They were His before ours, we just borrowed them. And if this might be my son’s end, we should accept it. It is hard for me too, but it is life we are talking about. Janice you should be strong enough to face this or the moment.” Frederick Lykke jumped in the awful conversation, and it’s like he had been stabbed by life’s sharp knife.

It had been a day, and everyone felt as though their life had been transformed. With one single act of fate, every one of them had been struck down, and nothing would ever be the same again. For David most of all, if he survived, which wasn’t sure yet either.

“We should get something to eat.” Proposed Matthew, but everyone’s not in appetite to eat.

Janice smirked under her fading sobs. “It seems redundant somehow. Eating in the midst of disaster.” She said, stoned voice.

They stayed silent for a couple of minutes, the only noise was the tame sobbing of Janice and Crissy and the ticking of a small clock. Tick tock. A nurse entered. She had kind eyes and pleasing appearance, she said that the operation is done and David was already on intensive care room. Yet they can’t go there for a while. There’s a rupture of joy in everyone’s faces. Of course, Janice Kennedy was exempted.