Date: 19.12.2020

It has been months since the headache started. Months since the fever broke and with all that, the  tiredness followed by the lack of hope to live. I have given everything I can to stop it from  escalating, but by now we have learnt how persistent misery is. My guilt has subsided and has  been replaced by helplessness. Seeing her lying on the bed, groaning, I am reminded that I  should have done better.

I picked up two more jobs today. The cost of her medications is only increasing. It feels as if we  are not the only ones that have been trampled in this Malaria’s rampage.

Date: 20.12.2020

Brett showed me this newspaper article. The medicines we bought were below the official  standard. They have been cleared away from the market. While reading the passage, I didn’t feel  relieved. I wasn’t unburdened of the guilt. I felt anxious. Those medicines were a sliver of hope  for my sister’s recovery. Not all of us get a shooting star to wish on and then see it come to life.  We have to toil to get our basic help. The medicines may have caused further deterioration of her  health but they gave her the will to fight a little longer and for me to work a little harder thinking  that the medicine might succeed. Now we both are swimming in the lake of hopelessness  because the medicines that can cure her are a dream that we do not have time to achieve. They  removed the pill, but they didn’t provide us with anything instead. Their plight is the welfare of  the world and yet they forget that for the health of the larger good, the groups that get forgotten  are the ones living below the line.

Date: 23.12.2020

I got fired from the café shop. I broke into a hospital. Lou is sleeping calmly. I might get  arrested, but I have hidden the medicines under her mattress. She has enough for a

Author: Aakriti Kanodia