The Day I Rode Faster Before the Ambulance

22 April, 2024, is a date that does not sit quietly in my memory. It moves, breathes, and returns with a certain urgency. That was the day my mother was referred to Neyyattinkara General Hospital for palliative care. By then, the language of medicine had already shifted. It was no longer about cure, but about comfort. No longer about reversing the illness, but about easing its weight.

By the morning of 22 April, her breathing had grown heavier, louder. Each breath felt like an effort pulled from somewhere deep within her. I remember standing there, watching, listening, and feeling a quiet fear rise within me. Yet, somewhere in my heart, hope refused to leave. It held on, even when reason began to loosen its grip.

On the way to the hospital, something changed. My mother began to struggle for breath. It was not the usual discomfort we had learned to manage over the past months. This was different. It was visible, audible, and deeply unsettling.

It was a journey of about 26 kilometers from the RCC, Thiruvananthapuram. That distance felt longer than any road I had ever travelled.

As the ambulance began its journey, I found myself on my bike, riding ahead of it. I do not remember deciding to do it. I simply did. I rode faster than I ever had before. The road blurred, the noise of traffic faded, and all that remained was a single, desperate intention: to clear the way, to reach sooner, to somehow stay ahead of what I feared might come.

I was honking constantly, shouting at vehicles to move aside, urging the road to open up. And in between those sounds, there were prayers. Not structured, not composed, just fragments of words rising from a place beyond language. I was asking God for time. Just a little more time.

When I look back at that day, one image stands above the rest. Not the hospital corridors. Not the conversations. But the road, where I rode ahead of the ambulance.

Because in that ride was everything I felt but could not fully express. Fear, love, helplessness, hope, and an unspoken refusal to give up. It was not just a physical act. It was a reflection of a son trying, in the only way he could at that moment, to stay ahead of loss.

I do not know if that ride changed anything medically. But emotionally, it remains one of the most intense moments of my life. It reminds me that love often shows itself not in grand victories, but in desperate efforts. In the urgency to hold on, even when the outcome is uncertain.

And perhaps, in ways I may never fully understand, that ride was my way of saying everything I could not say aloud.

Dr. Jayaram Paul

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