Treatment number 8

We sat in the corridor as mum waited her name to be called. A big flatscreen TV attached to the wall was muted, but the images and flashy icons of the news channel was very much alive. Mum kept on stroking her left shoulder, where the pain is returning, six hours or so after she took the medication earlier int he day. The day seems to be in six to eight hour increments, depending on how soon she feels the pain. Yellow pills, red triangular pills. Pills, pills, so many of them. I watched as she popped them, and as her face grimaced.

A few steps to our left was a man in his sixties or so, who lay there motionless with his eyes tightly closed. He had just been wheeled out of the radiation room next to us. His nose and mouth was covered by an oxygen mask, and by his bedside stood his daughter stood, who rubbed lotion on his forehead to moisten the flaky dry skin caused by the radiotherapy. "What a caring daughter you are," a nurse commented. I looked at them, and was moved by the scene.

A few moments later, the daughter walked up to the counter and demanded the name of the radiation specialist. Her tone was curt and to the point. Before I realised what was happening, she raised her voice "...do you care more about your machine or to the patient?" She looked sad, and though I did not dare to look at her, from her wavering voice, I could hear she was crying. "You told my dad not to move or otherwise he will damage the machine! As a medical specialist, your duty is to the patient, not to the machine!"

The specialist apologised profusely, and the daughter stepped aside and leaned against the wall. I still dared not look up at her face, but I sensed she was overcome with pain and grief. Her  outburst was justified, and probably intensified from the prolonged agony of watching her loved one suffer and lie there in a coma state of mind. As an orderly helped the daughter wheel her father way, she turned around and quietly thanked the specialised.

My mum's name was called, and into the radiation room she went, leaving me standing in that corridor, watching as the daughter and her father turned a corner and disappeared.