Simps Will See Dust 08

Was it ever fair to judge a lady by her looks? Did a lady deserve the attention of a man simply because she had a beautiful face or a shapely body? Life had taught us to be materialistic, and to judge things on the basis of how they appeared to be rather than how they really were. When people got married, or had girlfriends, didn’t they mostly do so for the face and forgot all about the soul. But did a beautiful face ever make a lady a good person? We might have taught ourselves to believe it that way, to associate beauty with innocence and elegance with graciousness. Everything I believed in had crumbled, and now, I was certain that beauty could be the most beguiling thing, and to judge a lady by her looks had to be among the most unwise and unfair things to do. A lady was only beautiful because of her mind and her dispositions, because of what she believed in and stood for. And she was beautiful when she was sensible rather than sensual. As long as she carried herself with dignity and honor. But what did that now mean for Brenda’s dignity, or her honor. Would I still respect her as I would?

Brenda had always been the perfect embodiment of beauty at its extreme, prettier than any lady in the world, yet still the sum of the most serene and commendable virtues anyone could think of. She was flawless in every human scale of judgment, and no one would ever have blamed me for falling in love with her. Even my classmates who were in relationships confessed that if they had only suspected they stood a chance with her, they would have jilted their girlfriends. I think I would too. Anyone would.

We had just wrapped up our ObsGyn rotations, and we were getting into Pediatrics. Word had it that it would be the most free styling rotation; without a proper system for follow up of the students, and without a definite authority to answer to, and a standard of performance to press towards, it was a certain thing that the students would mind their own business. By a strange quirk of fate, Brenda and I got assigned as bed mates. That meant that we would clerk our patients together, get to listen to the version of their stories, and draft their history for presentation, together. I had not clerked so many patients in ObsGyn. Though I continually promised myself that I would clerk some more before the end of the rotation, we were soon submitting our logbooks and that was a done deal.

I had not been myself since Brenda confided in me about her state. I had always been a little confused and edgy, but I now knew that I was a mess. I rasped my lab coat trying to straighten the untidy creases hoping that I would not meet a resident pediatrician who would ask me why I didn’t have my name tag. We walked up to the first bed by the door, the child’s eyes warmed up to us, she was smiling quite dazzlingly, and had it not been for the medicine lying on the bedside table, or the line she still had on her left hand, nobody would have thought she was ill. Beside the medicine casing also lay a barely eaten banana and an unopened loaf of bread. Her eyes were teary and seemed to be popping out of their sockets but she still managed a resolute smile.

“Where is mom?” I asked. “I am with my dad, I don’t have a mom” she answered with a palpable struggle in her voice, but with such endurance to relay that information, “He’s gone out to air some of my clothes.” “Okay. How are you feeling today?” Brenda asked, squatting a little to level her face with hers, “what’s your name?” “Tiffany. I have a surgery tomorrow, I know I am going to die, but that will make Papa sad.” I gasped. I never expected a kid, about the age of five speak so macabrely. “No, don’t say that, Tiffany. You won’t die. You will be okay.” Brenda said reassuringly taking her hands. “I want to rest, when I die I will rest. Papa will rest.” “Tiffany!” Brenda interjected softly. I felt broken by every word Tiffany spoke, yet I only stood there silent, as mute as I always was when it was important that I said something. “God is with you, okay?” “Is He?” Young Tiffany asked looking at Brenda, “everyone says that all the time, I don’t believe it anymore.” She had a kind of apathetic and solemn look on her face that seemed to say that she was content with her fate, and that she didn’t want to believe in fairy tales or anything like it anymore. “He certainly is, darling,”

Tears came to my eyes. My heart hollered silently when I regarded the depth with which young Tiffany spoke. She was a mature person trapped in the body of a little girl. Her view towards life was so sublime unlike the frivolity with which most of us had taught ourselves to think with. Brenda knelt down to Tiffany, embraced her, and quickly wiped the tears in her eyes. I was not sure if any lady could do what she did in that moment, they all seemed so invested in themselves, so concerned with their own affairs to be touched by the selfless story of a young girl willing to die if that would end her father’s suffering. What did I really live for? My love for Brenda in that moment had been multiplied by a thousand. I adored her. I loved her for being so different, so motherly, so kind. But what did my love mean now that she carried another man’s child. She was not perfect anymore, and I could not go on loving her anymore, yet I knew it deep within me that if my affections for Brenda could ever change, they would only increase. And in that moment it struck me, I had to convince Brenda to keep the baby.