HiveComb

I still remember it as if it were just yesterday. I was the child people pointed at with pity. Stuck in a loop of endless sickness. Always coughing, fragile, so small for my age. They even said I wouldn’t live past ten.

I can still remember how I would wake in the middle of the night to find my mother kneeling by my bedside, her lips moving fast in prayers.

I can still remember the tears in her eyes every time she carried me in and out of hospitals. The nurses even knew me by name. Some days, it felt like the hospital corridors were my second home. I got so accustomed to the smell of disinfectant, the constant sound of hospital equipment. The techniques of doctors whispering outside the door.

The memories are still fresh like yesterday. One night after a long night of fever, my mother had sat by my bed with a wet cloth, wiping my forehead. During the doctor's ward round, I overheard him say quietly to my mother,

“Madam, I’m sorry, but with the way it is, there’s a slight chance he might grow old.”

With a fear-filled voice, my mother had asked. “Doctor, don’t sugarcoat your words. Tell me what it is?”

“All I’m trying to say, ma, is, if he makes it past ten years, then it’s a miracle.”

I remember my mother walking back with a stiffened shoulder and a forced smile on her face. Her eyes had tears, and she tried to hold back. She sat beside me in bed and held me tight like I was going away, then she pressed her face against mine and cried.

“I don’t believe them. You will live. Do you hear me? You will live.”

I was only a child, but I had this fear in me. It was strong. A feeling I couldn’t explain. A feeling stronger than my pain at the present time.

But my pains worsened. And with each passing day, it grew everyone's doubts. Aunties shook their heads at the sight of me. Neighbors whispered. Fellow kids asked me weird questions. I was a child who always wondered why people stared at me in such an odd manner. I never knew it was because of my frame. I never looked healthy. Some spoke in parables I didn’t always understand, but I understood their eyes. Because in it, I saw pity and fear with a lot of unspoken words.

One night stands out clearly in my memory. I had just been discharged from the hospital again. The whole city was dark that night, and I lay outside in the open sky with my mother. I could see the stars. They looked beautiful, like silver in the sky. But my little mind was lost in thoughts. I recall asking my mother,

“Is it true what they say, will I die?”

For minutes, she didn’t give me a reply.

I asked her again, like she didn’t hear me the first time. “ Mummy, will I die?”

She looked me in the eye and responded. “No. You won't. Don’t believe them. Believe God. You are a shining light, and that’s what you will be to your generation.”

I believed her. She was my mum and I trusted every one of her words.

That night, something settled in me, and I lost that strange feeling I couldn’t explain. It vanished, and I was clothed with this strange calm. Like the stars in the sky that night, I believed I was meant to shine. So if I was meant to shine, it meant I had to be alive to fulfill such a prophecy by my mum.

And somehow, I kept surviving. I made it past ten years. Eleven and even twelve. Now I am an adult and still alive.

Till today, people can’t explain it. I haven’t seen the four walls of a hospital in years.

Science gave its reasons, and people believed theirs. But the truth is my fate was written where only the brave could see, in the stars.