« Has my son come yet? » the 80-year-old woman whispered from her hospital bed. I was standing beside her with the chief doctor, and I already knew the answer.
I had worked in a hospital for many years, and during that time I had witnessed plenty of pain, injustice, and human cruelty. But the case of this elderly woman changed the way I looked at people forever.
She had been in our hospital for almost a month. She was quiet, neat, and grateful for every kind word and every glass of water someone brought her.
Yet throughout that entire time, nobody came to visit.
Not a single phone call. Not a single guest.
Only we, the nurses and doctors, were there for her. Over those weeks, she gradually opened up to us and told us about her family.
She had a son and a daughter-in-law. Whenever she spoke about them, her voice trembled—not with anger, but with pain.
They never came to see her. They did not ask how she was doing. They did not ask whether she needed anything or whether there was something they could do to help.
Her son called for only one reason.
He wanted to know whether his mother was still alive.
He needed her apartment, and that seemed to be all that mattered to him.
Every evening, the old woman stared out the window as though she were waiting for someone. Sometimes she thought nobody could see her, and she would quietly cry.
I began going into her room several times during the night, simply to talk to her. I wanted her to feel that she was not completely alone.
But the heart of that poor woman had grown exhausted from pain and waiting.
One night, it finally could not take any more.
Only the chief doctor and I were beside her. The room was quiet as she took a soft breath and tried to say something.
Then, in a weak whisper, she asked the question she had apparently been carrying with her all that time.
« Has my son come yet? »
Those were her final words.
A minute later, she died.
The next day, we called her son to tell him the terrible news. But when I heard his reaction, I felt even worse than I had the night before.
« Excellent, » he said in an indifferent voice. « I’ll come by in the morning to pick up her things. »
I could hardly believe what I had heard.
The woman he had not visited for almost a month was gone, and the first thing that seemed to matter to him was collecting what she had left behind.
The next morning, he came to the hospital expecting to take his mother’s belongings.
Instead, we were waiting for him with an envelope.
Inside was a copy of his mother’s will.
And when he saw what she had decided to do with the apartment, his face changed completely.
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