Faith on four-wheels

I will never forget the night the world welcomed 2021. Everyone was desperate to leave behind the devastations of 2020, of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was working as a senior resident at LG Hospital. Inside the hospital, there were no celebrations and the new year couldn't bring any relief. Only the soft hum and hiss of ventilators. After months of watching families crumble, bodies pile up, and faith flicker like an extinguishing candle, for me, hope had become a distant luxury. Every day, families watched their loved ones slip away through glass doors they couldn't walk through.

And then came Ramachandra Bhai.

A man from a small village near Patan. He had brought his wife to the city because his village had little medical facilities. He had managed to find her a bed at LG. For eighteen days, his minivan became his home, parked just outside the hospital gates, as he waited for his wife to get better. Every morning, he would wait for me. Not to ask questions or demand answers but just to hear a word, a glance or anything that meant she was still alive.

One day, as I gave him the usual update, he folded his hands, looked at me with eyes turned  red from sleeplessness, and said,

“Saheb, I couldn’t go to the temples. I haven’t prayed. All I have left is faith in you. Please save my wife.”

In a country where women often suffer in silence, I witnessed something sacred. A man fighting all the odds to keep his wife alive. He refused to leave her side, even if he couldn’t be inside. And so, I stayed by his side. I brought him meals, I sat and talked with him when he had no company, and gave him updates. While her recovery looked uncertain, I made sure she got extra care. 

Forty-five days later, we received the news we all had been hoping for. Against all odds, she had survived. Severe COVID, multiple complications, weeks in intensive care and yet, she lived. All this while, generous donors had stepped in to provide them clean clothes and footwear.

Their goodbye broke me in the softest way. She smiled at me and said, “Come to our village one day. Eat with us. You are family now.” I told her I would and I meant it. 

I had spent weeks watching her husband sleep in a van, rationing faith like oxygen. I had watched her body hover at the edge of life. And somehow, against everything we feared, she made it back.

The meals and conversations you share with strangers. The way you become their only hope. There’s no word for that part of medicine. But once you’ve seen it, you carry it with you forever. 

-Dr. Suyash Singodiya

(Consultant Surgical Oncologist, Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, India)

Patient consent was obtained prior to sharing this story and image.

Patient consent was obtained prior to sharing this story and image.

Patient consent was obtained prior to sharing this story and image.