A Surgeon's Knife

I waited with bated breath as the doctor leisurely analyzed my scan reports. My eyes kept oscillating between the medical reports lying on his desk to the sagacious doctor who was scrutinizing it while rubbing his chin thoughtfully. My jittered heart started racing and blood pressure shot up with every change in his facial expression. I was already on the death-throes when he finally lifted his eyes from the reports and turned them to me. I felt relieved as I was able to get some medical attention and equally anxious to know what verdict he was about to pass after studying my case history.

"We have to operate it out." He said calmly as his cold eyes turned to me and made a chill run down my spine.

"A surgery?" I gulped down as his cold eyes pierced through my panicked ones and made me shiver.

"And we have to do it as early as possible," he turned nonchalantly to pick the receiver of the phone in his cabin and punched a few numbers with the speed of lightning. "You should get admitted in the hospital by the evening. We have to run a few more tests on you, prior to the surgery."

"Today?" My breath became obstructed somewhere within my throat and I turned ghastly pale.

"You must have heard the saying, 'it's better to be late than be Mr. Late'. But in your case, it's just the opposite." The doctor smiled serenely like a sage after passing such a savage remark. "Hurry up!"

"I won't make any delay, doctor." I sprang up promptly from my chair and shook my already shaking hands with the satan clad in an angel's robe, who was chuckling at my plight.

I had hated hospitals since my birth even though I was born in one. Even their smell gave me chills. My animosity towards hospitals grew up along with me. By the time I was a collegian, it became so severe that I had to sever all ties with my childhood sweetheart when she got selected to a medical college. I saw my nephew for the first only when my sister was discharged from the hospital after delivery and was back home. Now, I had to face the worst fear of my life, a surgeon's knife!

They brought me back to my room that evening after they had passed me through several whining machines. They had almost drained all the blood out of my body into enormous syringes that sucked my veins like the Dracula who had jumped out of his casket after remaining famished for centuries.

"Your reports are perfectly okay and you are in perfect shape for a surgery tomorrow morning, young man." The doctor said with a satisfactory nod.

"Tomorrow morning?" My hands turned numb as I felt that I had only a few more hours to live.

"Why don't you take a stroll in the garden," the doctor grinned mockingly as I turned pale as a ghost even while alive. "It will help you relax."

As per the doctor's advice, I dragged myself out into the open and thumped down on a bench by the far end of the garden. Soon two elderly gentlemen came to me and sat by my side. One of them was awfully plump and the other was terribly lean. They looked like Laurel and Hardy but introduced themselves as Tripati and Trivedi. Their amiable nature made me fond of them and we soon became friends.

"Are you here for surgery?" Tripati asked.

I swallowed my apprehension and responded with a polite nod as words refused to come out of their hiding.

"So are we," Trivedi announced proudly. "I'm are here for a second time. The last it was a kidney transplant and now it's a brain tumor."

"I'm here for a heart transplant," Tripati sounded triumphant. "They did an open heart surgery last time but it didn't work out well. So they have decided to replace the defected organ."

I turned as white as a sheet as those horrid words fell on my ears.

"You seem so nervous," Trivedi took pity on me. "Your case must be a really serious one, isn't it?"

"Hey, you didn't tell us what has made you brave a surgeon's knife?"

"Well," I gasped and sucked in air greedily as if it were my last breath before pouring my agony out. "It's appendicitis."

"What?" They asked in chorus and grabbed their stomachs as they burst out laughing.