Creative Writing Hua’s Last Hours

“Goodnight Jeevan”, heart full of despair, mind filled with a thick haze of fatigue. Hua saw himself as
a man of hope, a man of the people. He always looked for the best in a person and he made the
most of everything he has. Hua was never the smartest or the most gifted, but he was consistently
the hardest worker in every class he ever attended and earned everything he ended up with. Hua
was also a very proud man. Not cocky, but confident in his abilities. He believed he could do
anything, save anyone. This was his biggest strength and also his biggest weakness. And on this
morning, it turned into his biggest weakness.

The shift started with an unusual number of patients in emergency coughing and spluttering away as
Hua walked in to start his shift. Hua was unfazed by the sounds of a choir of choking people but was
energised by his routine morning latte and was eager to start his shift and work his magic. His
assistant Kayla called into his office the first patent for the day. Kayla opens the door and leads the
older man who looked to be in his 60s into the room. Hua was immediately caught off guard by the
older man who was actually in his mid-forties. Each step the senior took made Hua uneasy as he
watched the man’s knees buckle under each step. The older man dropped himself into his seat
grimacing and then finally looking up to make eye contact with Hua. The doctor gave the man a
reassuring smile before getting into procedure.

Throughout the check-up Hua felt an extra strong sense of urgency and investment into the man’s
health and does everything in his knowledge to help the man, but the man’s condition never
improved. Patient after patient stumble into his office that day, each one with the same but
progressively more severe symptoms. Relentless fatigue and a lung bursting cough were just some of
the symptoms.

Two hours into his shift he had his first death. A young girl around 16 years of age. 20 minutes later
he had his second. This time it was the old man Hua had invested urgency for. By hour 5 a dozen
more were dead, and the hospital was running at over 100% of its capacity. Hua was working harder
than he had ever before but nothing he did made any sort of difference. Hua had always attributed
hard work to results. That relationship was quickly severed only a couple hours into his shift. Hua
was defeated mentally by hour 8 and by hour 10 had developed a tickle in the throat. That tickle
didn’t take long to mature into a razor blade swallowing cough.

By hour 14 of his shift Hua made a choice to call Jeevan. The thought of contacting his one and only
friend had been in the back of his mind since hour 5 of his shift. Hua refrained from calling Jeevan for
two reasons. His first excuse he told himself for his hesitation to warn Jeevan of this Georgia Flu was
Jeevan’s paranoia and the fact that Jeevan doesn’t handle stress all that well. But Hua’s real reason
for not telling Jeevan was much more selfish. When Hua made the call to Jeevan it confirmed to
himself that he had failed. Hua didn’t take failure very well, for a normal person that trait would
heavily affect their daily life. But it didn’t affect Hua often. Hua rarely failed, even when he did his
ego rarely let himself take the blame. But on those rare occasions like today where failure was his
own, suppressing the antagonist in his mind became a great deal more burdensome.

A concoction of guilt and relief washed over Hua’s consciousness. The guilt sunk down from his chest
and made itself at home in his stomach. The guilt a direct result of his pride for not cautioning
Jeevan earlier and giving him the best chance possible to live beyond the horrors of the virus. Like
unearthing gold from under sand, just after the guilt had sunk from his heart to his stomach he
peaked into his heart and found comfort. He knew where it came from. A smile shaped to his face.
This was not a forced smile quite the opposite, it was one of those smiles that come from such a
deep spring of peaceful emotion no signal in your brain can extinguish its sparkle. If somebody had
looked over at Hua at that moment, they would have believed him to have been a mad man. How
could someone smile under such an occasion.

Hua smiled because he believed he wasn’t going to die unchanged. Like a character ark of a side
character who up until his last moments had been selfish and unchanged in his flaws but redeems
themselves in a satisfying personality progression where they sacrifice themselves at the expense of
their life to save the world. Well at least that’s how Hua felt when he overcome what he quietly
believed to be his biggest flaw, his self-pride.

Hua associated that moment he had just had to the time he found himself 30km into a marathon.
Hua was seriously unprepared for the race and was in the hurt box. He had never been so close to
giving up. Head was dropping back hunched every step was a painful waddle. He was just about to
stop when a stray plastic bottle shoots between the tight gap between his limited stride length. Out
of reflex Hua gave a pathetic skip to avoid any another rogue water bottle. His eyes dart up from the
ground from where they resided from. To his surprise he was at a water station. He veered his
momentum toward the table where the substance of life dwelled. His body still ached all over, but
the freshness of the water refreshed his mind, all of a sudden it was bearable.

“All of a sudden it was bearable”, summed up his last moment. Disease had completely taken over
his body, but his mind was at peace. Hua leaves his responsibilities behind dropping stiff at the
height of his happy hallucinations. From an on lookers’ perspective, it was just another tragedy in
the greater scheme of the catastrophe. But whenever Hua reflects back at it from his greater
perspective he is blessed with fulfilment.