I've never been one to take things easy. Life has never offered me anything on a silver platter, and I've never expected it to. From the time I could remember, I knew that nothing in this world was handed to you, not unless you worked for it. I was always the underdog—the kid who had to fight a little harder, push a little further, and sacrifice a little more just to get by. And that's exactly what I did, every single day.
Growing up, I didn't have the luxuries that some of the other kids had. I didn't have the wealth, the influence, or the connections. What I had was determination—an iron will that wouldn't bend, no matter how many times I was knocked down. But there was one thing that kept me going, something that made me feel like I had a purpose.
It started with my mother. She wasn't a doctor, not in the conventional sense, but she had an almost reverent way of speaking about health. About the body. I remember her sitting with me at the kitchen table, talking about how the body was like a machine. A delicate one, yes, but one that could heal itself if you knew how to take care of it. She would tell me stories about how our bodies could fall apart if we didn't pay attention to the signs—how even something as simple as a missed symptom could lead to catastrophe.
I didn't understand it then, not fully. But I was fascinated. She wasn't just talking about science; she was talking about life. About preserving it, about understanding it in ways that others couldn't. It was in those quiet moments with her that I started to dream. I didn't know exactly how it would happen, but I knew I would do something big. I'd make sure that the lives I touched would never end the way my mother's did.
She died when I was fourteen. Heart condition. A rare one, one that wasn't well understood back then. It was a silent killer. She had been sick for years, but we didn't know what it was. The doctors couldn't figure it out in time. By the time they had a diagnosis, it was already too late. She was already fading. My father—poor, struggling to keep us afloat after her illness had drained our savings—was powerless to stop it. There was no miracle cure, no magic answer. We watched as she withered away.
I watched her die. And it felt like my entire world shattered in that moment.
My father tried. He tried his best, but it wasn't enough. He never recovered after her death. He spiraled into his own darkness, trying to keep his business from falling apart, trying to put food on the table. But it wasn't enough. One rainy night, after a long shift, a distracted driver ended his life in a crash. Just like that, the last piece of my family was gone. My father, my mother—gone.
I had no one left but me.
It's hard to explain the emptiness that settles in after you lose everything. At first, you don't know what to do with yourself. You think about giving up, about letting the weight of it all crush you. But then… then you remember something. A promise you made to yourself when you were a kid. The one you promised to honor for your mother.
I wasn't going to let anyone else suffer the way she had. I wasn't going to watch someone I loved slip away because of a mistake or a misdiagnosis. It wasn't going to happen.
That's when I made the decision. I was going to be a doctor—no, more than that. I was going to be a surgeon. I was going to learn everything there was to know about saving lives. No one would ever have to suffer again, not under my watch.
But the road to becoming a doctor wasn't as easy as I'd imagined. I didn't have the money, the influence, or the connections to get me into a top-tier medical school. I had to fight for scholarships. Every. Single. Step.
There were nights when I stayed up late, hours spent in library poring over textbooks, memorizing every detail. There were days when my hands shook from exhaustion, my eyes burning from the strain of not getting enough sleep. But I didn't care. I couldn't afford to. If I stopped, even for a second, everything would slip away from me. If I let go of that dream, I might never pick it up again.
But no matter how hard I worked, it was never enough. No matter how many hours I spent studying or practicing, there was always more to learn. Always another textbook to read, another procedure to master. And the more I worked, the more I pushed myself, the more I lost sight of something important.
I lost sight of myself.
I didn't realize it at first. I didn't notice how much my body was breaking down. The stress. The exhaustion. The long hours in the hospital, pushing through every shift, skipping meals, neglecting sleep. I didn't see it. All I could see was the goal. The dream. The chance to make a difference. To save lives.
But eventually, it caught up to me.
It was just another night before a big surgery, and I felt it. A sharp pain in my chest. At first, I thought it was nothing—just the stress, the strain of it all. It wasn't unusual for me to feel that way. My body had been telling me for weeks to stop, to rest. But I ignored it, like I always did.
I pushed through.
I kept going.
I walked into that operating room, hoping that I could just push through one more time. But I couldn't.
I collapsed.
Everything went dark.
When I woke up, I was on the operating table. My own body beneath the scalpel, my own life slipping away.
They told me it was a stroke. A silent killer, just like the one that had taken my mother. My years of pushing myself beyond my limits had caught up to me. My body couldn't take it anymore.
I had failed.
And I knew it.
I thought about my mother. Her voice echoed in my mind. "Take care of yourself, Elias. Don't let your body become a stranger to you."
I had failed her. I had failed myself.
It was too late now.
As I lay there, slipping away, I couldn't help but whisper, "I'm sorry, Mom. I couldn't save you. I couldn't save myself."
"Dr. Elias! Dr. Elias!" The distant voices echoed in my mind as my consciousness faded. They were calling my name, but it didn't matter anymore. I had reached the end of my journey.
And with that, I slipped away.