WakeUp 101 - The young kid

Picture this… There's a young boy, around 12 years old, who is heavily tanned with his black hair slightly ruffled but exudes brightness. You can literally see the glow on his face. He is wearing a clean white shirt and brown pants - like a school uniform. He is lying relaxed on a bed, supported by a thick pillow, with his back at an inclined position as if resting on a beach chair. There's a television on the wall in front of the bed on which some movie songs are playing. His left knee is bent while his right leg is crossed with the ankle resting on the left thigh. He keeps shaking his right foot to match the beats of the song on television. Once in a while he changes the position of his legs. After about a couple of hours, he leaves the bed.

Once outside the room, he is met by his mother who takes a close look at her son's face to see if everything is fine; mothers have a penetrating way of looking through the eyes. Once she is satisfied that all is well, she hands the boy a plastic bag from which he pulls out a comb. He slowly combs his hair neatly with a boyish grin while looking at his reflection on a window. Few minutes later, mom and son leave the premise to catch a bus back home.

Everything seems to be normal till you realize what was being done to him when he was on the bed. His left arm was pierced in two places with thick needles to draw blood out of his body for purification. The boy’s kidneys failed a couple of years ago and he has to come once in three days to the hospital for dialysis which takes 4 hours each time. A school going kid having to put up with so much and yet having such optimism in his outlook… some might say that he didn't know the gravity of the situation he was in but I think he did. And he was trying hard to take it as part of his stride. It was the same hospital where I saw the mediocre attitude of the nurses (described in the previous WakeUp).

You get goose bumps at odd times and weird places; and I got it there in that hospital on seeing the resilient young school boy battling every day for survival.