In early August, during the period of heavy rains, my phone rang after midnight. I woke up a little frightened and heard the familiar voice of a woman who had worked for years as a cook. Through cries and cries of despair I realized that something was wrong with her daughter and they had her in the emergency room of a hospital where she was on call… I got up, took the car and after a while I found myself in the maze of two merged hospitals trying to find the ER… Finally, after a while, following the instructions of sleeping guards and nurses, I found myself in a round room with cots and screens in between, where the fifty inpatients were waiting for the care of the two doctors, or, some of them, the death certificate, to be transferred to the morgues… A little shocked and a little touched, because this situation reminded me of my homeland, I found the former cook with her daughter in bed… -What’s going on? What’s wrong? I asked. -We don’t know what’s wrong, she said. She’s unconscious… She’s recovered, but she can’t walk. I went to the entrance and asked the nurse for more information.
-Peter, if we don’t run tests, no one can tell what’s wrong… Don’t pay attention to what her mother says… And in short, in order for the exam to take place, it must be paid for in advance. The mother said she has no money, so nothing can be done… We talked for a while, I paid the fee, and immediately they took blood from the patient and sent it for analysis… I waited about an hour and a half. The nurse came and announced very coldly: -The patient has AIDS! She needs an urgent blood transfusion… Another shock! She left to go back to her post and came back… Her group does not exist in the blood bank of our hospital. You’ll have to look for another hospital, or wait until tomorrow morning to find blood donors willing to give blood. That is, if you can pay them… God help me and while looking for a hospital to go to, I came across a specialist who greeted me with a “Bless you”. I was surprised, but he explained that he had studied in Moscow and understood that I was an Orthodox clergyman. I explained my problem and he agreed to accompany me to find the blood bag we needed… We went from hospital to hospital. Waking up the guards, getting them to let us in, finding the right person on duty to tell us if there was a blood bag for this group… In the fourth hospital in a row, the Lord gave and we found! An additional delay to find the cashier did not seem like a difficulty, because we had the joy of having achieved our goal…
We returned to the hospital at dawn. They started the transfusion and immediately the patient opened her eyes. As soon as she saw me, she clung to my clothes and began to cry: -Don’t let me die, don’t let me… Let me get well and I’ll be in church every day… Pray for me. Don’t let me die I tried to reassure her. but what can you say to a young man, 20 years old, who you know has little chance of living? I left in black thoughts and deep pain for the reality that had unfolded before me the night before. Not that I hadn’t seen more difficult situations, but this one hurt me in its own way… The girl’s torment lasted for 12 more days with constant transfusions… Then she fell asleep crying and complaining… -I want to live. Why don’t I get well? Who could answer these questions? Or who would have the courage to turn these questions of a young man into self-criticism? I think, what matters most is to hold the hand of the one who is leaving life, to have to the end the feeling that he is not alone, more than anything else… I have often wondered how many people must have left and how many are leaving every day, because exactly no one was found to pay for their medicines! How little life costs in Africa of poverty and destitution!
† O Cameroon Gregory
