Rest in Peace(Asmita Majumdar) There came a knock on the door. “Come in”, I said. Mariya, the nurse stepped in with a clipboard in her hands. “Should I call in the next patient?” she asked. “Yes”, I replied, “I am almost done with Ms. Shanks’s report here. The rest can wait a bit.” “Okay then”, she stepped out of the office and called, “Mr. Allen, Mr. Coran Allen, please come in now.” I quickly put away Ms. Shank’s report and brought out a fresh paper. When I looked up, I saw a frail-looking man with greying hair, sitting in a wheelchair. Mariya wheeled him inside, nodded at me, and left, softly closing the door behind her. I looked at the man intently. His eyes were downcast and dead. It was as if someone had pulled an opaque curtain in front of his eyes. “Who are you”, I asked gently. The first step of dealing with a patient with psychological problems was to see if they remembered who they were, where they were from, or anything at all about their life. Often patients are subjected to such a great mental shock that all their cherished memories are wiped out. Then the first step of their treatment is to slowly restore their memories. One can heal only when one remembers their wounds and more importantly, what caused them. Mr. Allen slowly looked up at me. Various scars decorated his entire face. “My name is Coran Allen”, he whispered, his voice as brittle as ice, threatening to break at any moment. “I am a police officer. Also served in the army during the war.” His voice broke as he said the word war and a tear trickled down his face. The curtain in front of his eyes seemed to have been pulled aside. I could now see the pain, regret, and sadness lying fresh in his eyes, as clear as daylight. “Tell me about your life”, I said, “about your family and everyone you loved.” “Family? Loved ones? Those are terms I have long forgotten, dear doctor”, he said, his face hardening. “Is that so? Why don’t you start right from the beginning? Let us journey through your past, yes?” I said. “It would be a very painful journey and a journey you will remember.” He replied. I smiled and said, “I would expect no less.”

"I grew up in a full and happy family. I was living an ordinary life. I had a mother, a father, a brother, and a sister, all to love and all to love me. But I lost them. LOST THEM ALL! Our country was under attack, and the terrorists got into our houses, murdering all occupants and burning cities and villages to the ground. I still remember that horrible night. My dear mother’s face streaked with tears and terror. She pushed me out through the back door. She kissed my forehead and shrieked, “RUN! Run child, as far as you can go! God will guide you. GO!” She smiled weakly and closed her eyes. And then I watched as a bullet pierced through her chest and she collapsed on the floor. I opened my mouth but my voice was gone. A second later flames engulfed the left side of my house and just like that my mother, my family, and MY HOME went up in flames in just a matter of seconds. I ran. I ran as far and fast as my little feet could take me. That night I cried my little heart out. I squeezed all my tears out till my tear duct went dry. I cried till my voice was hoarse. But that was not to be left at that. I would avenge my family, my country, and all those who faced the same pain as me. Those barbarians would pay. I decided then to join the army. I would fight and take my revenge. I joined the army as soon as I was of age, before which I lived some painful years at the orphanage. The orphanage was a place I still hate from the very depths of my heart. It was where I learned that you can be unwanted even among the unwanted. I spent many tough years at the military base. With each enemy soldier, I put a bullet through, there was a feeling of exhilaration but somewhere, guilt as well. “They did not destroy your home or kill your family. Why rage on them? They are innocent”, a voice inside me would say. But I was not to be deterred by guilt. These soldiers would not turn away from torturing and murdering a few innocent souls, would they? Then one day I and a few other men were called for a secret mission. We were to cross the enemy borderline and attack a nearby city. It was from where they were getting their ammunition. We were to ensure that not a trace remained of that cursed city. The night after, we put our plan into action. We entered the houses, killed the people, captured some, and burned their houses. As I entered a house, I saw a very familiar scene. A woman pushed her son out of the backdoor, telling him to run away and save his life. She turned around to look at me, her eyes filled with fear but masked with rage. She looked at me as if I-I was the monster. I lowered my gun, dazed. One of my comrades yelled, “What are you doing? Kill her and get out so that we can set this house ablaze.” And just like that I lifted the gun again, closed my eyes, and fired. As I turned my back and left, tears trickled down my face, and the image of the mother and child’s horror-struck faces danced before my eyes. I felt as if a crystal ball had burst inside my chest, and the shards of broken glass were now impaled inside my heart. That night I left the army. I ran away. Yes, I have spent my whole life running away. Running away from everything, every adversity. I thought that perhaps I should become a police officer. Perhaps I could repent for my sins if I saved innocent lives, brought them justice, and defended the law. But the Almighty only had sorrow in store for me and the Three Moirai up there, spun my fate using barbed wire, filling my life with pain and pain only.

"After my horrible childhood, I was afraid to love. What if I was a monster? What if I deserved no one? What if anyone I loved would be taken away too? And thus, I had no friends, I was a lone wolf. I pushed away anyone who tried to come close. I was the Scrooge of my police station, who knew only work and nothing more than that. But as much as I may act cold and indifferent during the day, every morning I awoke to find my pillow and face wet with tears and sweat. Every night I was haunted by the ghosts of my past. I did not have a moment of peace, and smiling at anyone was merely a formality. One night I was on my daily round when I heard screams and gunshots. I ran as fast as I could. When I arrived on the scene, I saw a man holding a gun to a girl’s head. “Save my girl! Save her! Please!” shrieked a woman, her hands tied to the leg of the table behind her. The man looked at me and said, “Take one step forward, and the girl dies.” I slowly put my hands up and said, “How can you hold a gun to a child’s head? A child is a form of God himself! Don’t your hands shake while pointing a gun at such a form of innocence?” “God did not make the hands of those shake who killed my family and burnt my home. Which leads me to believe that there is NO God!” he sneered. “We both know that is not true. There is still time to change. Look, even when you deny God, your hands still shake!” I said, spitting out white lies. As the man looked down to see his hands, I ran towards him, pushed the girl out of his grasp, and grabbed his gun. But I had not realized that in between all this chaos, the man had fired and it was only when I heard a loud shriek, did the cold dread of death settle over me. I slowly turned my head, fearing for the worst. The mother of the child, still tied to the table, lay dead, the bullet impaled right in her heart. In my whole life, this was the third mother I had seen murdered."

“How much more can I take? How much more?”, Mr. Allen yelled. He shrieked, cried, he tore his hair out, and banged on the table. His eyes were wild and red. Tears trickled down his scarred face. However, his scarred face could never relay the story of the pain, guilt, and sorrow that lay in his scarred heart. As I saw him crying like a little child and repenting, I could barely restrain my tears. I knew that this job I had signed up for, contained many hardships. This being one of the many. “Maria”, I called, “please take our patient to his room and make sure all his needs are attended to.” “And Mr. Allen, your story was no less than what you promised. There are wounds that you carry in your heart. But every wound heals over time with the right ointment. Some scars are left, yes, but these scars are reminders of your pain, symbols of what you have been through. Do not worry Mr. Allen, you will heal.”

I remembered something as Mariya wheeled away a now much subdued Coran Allen. “Oh, and Mariya”, I called out, “What was the cause of his death?” Mariya looked up and replied, “He hanged himself from the fan. The housekeeper was the first to see his corpse hanging from the fan. She got quite a bit of a shock.”
Yes, dear reader, you read right. Mr. Allen died, and so did we all here. The patients are dead, the nurses are dead and I am dead too. After all, this is a psychiatric hospital for the dead.

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