The Child and Pain
As long as he could remember, he had suffered from pain. He did not know his father—a drug addict who conceived him high—and so life was something incomplete, flawed, for him from the very beginning. His mother could not bear either her own suffering or her son's, and at the age of five, she admitted him to the hospital. That first time the little boy found himself within the state walls, he heard a phrase from a doctor that initially seemed strange to him: "If you wake up and nothing hurts, it means you're dead." After some time, his mother took him back. But soon he was admitted to the hospital again, and that day was the last time he saw his mother. Since then, he remained there, and the hospital became his world. He matured quickly, ahead of his years. In the hospital corridors, amidst the smell of iodine and quiet moans, he saw his life in a different light. He watched his ward neighbors—those who died with dignity and silence, and those who cursed the heavens...
