Ben looked so peaceful. Yes his skin was pale, his fine
blond hair, thin and mattered. But he still had one or two freckles on his
nose, which somehow represented happier times. The sweat beads had disappeared
from his forehead. He was still; no longer groaning in pain. He was better off,
that Belinda was certain of.
In fact, if someone wasn’t doing that well, it was Belinda.
Over the last few months, she’d gone from being a happy, beautiful mommy with
bouncy four year old boy, to a weathered woman trying to find a way to mother a
dying child.
As Belinda held little Ben’s cold hand, she started to feel
the weight of the world lift off of her shoulders. She knew that the hard times were far from
over; she’d have to face the law for what she’d done. But knowing that Ben no
longer suffered, knowing her little angel was finally pain free... was all
worth it. A little thought which would try to surface, which Belinda kept stuffing
back down again, was the idea that Belinda was finally free of this heavy
responsibility. It wasn’t a thought that Belinda was willing to face. She had
done it to help her boy, not herself.
Belinda pressed the buzzer to summon the nurse. She got up,
kissed Ben’s forehead, whispered good-bye and went to wait by the door. When the nurse arrived, she took one look at
Belinda and she knew. She rushed over to Ben’s bed, checked the machines,
checked for his vitals, but it was too late, Ben was gone. Belinda didn’t say a
word. Tears started to run down her cheeks. The hot tears kept pooling up in
her eyes, blocking her vision and then spilling over onto her cheeks. It was the
sensation of warmth in her face that distracted her from the chaos around her.
She hadn’t felt warmth in months.
Belinda had somehow been shifted out of the room and into
the passage, but she overheard something that seemed to shock her right out of
her comatose state; she heard nurse Jackie
talking to one of the doctors that was attending to Ben; ”I don’t understand it, this afternoon Doctor
Jonson said that Ben was getting better. He said that there was hope for a full
recovery. It’s just as well that he wanted to tell Ms Jean himself. Can you
imagine if we’d given her hope and then just hours later, he died?”
Belinda went ice cold. She felt sick to her stomach. She
could not believe what she had done. Suddenly she couldn’t understand why she
did it in the first place. Panic started to set in, knotted and twisted with
grief, striking over and over again like bolts of lighting, each one hitting
harder, bringing to life one shocking revelation after the next; she did it for
herself, she thought. She did it because it hurt HER to see him suffer like
that. She did it because she couldn’t bear to hear him ask again; “Mommy, make
it stop?” The burden was too much to carry. The agony had ruined her life. She
just wanted it to be over with so that she could move on and live a normal life
again. She had convinced herself that it was the right thing to do. She had
convinced herself that it was her place to end his suffering. She had convinced
herself that it was quite okay... to murder... because she found a way to
justify it... but who made Belinda God?
This story was motivated by an article I had to read for my
studies. Considering my lecturer’s views, I thought a different perspective might
be in order.
Click here to read the article.
