3am. Your phone rings. A call from home.
"We're taking Maa to hospital. Chest pain."
By the time you land, she's in ICU. Heart attack. She'll survive, barely.
• • •
She stood by you through every thick and thin of your life.
And on the one night she needed you the most,
thousands of kilometres stood between you.
• • •
As soon as you walk in, the doctor turns to you:
"Is your mother diabetic? I'm surprised to see her cholesterol is high, and her BP too. Was anyone monitoring her, or did this happen suddenly?"
You don't have a single answer.
You didn't know.
• • •
Three nights in ICU. Angioplasty. Tests. Medicines. Three to four months of recovery for Maa. Unpaid leave. Flight back.
Roughly ₹8–10 lakh.
But the bill in rupees is the part you can pay.
What you can't pay off is the trauma of watching her on a ventilator, and the guilt of not having been there when it mattered.