Short Stories

Sight to the blind

by Lusungu Muyangana
05/06/19
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The patient walked in with a bloody rag tied around her head, slightly covering the left eye. I had seen her earlier in the corridor. She had walked along briskly and full of life like she had no trouble. How could she walk like that when her eye was injured? I knew then that I would probably see her soon. I just couldn't tell when. I had met many patients in the corridors only to meet them later in the eye clinic. Not every case was the same. Some left happy and some left sad. Some went to surgery and some to the Optician. Some ended up at the pharmacy and some just needed a hat and sunglasses. All came to see the doctor hoping to receive help for their vision.

It was almost noon and I was eager to go home. Yet I continued to sit across from the Doctor waiting for instructions and translating whatever the patient said. I had hoped that we could have attended to her earlier. I was uncomfortable looking at her injured eye. She was the last patient but now the prospect of leaving was no longer inviting.

She had travelled from a far town just to get to the hospital. Some boys with catapults had shot stones at her just because they couldn't buy her oranges.'Dreadful boys' I thought 'Now she has lost her eye. How do we tell her that?' The doctor continued writing looking as calm as ever. The patient sat looking hopefully at the doctor. I sat facing both of them dreading the moment of truth. 'Where was the nurse when I needed her?'
The doctor got up, removed the bloody rag and began to examine the patients eye. I looked away. The nurse came back into the room only to receive the instructions that I had been dreading. Carefully and gently she translated the doctors words. The patient would never see through that eye again. I saw the hope drain off her face as she broke down to cry. Moved by the pain and knowledge of the loss I began to shed tears too. I looked up to see the nurse wiping tears from her eyes. This patient had come hoping that her eye would see again. Now I understood the confidence that she had in the corridor. She believed that we would help her left eye see again. The Doctor was back at her desk writing. She was preparing for surgery. The damaged eye was to be removed.

As the patient walked out, I gathered my things. We had seen the last patient. I could prepare to go home. I was drained and emotional. I felt broken. The picture of that patient realizing that not only would her eye not be fixed but be removed was more than I could bear. 'Was that all? Did we tell her all that she needed to know? Blind Bartimeus had asked that he might receive his sight. Yet after he had received his physical sight, he followed Jesus in the way. He had gained another form of sight. Maybe that was why I was here? To help the patient receive her spiritual sight.'

"Nurse, to which ward did that patient go?"

Luke 4:18 -19 (KJV) The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.