The Doubt Point

It was all yellow. Not the warm, friendly yellow from the morning or afternoon sun that floods living room floors. It was the swollen, sickly yellow of malaria, jaundice, and urine—simultaneously sterile and diseased. Stagnant. That was the halo of yellow surrounding the man on the slightly inclined bed in the Oncology Unit.

He seemed more machine than human with the buzzing, dripping, and blinking devices that were synced to his feeble heartbeat and weighted breaths. It was like an orchestra tuning at the start of the show. Chaos. Unity. Chaotic unity.

The man tilted his head towards the IV bag and watched the saline fluid drip slowly, like every drop was holding on for dear life before it plummeted into his veins. He smiled a little. The terrified drops reminded him of waterslides and how scared his daughter had been when she first was pushed down the tunnel.

“It’s not the slide,” she said—shaking and dripping—as they climbed the stairs. “It’s dark in there.”

He stopped smiling. He promised himself he wouldn’t do it anymore. He wouldn’t remember. All that there was for him in the world was here. Here in the yellow room, with yellow walls, yellow tiles, yellow scrubs, yellow smell, yellow curtains…yellow sleep.

When his eyes fell open, he noticed someone had filled the bag. It bothered him. It was like someone flipped the sand timer when they weren’t supposed to and stole an extra turn.

“You need to wait your turn,” said a voice that might’ve been his.

“But if I don’t run up now, I won’t later. I’m scared.” He knew that voice.

“What’s to be scared about? Look, we can see the whole slide from out here. It’ll bend down, turn to the right, swerve to the left, and drop you in the pool by the blue window. It’s like ‘A Ram Sam Sam.’ We know where it starts, and where it ends.”

“Blue’s my favourite colour!”

“I know, sweetie. Watch your step.”

The nurses’ garbled voices, ringing like children’s shouts in a pool, almost dragged his eyes open. But way down, far below the dripping metal stairs, he heard a voice echo up the slide to where he stood.

“It’s OK, daddy. It’s only dark for a little. Then, blue!”

He smiled and sat down in the lukewarm pool at the mouth of the slide. He closed his eyes and leaned back and felt the water rush over him, pushing him down. Out of the yellow. Into the dark. Towards the blue.

Photo by Jill Burrow (Pexels)