Nurse had plans for better life in Gulf

In a month, he was to leave for a ‘better-paying’ job in a Gulf hospital. The sole earning member of a family of five, all Cyril P Joy, 26, dreamt of was to provide a comfortable life to his aging parents and two younger sisters living in Kerala.

In a month, he was to leave for a ‘better-paying’ job in a Gulf hospital. The sole earning member of a family of five, all Cyril P Joy, 26, dreamt of was to provide a comfortable life to his aging parents and two younger sisters living in Kerala.

HT Image

What the family, however, received on Thursday afternoon was his embalmed body.

Cyril, a nurse, was part of Apollo’s emergency medical team returning from Patna with a sick person on board the air-ambulance that crashed near Faridabad on Wednesday night.

“Overnight life has changed for his family. It is not merely an emotional loss for them, rather a financial one too,” said Thomas Anthony, his brother-in-law, who works in a private firm in Nehru Place.

Officially, Cyril was off-duty when the emergency call was made but decided to volunteer for the patient’s evacuation from Patna. “In the next five minutes, they would have been in the hospital. Destiny has been very cruel to us,” said a shocked Jessie Thomas, Cyril’s cousin.

Cyril’s relatives did not want to disclose the news of his death to his family back in Kerala. But ironically, it was his parents who first found out about the incident through TV news.

After completing his diploma in nursing from Laxmi College of Nursing, Bangalore, Karnataka, in 2005, Cyril had joined Apollo Hospital in Delhi. “He had been one of the brightest staff members we had. The news came as a shock to us.

We are still trying to come to terms with the loss,” said Dr Anupam Sibal, group medical director, Apollo.