She Choose To Forgive Him

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. She could make out the cherry blossoms falling like pink snowflakes between her swollen lids. She wished she could dance in the flowers, giggling like a little girl high on the euphoria of life. The cancer-ridden woman grimaced in pain as acid-like tears trickled down the sides of her face.

A scarred-up and frail man came in. The woman knew that despite the many wrinkles decorating his thin skin and his persistent limp, he was only in his sixties. He was one of the lucky ones, especially since he was the reason the woman was lying here on her deathbed. This man was why more than half of the human population died agonizingly and were buried in mass cemeteries.

Actually and honestly, the fortunate ones were the ones in all those graves. The woman never appreciated when people said that death was a mercy. Not until she sobbed, watching her husband and little boy suffer for weeks before dying. By the time of their respective funerals, she thanked death for ending their agony.

A sharp pain shot up the woman’s spine, ripping a scream from her throat. Like clockwork, one of the monitors hooked up to her started to beep incessantly. Beep! Beep! Beep! The man hobbled over, grabbed a needle full of a transparent liquid, and injected it into one of the I.V. ports. Instantaneously, the harsh noise and pain subsided.

The woman licked her cracked lips as the man poured some water into a glass with a crack running up its side. After placing a straw in the cup, he bought it close to her lips, encouraging her to drink some. The coolness felt amazing as the water went down her throat, but she knew it didn’t do anything. It was nothing but a temporary comfort. She watched the man put the cup down and scribble something on a nearby pad.

“Why?” croaked out the woman. Why did you do this to me, to my family? The swelling in her throat was so bad she could barely breathe, much less talk.

The man opened his mouth to answer, then shut it. How she wanted to scream at the man, throw something at him. You killed my husband, my sweet little boy. So many bodies. So many funerals. So many broken hearts. Because of you. We deserve the truth.

“I’m. Dying,” she shallowed, “Deserve. That much.”

Silence filled the room as the man internally quarreled with himself. After a few seconds passed, some unspoken part of him won. He dragged a chair to the woman’s bedside and plopped down. The light shone in from the window, breaking up the shadows that appeared to surround him constantly. From here, the woman could see more than the scars from his fight with the disease. She saw his enormous weight – guilt, stress, anguish. This monster, the villain in everyone’s story, seemed just as broken as everyone else, maybe even more so.

“Ten years ago, I was happily married to a brilliant woman. We worked together, before getting married and after, to try and figure out how to clean up the Earth efficiently and quickly. Together, we figured out a substance, D.T106, that could be poured onto oil spills, dumpsites, and junk yards. All the damage and anything that caused it in the first place could disappear within two weeks.”

The woman started to cough, interrupting the man’s story. He grabbed the cup and placed the straw on the woman’s lips. He wished he could do more to alleviate her suffering, but the man had seen the disease’s process too many times to know he couldn’t. At this point, the only thing anyone could do was palliative care.

Once the woman’s cough settled, she nodded at the man, encouraging him to continue. “We were so proud. After twenty years of failures, it appeared to be a success. But there was a problem that didn’t show up until months after the initial tests.”

He didn’t say it, but the woman knew what he was referring to; the cancer-mimicking disease. “My wife got sick first, then me. No one could tell us what it was. It was a medical mystery, the first two cases of its kind. For months, we slowly felt ourselves dying by the very thing we created to save us, to save humankind.”

“After fighting for a year, my wife finally succumbed to this, uh, cancer. A month later, I was cleared, whatever that meant. I attempted to destroy everything, not just cause of the danger but also because it took my wife.”

“I’m sure you’ve heard of the saying ‘what goes around comes around’?” The woman shook her head slightly. “I disposed of it wrong; the D.T106 leaked out of its containment and leeched into the groundwater and dirt. Because my wife and I created the substance to take effect instantaneously, nothing could stop it from spreading.”

The woman filled in the rest. This poor man. He made a mistake, and millions died or wished they did. The man saw what happened to him and his wife repeatedly. With the last of her strength, she shifted her hand on top of his.

Surprised and touched by this dying woman’s compassion, the man began to sob. Ever since the investigation revealed his error to be the cause of the widespread pandemic, he only heard people calling for his head. No one bothered to hear his story. No one bothered to give him a chance to fix things in the light of day.

The woman continued to surprise him with this. With her last breath, she said, “I forgive you.” The heart rate monitor showed a straight line, confirming the woman had died. With a heavy heart, the man turned off the machines and began preparing the body for burial.

The man would have asked her why she forgave him if he had the chance. If there had been more time, he would have heard the story of a doctor who made a small mistake that led to the death of a young man. The woman would have told him, “we all make mistakes, and sometimes people die. It doesn’t make us bad at our jobs or mean we are horrible people. It means we’re human.”