Fear feels strange. It starts with your mind, goes to your heart and travels all the way through your body, making your entire body shake and tremble. It creates a continuous drumming sound, and your heart does nothing to lessen the tension building up inside you.

As fear takes over my body, I bite my lip and intertwine my fingers to give myself nonexistent support. Either way my eyes do not receive the message. I feel my face getting hot and tears streaming down it. I hear footsteps before I see the crew of doctors coming my way. I know exactly why they are coming my way, but I do not think that I am ready to hear what they have to say.

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“I would create a rainbow for you, my love. I do not know how, but I definitely would. For you, my sunshine, I would do anything. I do not know who your father is, but I would tell you stories of him, if that’s what you want. I would get you the bicycle you had asked for your birthday; you can ask for whatever you want. But, please don’t leave me, Shiva. Please come back to me. For me. For us.”

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“Excuse me, are you Shiva’s guardian?” the tired-looking doctor asks me, forcing me to come back to reality.

“Yes. I...I am his mother,” I stammer, with all the energy I have before breaking down completely. I sob, I cry, biting my wrist and holding my chest. I can’t hold it any longer. I make loud, devastating sounds of mourning.

It is devastatingly heartbreaking when the people you love leave you. But the pain a mother feels when her only child leaves her is unbearable. One can’t imagine the pain a mother feels when she sees her child lying on the floor in a pool of blood. How could she have known he’d fall from their three-story home? How could she not have been able to save him?

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Time seems to have stopped. I feel thirsty, but I do not want to drink water. I do not want to move. People are muffling beside me or around me, maybe. I do not know. I know nothing for all my breaking soul can see is my little baby crawling towards me. His eyes bright and smile brighter. He was the only reason for my sorry excuse of an existence. He is gone. My baby. My life. My Shiva.

My eyes abruptly open and my chest heaves because of the thunder inside it. I take in my surrounding as I allow my eyes to adjust to the bright light filling the small room. I clear my dry throat as I see a lady in white coming my way, concern written all over her face.

“My son… Shiva,” I say. She interrupts me mid-sentence.

“His body will be taken care of if you are struggling financially, you know. I heard the doctors talk.” Anger now envelops me. Words leave me. Darkness pulls me in. “Colour is synonymous to Shiva.” I repeat to myself. My mind remembers his resplendent face. But my heart is dark, and I find myself reacting to the lady’s words. I shout, cry and almost slap her, before some guy pulls her away from my snatching hands.

“I am sorry on her behalf. She is new to this circumstance. Things will happen as you want them to be handled.” He says looking at me, while simultaneously trying to block her from me.

My eyes fall to my wrist and gradually to the bottle hanging above my head connected to my body through a pipe. I stare at an empty wall as I tell him, “My son dying is new to me as well.”

I turn my gaze ever so slowly to the man who probably condemns me crazy. “Don’t you think so?” I say, staring at the man in front of me or at nothing in particular, for my eyes do not register light or anything it sees. Or any colour. All they register is the vast hollowness that tugs at my soul, rendering me bare.