The Hospital Road (2012 Edition)

I had written something similar in 2009, this is a rewrite version of the short story "The Hospital Road" posted by me earlier. I have improved few things, and you may experience the touch of betterment. However, I still believe that there are some errors, so a review will be appreciated!

The Redwood city district residential area has always been famous as a home for middle class workers who surrounded the north lake, parted from the workplace area of the city which included supermarkets, public library, and the court office. Anybody who ever wished to travel across the south district had to travel through the Hospital Road which was named after the City Hospital which was the most equipped medicine resource of the Redwood.

I don’t remember his name, but I remember the accent of the man who lived at the second floor in 14th number apartment of the building next to the street we lived on. He was really happy fifty-seven years ago, people told me, when he got the news that his wife was going to give birth to their first child. It was thirty-five years before I came to this world, he was young and active when he had his daughter - a perfectly healthy child delivered at the City Hospital. He had no friends or family, but for his wife and their newly born baby whom they wanted to carry back home after they finished the hospital’s ‘paper and policies’.

“It was his dream to have a child at his home,” my mother had told me, though, his destiny had decided to wake him up from his dream. In the early morning ride, when they left the city hospital, their car crashed into a public bus at the Hospital Road leaving all three of them seriously injured. They were brought to the Emergency Room of the City Hospital where skilled surgeons performed different procedures  to save their life. Though they succeeded, they failed to save the life of the baby. His wife was hospitalized for two weeks and was declared physically perfectly fit, though mentally tortured of losing her daughter, she was brought back to their apartment. She was a woman nobody knew much about for she died a year later the accident due to psychological illness and clinical depression which ruined her eating habits, and in turn, her liver.

Years passed, and then came I, people told me his story and my mother was sympathetic to him, though I always hated him. My brother loved him so much that daily, after school, he went for his apartment with other children of his age who played and talked with the old man in his living room about his young days when he used to travel around in the country.

When I was twenty, my hatred for him was increased for I believed that he snatched, from me, whole of my brother’s childhood in his apartment which was now decaying. Most people had left the building he lived in for the risk of it being collapsed due to severe architectural damage. My brother had also grown up, but he still loved him and visiting his apartment.

One day, my mother visited him, they were friends. I accompanied her for that was what she wanted me to do, and for once in my life I wanted to visit his place and search what children like so much about that place. The rooms were badly furnished and staircase of the building was dirty and stinky. The paint on the walls had started decaying and the rooms appeared dark though the sunlight could enter from the broken windows. There was an elongated ceiling fan in his room which was painted with cream color and filled with old furniture which was, now, in very bad condition.

“You are a nice girl, your brother used to visit me, he told me about you,” he told me with a smile as he offered me, and my mother tea and snacks. I did not want to admit it, but his words and expressions had delighted me. Despite of my hatred, his accent appeared pure and attractive to me. The old man had no moustache or beard, and his head was shaved, as well. He wore a blue colored buttoned shirt and black coloured trouser which made him look really nice in the disordered rooms he lived in.

“You are old now, and so is this building. You must leave this place now, anything can happen here, especially when kids visit you so often,” my mother said to him. I thought he would easily agree to my mother, but instead this ignited his anger. He had his sentiments attached with his place and he was willing to stay there until his death. My mother wanted to stay there, but she decided to leave because of the house work, she probably thought that it was not worth to spend his time trying to convince the man and left.

Next day, I went there alone, and saw him leaving the place. I was really happy to see that he understood what my mother wanted to explain, and for I was not attached with him too I wanted to wish him goodbye and invite him to my home before he left.

“Now, sir! Where are you going?” I asked.

“To die,” he replied.

“But..,” I was shocked and could not speak anything more.

“Isn’t this what people wanted?!”

I tried to talk him out of it, but he did not respond, and finally I decided to stand still over there.

“I don’t know if there is anything like second birth, but if I ever have to born again... I wish if I would born in your house,” I screamed on his back.

It happened last week, and when I returned home from the office, I heard it from my brother - the old man he used to visit had died. He got hit by a drunken driver the next day he left when he was walking by the Hospital Road.

The Hospital Road had saved many life, but destroyed a few too.