Broken Symmetries: Age of Illuminati (13 page)

One doctor came out from the intensive care unit and shook his head to his parents with a sad face, and his mother burst into tears while his father tried to calm her down.
Young Nimrod
was in a state of shock; he couldn’t cry because he was yet to grasp what was happening and he was in complete denial. At that moment he heard his father tell the doctor that he would like to leave his daughter’s dead body in the teaching hospital for scientific research in the hope that doctors and scientists would be able to understand conditions like hers and discover a cure for it to help others.

***

Back at home,
Young Nimrod
locked himself in his room as he eventually grasped the fact that his little sister was gone forever. He didn’t come down for lunch nor for supper that day. His parents began to get worried about him as their frequent calls to him were not answered.

“Poor boy he studied very hard and he thought he was close to finding a cure, but now he is very disappointed,” the mother said. “I think he was emotionally attached to his little sister and felt responsible for her health.”

“We should give him some time. He will soon get over it,” the father said.

“I don’t think he will forget easily. I think we need to tell him that his sister is alive and now in heaven,” she suggested.

“And how will that make a difference?” he said.

“It doesn’t make a difference for her, but it might provide for our son a sense of emotional relief to believe that he can meet his sister again in another life,” she said. “Please let me do that, as our son is not going through a normal situation and he is suffering now.”

“Do what you think is right to do,” the father said in a discouraging voice.

    
Young Nimrod
recoiled himself under his desk for the entire day. He was thinking about his sister, and he remembered everything he read about death from his medical books. His sister’s body was going through irreversible changes with her body cells decomposing back into elementary materials. Nothing now could be restored. ‘I’m a huge failure. I failed everyone.’ He remembered the day in the school when he said to his teacher that he wanted to become a god. ‘How silly I was! I should have said: I want to become a failure, a waste, a piece of trash,’ he said to himself. ‘I’m nobody but a useless creature who can’t save anyone.’

That moment he heard his mother was trying to open the door. “Where are you?” his mother said when she entered the room.

“Please leave me alone!” he shouted from under his desk.

His mother approached him and sat next to him under the bench

“Do you want to know where your sister is now?” she said.

“I know where she is. She is in the dissection room and soon her body will degenerate to nothingness again,” he said in an angry voice.

“That is only her body, but her soul is in heaven. She is now a butterfly wandering among the flowers in paradise,” the mother said in a soft warming voice.

“I know that is not true, there is no soul and you don’t believe in it either,” he said. “Please don’t try to comfort me with such myths.”

His mother realized that her plan would not work with her son. After all, he had grown up in an atheist family, so he would know that she was faking her belief in the afterlife no matter how much she tried to act realistically.

“Then, what are you planning to do? You can’t stay under the desk and not eat anything forever,” she said.

“I just want to die,” he said.

The mother realized his son was in a deep depression, so she thought she needed to do something, otherwise, she couldn’t afford to lose her remaining child. ‘Think, please think,’ she said to herself while she was trying to find another way to approach her son and relieve him of his depressive thoughts. She looked at her thumb and saw a faint scar of a recently healed wound.

“Look at this scar,” she showed the scar to
Young Nimrod.
“I accidentally cut my left thumb yesterday. My entire body was in pain because of the wounded thumb. My legs took me to the bandage site, and my right hand took the bandage out and my eyes guided my other body parts to wrap the bandage around my thumb. All the parts of my body helped each other to fix my wounded thumb.”

Young Nimrod
listened tentatively to see his mother’s point as she continued to explain, “The world we live in is like a body. When someone is in pain, others will feel the pain too, so they seek to find a solution to relieve it.” She then continued, “You were in an emotional pain because of your sister’s pain, and this has made you stronger and smarter. You almost found the cure for your sister’s condition.”

“But I failed and she is now gone forever,” he said.

“No you didn’t fail, you should use what you have found to cure other disabled children like your sister. They are suffering now and they need your help,” she said.

“I only wanted to help my sister,” he said.

“Don’t say that! Nature has sacrificed your sister to find a cure for one of its problems, and now she has found the cure through you,” she said.

“But why would Nature choose to sacrifice my poor little sister?” he said.

“Nature knew that you are smart, so she chose to sacrifice your sister hoping from a smart brother like you to find a cure,” she said.

Young Nimrod
shed a tear, “That is not fair. My sister wanted to grow up to be a young beautiful lady not to die and suffer,” he said.

The mother exhaled a sigh and put some emphasis on her sentence, “You might not believe me, but it was your sister who accepted to sacrifice herself. She did that so that every kid with such a condition would benefit from your invention,” she said.

“That is not true! You are just trying to relieve my pain. Nature blindly chose my sister,” he said.

“But your sister was not blind, and she deliberately put you through emotional pain by making you fall in love with her then by leaving you early,” she said.

Young Nimrod
remembered his sister’s last words when she said sorry to him before she fell into the coma; he wished his sister had never said that. It was like a deliberate set-up to increase his emotional pain even much.

“If you die now, it means your sister sacrificed herself for nothing,” the mother said. “Nature will have to sacrifice many more children with your sister’s condition until she finds another smart person like you who can find a cure, so don’t let this cycle go on forever. You are already close to finding the cure, so try to save others. Try to save them in the name of your sister, and you can name your discoveries after your sister. She would be proud of her sacrifice and Mother Nature will list her sacrifice among the most valuable sacrifices. Your sister will be immortal!”

The mother then stood up to leave the room, but she turned to
Young Nimrod
to say her final words. “It’s your choice. Die now and waste your sister’s sacrifice or finish your invention and crown your sister’s sacrifice.”

Young Nimrod
thought deeply about his mother’s advice for a while, and then he looked at the picture of his sister on his desk. The picture had always reminded him of her and fueled him to strive to achieve the impossible. His sister was gone, maybe he needed to forget about her and move on with his life. His sister was one of many kids who were suffering, and he needed to throw away the picture. A picture that once stimulated him but now could hold him back. He took the picture down and found a lighter before igniting a flame at the corner of the picture. “Rest in peace my little sister,” he said while watching his sister’s picture burn in the hope that she would be erased from his memory.

Chapter 22

During one of his night shifts at the Rizgary teaching hospital, Sardar was doing his usual tour among the patients, and he came across a newly admitted one who had a recent trauma from a road traffic accident. His x-rays showed a fractured thigh, there was a traction set pulling on his broken leg. His condition and vital signs were already stabilized and he was on the operation list for the next day. During the history taking, Sardar asked him few questions to check his general condition.

“I have a severe pain in my thigh,” the patient complained to Sardar. “Doctor, please give me a strong pain killer.”

Sardar looked at his medical tests and history; the patient had a road traffic accident this afternoon, apart from a broken femur there were no any other serious findings, however, because the trauma was recent, there might be some torn organs in his abdomen or maybe a small latent bleeding in his skull that didn’t show up yet in the medical images. In such cases, monitoring the vital signs was important, but what was more important was to look for any newly reported pain especially in the abdomen or any severe headache which could mean internal bleeding. The pain in this case was the best indicator because it usually appears before the deterioration of the vital signs which were recorded by the tools and devices connected to the patient.

Sardar couldn’t easily decide whether to give the patient a strong painkiller to relieve him from his excruciating pain in his broken leg or not because a strong pain killer could potentially mask other pain sources which may appear later and indicate a serious new development. The decision to give or not to give a strong painkiller to a recent trauma case was not a sharply defined black and white situation in medicine. In his medical school, they taught him that doctors were essentially painkillers, after all, pain is the main reason that brings patients to the hospital in the first place. Relieving pain before diagnosing the situation firmly was not usually indicated because pain is the crowning achievement of Nature. Ever since neurons evolved to perceive pain, the survival rate in the animal kingdom had increased dramatically. For example, patients with Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Anhidrosis ‘CIPA’ usually injure themselves without noticing and hence, their survival rate is much lower than those who feel the pain. Also, patients with diabetic neuropathy might usually pass away because of heart diseases without reporting or feeling any chest pain which is usually the initial symptom that brings the patient to the hospital to receive the necessary treatment and survive. Because pain was so important for the survival of our species, Sardar thought natural selection may push this trait even further to fine tune the perception of pain in the subsequent generations. In his current case he wanted to behave rationally and so prescribed a weak painkiller for the patient, a lightweight painkiller which could relieve the patient from some pain in his broken leg but would not mask other pain sources that could arise later due to serious internal bleeding.

Later on that night he was lying on his hospital bed in the on call room hoping to rest and wished for no complications among the patients which could potentially disturb his night shift. He began to think about emotional pain, which was another type of pain and it was no less beneficial than the physical pain itself. The emotional pain that arose from the loss of a loved one or death of a close friend could be massive, although humans and elephants were probably the only creatures who mourn their dead. The afterlife promises could suppress this type of pain effectively but it could also mask potential problems in the world, problems that need proper understanding and diagnosis.

Science was still behind in curing death but the emotional pain arose from losing a loved one motivated many scientists to find a cure one day, hence, according to Sardar no faith should suppress the emotional pain with afterlife promises. Emotional pain might be the necessary sacrifice we have to pay to reach a bigger goal.

Sardar was immersed in his thoughts as he started to fall asleep, but suddenly his quiet night was interrupted by a phone call! The call was from a nurse informing him that one of the patients was in trouble, so Sardar quickly put on his white coat and rushed to the nurse’s station. The nurse told him that the patient with the broken leg was still complaining from pain and couldn’t sleep.

“Doctor, your painkiller didn’t work. I still have pain and can’t sleep,” the patient said to Sardar.

“Is it the same pain from your broken leg or a new pain at another site?” he asked.

“No, it’s the same pain, but your painkiller didn’t relieve it,” the patient said.

“Can’t you endure the pain just for tonight? You had a recent trauma and I really don’t want to mask other potential pain symptoms that may arise,” Sardar said.

“One night without pain is better than a thousand nights with pain. Doctor please. I just want to sleep,” the patient said.

The nurse came closer to Sardar. “Doctor, please let me inject him with a strong painkiller, otherwise, he will not let us sleep,” she said.

Sardar finally agreed to his request but he found himself in a deep moral dilemma. On one hand, he blamed the religious clergies for giving afterlife promises to people, following their wishes, relieving them from the fear of death and masking the bigger problems of Nature. On the other hand, he himself, and many other doctors he knew, didn’t usually act rationally and follow the patient’s wishes!

The next morning, Sardar woke up from his sleep. He looked at the time and realized it was the time to do his morning tour among the patients before he could gave the shift to the next doctor. He started with the patient with the broken leg, “How do you feel now?” Sardar asked the patient.

“The second painkiller you gave me was great. I slept very well last night. Thank you,” the patient replied.

Sardar looked at the vital signs and they all looked normal, and he felt lucky that the patient didn’t develop any other serious problems that night. After all, his decision to give the strong painkiller was the right thing to do, he made the patient sleep comfortably without any pain, and he was able to sleep that night too without anyone waking him up during his sleep.