A New Beginning
Anonymous
A soft cry crosses the room immediately waking the mother from her brief few hours rest. The cry charms the mother and the nearby father who stands over the infant looking into the eyes of his newborn son, eyes that stare back at him with an amazing purity and innocence. A doctor slowly walks into the room not wanting to disturb the proud new parents. The doctor gently moves over to the father placing their arm gently upon his shoulder, reassuring him the child will be fine, and looks beautiful, a perfect new life.
The doctor remains chatting to the parents for a great deal of time, for it is their first child. With firm arms they pick up the child and hold it cradled in their arms for a few minutes. Their eyes meet, another face remembered by both the doctor and the new born child. The morning passes and the time comes for the doctor to leave, there day at the hospital is over.
Walking slowly towards their car the doctor reflects on the infant it saw earlier in the morning, they remember the face, such innocence and charm. Driving home the doctor feels tired after their long day’s work which had begun at one o’clock in the morning. The gentle sound of the radio and the warm atmosphere of the car begin to have their effect. They feel their eyes begin to droop and yet are strangely powerless to stop it. The is a screech of brakes as the car veers across the road ploughing headlong into one travelling in the opposite direction. The doctor’s mind flashes, reflecting their life; chasing butterflies as a child, the first time they made love, graduating from medical school, a million memories rush through their brain. The last of these flashes is an image, an image of a new born child’s face. Then all is blank.
A man walks slowly through the hospital his mind racing with a mixture of joy and great frustration, sadness and anger. The mixture and confusion of thoughts in his head is agonising. For it was on this day that the life of his first child began and the life of his own mother ended.
By not revealing the sex of the doctor throughout the article I hoped to further depersonalise them and allow them to simply to be thought of as a doctor.
I perhaps hoped to reflect the fact that one must remember that doctors are only human themselves. It shows patterns of life and emphasises that both good and bad things can happen to us throughout our lives.
To write this piece was as emotional experience as the events described are so personal to me, an event which I reflect upon a lot and perhaps had some influence on my application to medical school. I found the piece difficult to write and but once finished did gain a great deal of satisfaction. It was an experience I would like to repeat, although not too often, as it was emotionally demanding.
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