Published on: September 1, 2026

I rushed towards the pharmacy, but her face kept appearing before my eyes. The child was crying in pain. Who was this stone-faced woman standing there? Perhaps a distant relative. Where was the child’s mother?

Anyway, who cared who she was? At least the doctors were here. There was Dr. Sunil, Dr. M. R. Rajagopal and Dr. Greeshma. But where were they headed? I, too, had been called to join them. God knows what questions they would ask.

Amidst the chaos, I managed to gather a brief history of the child. We nurses have a particular knack for collecting such details on the go. Thankfully, there were no questions, as I had feared. But one thought remained in my mind: What now?

Even with all the morphine and fentanyl being given to the child, there was no relief from the pain. Maybe she was like me, nothing seemed to shake her. And, strangely enough, she carried the same name as I did.

We administered nearly 200 ampoules of morphine during her stay. We used Fentanyl and Midazolam too. Nothing brought her relief. Her pain simply refused to bow down to any medicine. All the pain management we had learnt seemed irrelevant before the cancer that was consuming her tiny body. And yet, even in the midst of unbearable pain, she smiled at me. Somewhere along the way, she had endeared herself to me.

I realised that her mother had already exhausted all her tears. But in her place, there were many eyes that cried.

She did not even seem to notice when we pressed her ink-covered hands onto a sheet of paper. Those little handprints would remain, a testament to her existence.

Finally, the day we had feared, and perhaps the day she herself had longed for, arrived. The cream cake, ice cream and mango juice that she had wanted to taste just once were brought to her. She tasted them eagerly, almost greedily, as though she already knew that this was her last day.

She had also wanted to spend an evening in the cool weather of Ooty. That was one dream we could not fulfil.

At last, she gave up her valiant fight against pain. Leaving behind scarred minds and hearts, she went in search of a world beyond.

Later, I visited her grave in the cemetery. She lay there, close to her grandfather, as though the two of them were sharing jokes. Her mother still spent time with her, talking to her.

The flowers beside her grave seemed to carry her fragrance and her vividness. And finally, the memories she had left behind brought tears to her mother’s eyes.

Those memories that she held close to her heart were perhaps more than memories. I would like to believe that they carried the soul of her daughter.

And there, in the cemetery, I saw her smiling again. A smiling face, free from pain. That is how I remember her.

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