Sometimes the fight need not be with the other person

Lalitha, age 37, her routine for almost a month has been like this. Make 15 calls and check on with the patients in the morning, provide assistance to them over the phone. Call new patients who were tested positive for COVID and get them to join for the treatment in the hospital. Again check on with the patients in the evening and be available to contact throughout the night. She makes at least 70 calls in a day and sudden escalations during the day create more panic not able to deal with them like meeting them in real which is what she has been trained for as a nurse.

She is a person who doesn’t like talking to people over the phone. A shy person in general who now has to make video calls to check with patients at times. Staying at home the whole day and working like how she used to work with patients in the hospital was stressful to her while some of her colleagues were able to work from the hospital and she was being asked to do the same from home so she could reach more people, the people who can’t afford to come to the hospital, she had to do it. Service was her duty and with dignity, she strives to help people even while she needed someone to help her psychologically.

She does understand that people are going through things they’ve never been through in their lives. She knows a panic and tension is dispersing in the air, and people are even doubting their neighbor's breath. She is going through all those feelings that everyone is passing through as well if only people that she is talking to can empathize with and see from her perspective how difficult her job right now is to be treating people over phone calls, her life would be with one less burden on her shoulders. She was never prepared for this, never did she ever expect that she’d be doing something like this in her life. Those demanding voices, those intolerant words, those panic moments with every emergency call, her heart skipped a beat at least once every hour. Always expecting a call during the shower, while making the dosa, while going to bed. It’s been months since she had a REM sleep, always anticipating an alarm of panics from the patients. Little did her family help her cause, now that she is home her son and her husband demanded more care, they weren’t patient with her and she was the only person to whom they could vent out their frustration being locked up inside the house all the time. She had to deal with it and tried her best not to return her frustration out on them. At times that also did happen. She would go completely out on them and vent out her anger. Day after day, the peace in the house was diminishing. ‘How long can we take this?’ was the question in all of their minds.

She sat down alone, took a moment to think why she was doing this? Yes, she was not in a good head space. Yes, was not herself at most times of the day. Yes, she needed help from others. Yes, she was tired and frustrated. And she looked at what she was doing. She was helping people, her kind words are giving someone a hope to survive. She is saving the lives of people. Like the sun rays that hit you after a dark cold night, the hope she was being to people pushed away from her frustration and negative emotions she had during these days. ‘It is the greatest of the people that face the greatest of the challenges’, she said to herself. Quitting was never an option, she quitting or not doing her duty well might result in someone losing their life. She realized the responsibility in her hand.

Each call now seemed like her life’s calling to save people.

Maybe people will not look upon her as a hero for her efforts and the sacrifices she was making but does it matter? Is that why she was doing this in the first place so people recognize or reward her? It’s a feeling beyond that. It’s being a savior.

It is the toughest of the times that brings out the real strength of people. Sometimes the fight need not be with the other person but with yourself, sometimes the fight can be pushing you a step better when you feel you can’t move an inch further but you try because you have a purpose, sometimes the fight can be with your own voice that says ‘enough’ and you have a profound voice that arises from within ‘I can do more’.

Once the storm is passed, there comes sunshine and rainbows, people will look upon you, stories about you will become history and this story is one such.

~Hari~