As he went into the pre-operation room, he was given a pair of plastic bags to wear as shoes. He was already wearing the blue/white dress you wear in a hospital before you're going to get operated. His mother was waiting outside, trying to converse with him. If it weren't the pre-operation room, she would be sitting next to him talking loudly and just try to make him feel comfortable and relaxed. The time was approaching near. "Mummaa! Where's Papa?" "Ohh he's just coming, you know how he is. The relationship between him and hospitals are as usual, bad." His dad was around 20 feet away, standing outside the lift - fearing the very sight of his child in the pre-operation room. But he still had the guts to walk those 20 feet and be there for his child, for he was the rising sun in his life. Nothing else mattered.
"No.5 - Master Srivastava, please." The feeling of anxiety that crossed his mind. He could die out there. He knew he was in the best of hands, but he was simple scared. Anything could go wrong. What if someone didn't cut him properly? What if the operation wasn't successful? What if the light went out in the Operation Theater? He was scared, but he was ready. He had the courage to lie down on the old, noise creating stretcher. It was either here, or there. He knew the difficulties, he knew the seriousness of the matter. "Everything will be fine. We will be waiting for you, come fast!" As soon as his father finished the sentence, he broke into tears, followed by his mother. For a second, he was going to cry - but he held his nerve. He had to overcome this and move on. I mean, he was just 16. There was a whole life in front of him. He hadn't finished school. He hadn't had even a single girlfriend, he hadn't experienced his first kiss, his friends were waiting for him to have a jam again. There was just took much to lose. As he looked up the stretcher, he saw lines of Operation theaters on both the right and left side, running endlessly. It seemed like a mirage, like a never ending path. Either you come back the way you came from, or travel further, into infinity.
He entered the Operation Theatre. Four doctors picked him up and placed him on the main operation stretcher. Ahh, the coziness and the softness. He look a sigh of relief. His back was really starting to hurt on that crooked stretcher. A doctor started conversing with him, explained to him the whole procedure of the operation. There was the anesthesia team, then there was the operation team. He was surrounded by all sorts of wires, tumblers, words everywhere, hi-tech computers - all that techy hospital stuff. He felt nice. He could relate to it. "Ohh, Toshiba! Thats a nice monitor", he said to himself. He had never spoken that much to himself ever in his life. It was just him and his mind. A doctor started talking to him, asking him where he studied, how old he was, what were his parents' names, did he have a girlfriend or not. Basically he was getting a heavy dose of local anesthesia on his back. When the needle went in, it did hurt. Irrespective of the thousands of blood tests and the thousands of needles that pierced through his skin, a needle on the back really stung. And the pain when the anesthesia was released. It felt like a huge mass just demolishing the muscles inside and trying to enter inside. But he took the pain. One followed, then another one entered. The moment he would feel its done, another one would enter his back. After 5 injections, it was done. His back was numb now. He really had problems switching back to his original position. It was painful. Little did he know, pain was going to become a part of his life for the next 3 weeks or so. So the doctor told him about the anesthesia, the main anesthesia that would put him to sleep. And he was surrounded by a wonderful white light. The mask supplying pure oxygen was put over his mouth. And in the next ten seconds, he reached a different place altogether.
He said, "I do not remember the next 3 hours AT ALL! It was as if they just put me to sleep there, and I got up in the recovery room." All seemed so much fun and he was happy that he faced a new experience in life. He was on the verge of facing something no one could have dreamt of at his age. This was the time he would become unique, this was the time he would cheat death and come out a stronger 16 year old teenager. This was the time when he became a man. He was brave, easy to handle and most important thing of all, he had hope. he believed that god would save him. And so he did.
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