I am not just a doctor. I am a fighter. A teammate in the battle alongside warriors who face cancer head-on. Most of the time, we win. Together, we hold the line, reclaim strength, and celebrate life. But sometimes - rarely - we lose.

But then there were Abhimanyu and Swathi.

He was just 20. A quiet boy, always polite, always smiling, even when the disease gnawed away at his marrow. Leukaemia. Relapsed, unresponsive, relentless. The reports were unforgiving - his counts worsening, organ reserves depleting. But he looked fine. That’s the trick this disease plays - it hides behind a normal face until the moment it doesn’t.

Swathi was 35. She was not just his sister; she had become everything else their parents couldn't be. After their sudden death, she stepped in - more mother than sister, more protector than peer. She bore her grief in silence and transformed it into care. Her life narrowed down to a single mission: keeping Abhimanyu safe, alive, whole.

And perhaps that's what made it harder.

I tried, gently at first, then honestly, to help her see what we all saw in the labs, in the scans, in his silent deterioration. But she never gave in. She clung to every sign of life like it was proof of a future.

Then came the morning.

He was smiling. Talking even. But his blood pressure had started dropping. Pulse thready. I had seen this before. It was the body’s final surrender, the kind that comes not with screams but with stillness. I knew he wouldn't survive. The lab results were clear - his marrow was already deteriorating. The body was giving up, cell by cell. But he didn't know.

He thought it was just another episode, like the ones he had survived before. He believed he'd bounce back again, like always. There was a quiet hope in his eyes. And a deeper silence in mine.

We moved him to the ICU. On the stretcher, as the staff wheeled him away, he turned his head toward me and waved. I knew. But he didn't. That wave was casual. It was hopeful.

A quiet, knowing gesture from someone who had faced death before - and this time, he believed he would survive.

He didn't survive the night.

And then came the part we dread more than any procedure, more than any complication - telling Swathi. She stared when we told her. Then blinked. Then smiled faintly.

"Thank you, doctor," she said softly. "You saved my son."

We didn't understand.

She wasn't crying. She wasn't screaming. She was... calm.

There was a pillow in her arms, held close to her chest like a newborn. She caressed it, whispered to it, rocked it gently.

Her mind had broken the fall by breaking from reality.

She had chosen a different world—one where Abhimanyu survived, where he was still with her, perhaps just sleeping in her arms.

And what could we do? What could anyone say?

So we stood there. And nodded.

"You're welcome," I said, numbly. "He was a brave boy."

She smiled.

As the relatives took away his body, wrapped in white, surrounded by wailing, incense, and the echo of finality, Swathi remained. Rocking gently, whispering lullabies to the pillow-child she still saw as her brother.

And then she, too, left.

It’s strange - how the mind chooses survival. In her world, he didn't die. And in some distant corner of mine, maybe that was a mercy.

We said goodbye that day.

To Abhimanyu.

And, in some way, to Swathi too.