The Little Candle
Sofia Lopes
I am looking at the sky and I cannot avoid being dragged back that night, remembering that endless dark sky when the stars seemed like little knives to me. Again thinking that only they had the courage to reap darkness no matter how big it was. I like to consider that maybe I was one of those knives.
My hands were shaking as always, I was trying to convince myself to face truth. I was just a simple resident; it was just a simple surgery; I wasn’t the signature in a beautiful masterpiece, I was that little blank space that no one ever sees and the ones who do, just criticise it.
I remember that weak cough, I recall looking at the small room thinking that there was a huge mistake, they’ve put a little child at the terminal diseases place.
So, I walked into the room, I sat side by side with the little girl and I looked deep into her eyes, they were dark, hopeless, I held her little cold hand and so I squeezed it.
She murmured something, I wasn’t able to understand what, maybe because I live way more outside life than in it, but still I put my hand on her hand and closed my eyes. I was late for the surgery.
Life is a candle. We just realize that the candle is actually burning when you see it shimmering, when you notice how small it is. Hope! Hope is what keeps that little candle burning.
At that point, supporting that lonely and helpless girl meant more to me than the assisting spot at the surgery. So, I could give that little girl a little more warmth, a little more hope and maybe a little love. Courage is like a fire that is burning out in your chest leaving nothing but pride on you.
Would I miss the surgery to be with the lonely girl, to hold her hand for a few more seconds, when her little flame was about to extinguish? My career was at risk although sharing the little girl’s last seconds meant everything to me. A part of me knew how she felt, or maybe wanted to know just to release a little, the pressure we were feeling.
She was receiving morphine, a drug, when I was giving her love, also a drug. But I like to think that love was releasing a pain no meds can… and so I missed the surgery.
I was there when her little flame was replaced by darkness. I closed her eyes, then I heard those angry footsteps stopping at the entrance of my room.
I jeopardized my career on that cold and dark day… The sky was just as dark as it is today, but there was something heating and lighting my way home, maybe those little stars, maybe the flame that was burning in my chest.