The man who jumped from the 49th floor and remained alive

Chapter 4: Hospitalization, a World Away

The distance from the edge of despair to the antiseptic peace in that hospital room was traveled across worlds. Waking up in the hospital with machines humming and the sterile smell of clean all around was coming to in an alien landscape. It was not a healing sanctuary; it was limbo: physical boundaries taken care of while the spirit stayed locked in the shadows of the chasm. In fact, the atmosphere at the hospital seemed pretty much different compared to what reigned within me. White walls, bright lights, and the constant coming and going of staff created an atmosphere of impersonal efficiency. But underneath that veneer of the everyday care, an undercurrent of care, barely registering a glance against the human fragility every patient carries. As I lay in my bed, fully conscious of the activity around me, I had begun to realize the reality of the situation. It was not some mere physical survival, but a pivot point for self-reflection. The broken hand became so prominent, like a physical symbol of death burned down, and focal for ruminations. That constant comrade, which the pain of body and soul always brought forward, of the hasty journey of how I landed here; in those moments of peace when the hum of visitors would recede and the night get even darker; I would set off on a deeply introspective journey. Questions without answers swirled in my mind: Why had I survived? What was my purpose in this continued existence? The existential weight of these questions seemed to be magnified, if it were at all possible, by the walls of the hospital room, a microcosm wherein the fragility of life was daily acknowledged and challenged. The hospital was another world, measured not by the movement of the sun but by the rhythm of checkups and going around with medicines. It was here, in this in-between place, that the seeds of understanding began to sprout from the soil of my turmoil. What I learned that day was that healing wasn't repairing of the bones but nurturing the soul back to completion.