GKL Hospital
Three boxes and most of them were books. Pihu had finished packing her
life into boxes labelled 'FRAGILE'. Her parents were waiting outside, their
eyes hollow and devoid of hope. They held hands. Occasionally, a teardrop
streaked down their cheeks. For the last two months they had been the
happiest they could have ever been. They had watched helplessly as their
daughter almost died lying on her bed, and then saw her gain her strength
back. Now, they were scared she would go back to her previous condition.
The drugs, after the initial promise, had stopped showing combative
properties against the disease. As a result, all the symptoms were back in
the case of a large chunk of clinical-trial patients in New Delhi. Dr Arman
had asked them to admit Pihu into the hospital too.
'Let's go?' Pihu said and held out her hand. Her mom held it with both
her hands and caressed it. She could see the pain in her mother's eyes and
false hope in her dad's. They got into the car they had hired to take them to
Delhi. Her father had taken a transfer to Delhi. His boss, for the first time,
was sympathetic.
The taxi reached Delhi at eight in the morning. They went straight to the
hospital instead of the apartment they had rented. Dr Arman had scheduled
some tests for her. By mid-afternoon, they were done. She also selected a
room which she would move into later that night. Her parents wanted her
days in the hospital to be comfortable, but she still chose a double-bed
room.
'Beta, why don't you take a single room? It will be much more
comfortable,' her mom suggested.
'Mom, I don't need a single room. Plus, it's very expensive, Maa.''As if …'
Her mom broke down and Pihu wrapped her arms around her. She kept
weeping and mumbling in sobs till the time they reached home. The taxi
driver unloaded the boxes and carried them to the apartment. He was
instructed to keep the boxes near the door itself. Her dad went back with the
driver to get some food and check in with the hospital about the
arrangements.
Pihu felt bad for her dad. Not a single teardrop had escaped his eyes. He
knew it would make his wife feel worse. But Pihu had noticed every time
her father tried to look away from her. He did his best not to make any eye
contact with her, to stem the barrage of overwhelming feelings he had held
back behind those stoic eyes. At times, she would think that it would've
been better if she had just died the first time around. She hated the false
hope the experimental drugs had momentarily generated.
'Dad's not talking to me,' Pihu said as her mother laid down lunch. 'I am
not going to be here for long, I think he should.' Her mom's mouth went
dry and the colour drained from her face. Seeing that, Pihu apologized, 'I
am sorry. I won't say that.'
Sometimes, she felt suffocated. She wanted to crib and cry and shout at
how unfair it was. But she couldn't, because it wasn't just she who was
suffering. Her suffering would end with her last breath while her parents'
would just start.
'I have cooked everything you like,' her mom said.
'I can see that.' She giggled and loaded her plate till it almost tipped
over. She didn't know if she would be able to eat solid food again. They
smiled at each other.
'Your dad was saying that the doctor might try some new treatment on
you? Do you think the new treatment will help? Has anyone been cured?
How many patients have shown signs of relapse?' her mom asked as she
ate.
'A few. The next stage has not been tried on anyone else. They might
start with a few patients next week.''Hmmm.' Her mom's eyebrows knitted. Even though her daughter was to
be a doctor a few years from now, she never believed a word other doctors
said. She always viewed them with piercing suspicion.
'We can hope for the best,' Pihu assured her.
Her mom stayed quiet for a while. 'I don't know why God did this to us.
We have never cheated anybody. You have been such a good girl. I pray
every day. Then why us? Why my little daughter?' she said and patted
Pihu's head as she ate. Pihu tried hard not to cry. Seeing her mom's tears
made her maddeningly sad. But she had asked these questions a million
times and had never got around to finding an answer. It was time to stop
asking.
'Maa, I don't want you to cry. If you cry, I will too,' she said.
'But I had so many dreams for you. Your wedding, your kids, my
grandchildren. What had we ever done to deserve this?' her mom wailed
and rushed to the other room.
Pihu knew she would not come out of her room before she cursed God
countless times for their pain. But she would still pray, and light diyas and
incense sticks. She felt sorry for her mother. Though she wanted to hug her
and assure her, she wanted her mom to prepare for the worst. She
concentrated on the food instead. A little later, the bell rang and her father
brought in twenty more boxes of their stuff, which were unloaded in her
room. Her father paid the driver and he left.
'Mom's crying again,' she said as her dad joined her at the table.
'What else can she do?' he asked.
Pihu served him. He had not been eating a lot those days. She dumped a
lot of rice and pulses on his plate. His attempts to stop her fell on deaf ears.
'Eat. You need it,' she commanded. 'You're under a lot of stress.'
'And you?'
'I am okay.'
'Are you sure, beta?'
'I will be fine. Plus, I have the best parents in the world to help me deal
with this.' She put her hands around her father's neck and kissed him lightly
on the cheek. Her father didn't say anything. After they finished the food,they washed the dishes together—something that they had always done
together.
'Did you like the room you saw?'
'Yes, I did. There is another patient in there. He is young, so it's better.
At least not like the other rooms where there were only old people,' she
laughed.
'Is it a boy?'
'Not really a boy. Five–six years older than me. Are you scared I might
have an affair with him?' she chuckled.
'I wish you could. And then I could take away your cell phone and scold
you,' he said wistfully.
'Aw. You're the best dad ever,' she purred and clutched his hand.
He put his arm around his daughter and his eyes filled with tears. Pihu
knew how difficult it must be for him. No matter how hard he tried, she
could always see it. At least things were a little better now. She had got a
second chance to live. Though she didn't know how long it would last, she
still wanted to thank the doctor who had made it all possible.
The taxi pulled over at GKL Hospital. The three boxes were in the trunk of
the car. Sealed. Pihu got off the car without any help. She was feeling a
little better. The hospital was made of red-brick stone and was
preposterously huge. One of the hospitals she could have worked in, had
she graduated. She was yet to meet her doctor, Arman Kashyap, and was
dying to meet him. She stifled a giggle at her choice of words. He was the
man with all the answers. And he was good-looking too!
They walked to the reception and filled up the elaborate patient
admission and insurance forms. They were asked to wait so that the room
could be prepared for her. Pihu was asked to accompany one of the nurses
into a changing room.
Unlike others, Pihu loved the stale, nauseating formaldehyde smell that
hung around in a hospital. It smelled like a dream to her. A broken dream
now. The nurse handed over a robe and pulled the curtain so that she could
change. Tying the knots of her robe was a little difficult as her fingers failedher. The nurse asked if she needed any help and Pihu called her in. She felt
naked and embarrassed as the nurse tied the knots behind her back. But she
had been through much worse. Before she took the experimental drugs, she
was used to a nurse bathing her and seeing her naked every day.
'I am going to die,' she said to the nurse and smiled.
'Don't say that,' the nurse replied.
'No, I just said that because you might be the only one who will see me
naked before I die. That is, apart from the other nurses who have seen me
naked before. Why don't we have hot guys as nurses? I mean, I wouldn't
mind that. Even you wouldn't, would you?'
The nurse laughed and Pihu laughed with her. 'Shall we go?' the nurse
asked.
'Only if the knots are tight enough.'
'They are,' she said. 'Which ward do I need to take you to?' She picked
up her chart and read out the room number. '509 … Oh, seems like you
have another patient with you in that room.'
'I know. I've met the guy,' she said and grabbed her crutches.
She stopped by a few mirrors to look at herself. And prayed that her robe
wouldn't fall off. Even with the flimsy robe on, she felt as good as naked, as
if everyone could see through it. The nurse offered her a wheelchair, but she
refused. She staggered on to her crutches and walked to the elevator, which
took her to the third floor. She didn't know how long it would be before she
lost the strength to walk again. She walked towards room no. 509.
Hepatic encephalopathy. She read out the words written on the chart of
the guy who was to be her room-mate in her last, dying days. It's curable,
she thought. In most cases.
'There.' The nurse gestured. 'I will set you up and call your parents?'
'Sure.'
She saw the guy again.
Dushyant Roy.
He was sleeping. She thought he looked gorgeous with his unruly hair,
four-day stubble and carefree arrogance. He drinks. He smokes. Probably
does drugs too. Hmm. Probably owns a bike and drives it really fast. Withinminutes she had imagined him as a bad boy straight out of old English
movies. Or more like Ajay Devgn, with his legs in a 180-degree split on
two Yamahas, from the cult Hindi action movie Phool aur Kaante!
In the eighteen years before her disease was diagnosed, she had never
looked at boys like a girl usually does. They were always classmates, not
potential boyfriends. Over the last few months, she had grown fat on a
healthy diet of her mother's old Mills & Boons, the Fifty Shades and the
Sylvia Day trilogies, and felt an insuppressible urge to be amongst the
opposite gender. To feel what it was like to be attracted to a guy, to feel the
little goosebumps when a guy touches you, to be in the naked company of a
man. To …
'There,' the nurse said as she tucked Pihu in. Pihu thanked the nurse,
who asked her to push the button if she needed anything and left.
'It's not that bad,' Pihu mumbled to herself. She fiddled with the controls
of the bed. Up. Down. Stop. Up. Down. Stop. Up. Down. Up. Down. Stop.
She giggled.
'Can you stop?' the voice from the other side of the curtain said. It was
hoarse and demanded attention.
'Oh.'
Dushyant. She drew the curtain to the side and met his piercing gaze.
'I am trying to sleep here,' he grumbled.
'You're not trying to sleep. It's a symptom of the disease you have. You
will feel sleepy for the next month or two,' she explained, her playful
enthusiasm anachronous with the news she delivered.
'Whatever. Will you just stop making that noise? It's annoying.'
'Hi, I am Pihu!' She thrust her hand out.
'Umm … I don't need to know your name. I am leaving in a day or two,'
he said, 'and your voice is more annoying than the noise you were making
earlier. Let's not make it any more difficult than it already is.'
'Fine. By the way, you're not leaving in a day or two. Your liver is shot.
Your treatment is going to be long. So it's better if we became friends.' She
forced a smile on her face.'I don't want to be friends with a kid. And mind your own business,' he
growled. He paused. Pihu waited for him to realize that they had met
earlier. His eyes widened. 'Aren't you the—'
'Pihu.'
She stretched her hand out again for him to shake. Reluctantly, he shook
Just then, her parents walked in with a few bags in their hands. Pihu felt
Dushyant jerk his hand back and saw him bury his face in his pillow.
Such beautiful eyes, Pihu thought to herself. Snap out of it! You pervert!
Lately, the urge to be with a guy had peaked. She didn't want to die un
kissed. Being a good girl for nineteen years hadn't yielded anything, maybe
being bad would.
'Are you comfortable?' her mom asked. 'Is the air conditioning okay?
Are you cold?'
'I am fine, Maa.'
She clutched her mom's weathered hands. Her mother sat next to her,
patted her forehead and mumbled some terms of endearment she used to
call her when she was a kid. Her father opened the bags, arranged the
bottles, the books and a couple of framed photographs from the thirty-six
photos-a-reel days.
'I wish I had a brother. I always missed a sibling,' she said as her eyes
fell on the picture in the photo frame. It was from the time they had gone on
a ten-day vacation to Dwarka-Puri to celebrate her tenth board examination
results. She would never forget those ten days of scrumptious food, parental
pampering, sandy beaches and long walks.
'Our world was complete when you were born,' her mom said. 'Plus, it's
such a problem raising young boys. Girls are like little angels.' She ran her
hand through Pihu's hair. Pihu didn't know if she had ever felt better.
'Do you need to sleep?' her father asked.
'I think I will read for a bit,' Pihu answered. She could sense Dushyant
writhing uncomfortably in his bed. Was he in pain?
'Which one?' her dad asked.
She pointed out to the book Pathology of the Liver by R.N.M.
Macsween. Her dad handed over the book, which was thickly bound andcruelly heavy, and she opened the book from where she had stuck small
yellow and red Post-its.
'I will be outside if you need anything,' her dad said.
She nodded. Her mother took the couch and scrunched up to fit in. The
room suddenly felt silent. The medical instrument beeped. Beep. Beep. The
drips dripped. Drip. Drip. She rustled through the yellowed pages. There
were diagrams and pictures. Her eyes widened. It was fascinating as well as
disgusting. Dushyant was snoring now.
Pihu read through the night. Near morning, she fell asleep.8
Dushyant Roy
It was a painful morning for Dushyant. The sedatives wore off and the pain
escalated. He had rung the bell twice but he hadn't been attended to. He
clutched his stomach, rolled in his bed from side to side and whined. Had
Pihu and her parents not been nearby, he would have screamed his lungs
out. His guts were on fire.
'Can you call someone?' he heard Pihu say to her father. Her father
promptly left and came back with a nurse.
A transparent liquid was injected into his bloodstream and he felt
immediate relief, followed by a spinning, whirling sensation in his head. As
if he had just got off a merry-go-round. The nurse left just when he was
about to ask her for more. His hand was stretched out, wanting more of the
liquid that had just got him high as a kite. Slowly, his eyes closed and the
boundaries between truth and fantasy began to blur. He heard the woman—
Pihu's mother—say to Pihu, 'He used to drink and smoke. The nurse told
He needs a liver transplant, but he has no donors. I don't know why you
chose this room. He will give you some infection.'
'Maa, his disease is not contagious and it is too late for him to give me a
drinking habit.'
Her mom gave her an icy stare. 'Whatever it is. I wonder where his
parents are. Since the time we have come, no one has come to meet him.'
'Why are you so worried?'
'I just feel bad for his parents. Such a young boy with such bad habits.
Disgraceful!'
'It's okay, Maa.''What okay? My daughter is such a nice girl and she has to … and he
will live. It's so unfair,' he heard the exasperated mother say. Would his
death make it any better for the woman?
'Maa, can you keep your volume down?' Pihu begged. 'He can hear us.'
'I don't care,' her mother said angrily.
He tried not to move and concentrate on what they said about him.
Getting fucked up has its own advantages. It's as if people assume you are
deaf when you're not. But they had shut up. Soon, he was in wonderland.
Darkness. Clouds. Flying. Kajal.
The ground beneath him shook, then his bed and then he. He woke up with
a start and saw a familiar face staring at him. It was the offensive doctor
with a rod jammed up his behind.
'Good morning. Though it's almost noon,' the doctor said. 'I am Arman.
I believe we have met before. You're the one who almost drank himself to
death. I'm the unfortunate one who has to save you so that you can do it
again.'
Dushyant felt embarrassed and angry. He could feel the girl's and her
parents' eyes on him, judging him, cursing him. The cocky attitude of the
doctor made it worse, and the dreadful pain in his stomach made him want
to slap the doctor across the face.
'Can we get on with this?'
'Yes, we can. I heard you were whining with pain this morning? Did he
cry?' Arman asked. The nurse nodded in affirmation.
'I wasn't fucking crying!' Dushyant protested.
'Shut up and keep your voice down. This is a hospital, not your house. If
you're not crying, the pain is not much. And for future reference, please
don't cry. You're a grown man, for heaven's sake. No more sedatives for
you. We will start you on a fresh batch of antibiotics. The first ones didn't
work like they should have,' he said.
'Are you even sure what's wrong with me?' he asked, trying to get back
at the doctor.'As a matter of fact, I am,' he retorted. 'You are stupid and throwing your
life away. Now the fewer questions you have, the better for you.'
Dushyant felt offended, but before he could say something, another
doctor, a girl, entered, dressed in a doctor's coat that fit her snugly around
her tiny waist and well-endowed chest. Her heels looked a little out of place
in a room where someone was dying, but they looked good on her well
built yet slender legs. Her naturally tanned skin shone and Dushyant's pain
died out for the few seconds that he spent looking at her, imagining her in
various scenarios, with and without the heels and the overcoat.
'This is Dr Zarah. She will take the tests and try to keep you alive if you
decide to cooperate with her. Do you understand?' he asked him
condescendingly.
He was stumped and didn't know what to say. The girl standing behind
Arman looked more amicable, even though her expression remained
unchanged. Arman piled the girl with medical mumbo-jumbo before he
moved over to the other side. He saw him pull the curtain and block the
disgusted faces of Pihu's parents out of view. Was he that repulsive?
'Is he always like this?' Dushyant asked Zarah as she tied a strap around
his arm.
'More or less. It's been just a few weeks for me too. But he is a brilliant
doctor and he will end up saving your life,' she answered. He noticed the
sharp nose and the light-brown eyes. The lipstick was immaculately done;
the outline matched her bronzed skin perfectly.
'My life? You guys already know what I have, don't you?' he asked, a
little scared. He wanted a smoke, a beer and maybe a snort of a line of
cocaine.
'You had another seizure last night. The problem can be neurological too.
We are still looking at it.'
'What? Neurological? You mean something is wrong with my brain?'
'We're not sure. It might be a tumour or a clot somewhere. We need to do
a full-body scan and an MRI.'
'When?''Right now,' she said and pressed the bell. Two ward boys came rushing
to shift him from his bed to the other stretcher.
'I can move.' He got up and climbed on to the stretcher. The ward boys
started to wheel him away from the room. Zarah walked by his side, her
heels clicking against the sandstone beneath, her hips swaying alluringly
with each step. Dushyant wondered how old Zarah was. He really needed
an ecstasy pill. Or at least a joint.
'How come they never came when I was pressing the bell all morning?'
he complained.
'They have been working here for years now. They know when they are
needed and when they are not,' she explained. 'There.' She pointed to the
MRI room.
'Really?'
'No. Not really. Arman had asked the ward boys to keep you off any kind
of sedatives.'
'Why? Why would he do that?'
'He doesn't like you.'
'A doctor hating a patient? That's new. Well, fuck him.'
He was sure he saw Zarah smile. For the first time, he saw an expression
on her face other than her constant icy stare. A little later, he was frisked for
metallic objects and asked if he had any plates or screws in his body.
Despite the multiple fractures his body had sustained from falls off stairs,
bike accidents and such, his bones still held up on their own. Bones of steel
and a heart of stone, he thought and smiled.
'Now, this will take a while. Don't move while you're inside and shout
out if you feel strange. Am I clear?' she asked.
Dushyant nodded. He felt a little ashamed in Zarah's company. In the
outside world, he would have talked about her with his friends and
wondered if she was single. Maybe he would have fantasized about her a
little. But now, he was naked in a robe, helpless and at her mercy. A pretty
girl's mercy. His body ached for a smoke. He felt defeated. Like he had
when Kajal told him she never wanted to see him again. That day was a
cursed day; a day he never wanted to remember. A little later, he wasswallowed by the gigantic circular dome of the growling MRI machine. He
felt unsettled. His head ached and he wanted to scream. You're a grown
man. The words came back and he stayed shut. He didn't want to shout like
a scared pussy in front of her. Why did he care?
'Did you always want to be a doctor?' he said, just to distract himself.
There was no answer. A little later, a voice answered back. 'More or
less.' The voice echoed. He felt better.
'This thing is bloody noisy.'
'I know it is,' Zarah said. 'Let me concentrate on the unflattering images
of your brain.'
'How does it look?'
'It looks perfect to me. Though we will have to take Arman's opinion on
this. I am no expert.'
Dushyant stayed shut for a while. The white shell made him
claustrophobic.
'Are you okay in there?' Zarah asked.
'I guess.'
'Just a few more minutes,' she said.
He closed his eyes and tried to relax. He thought about Kajal and the
other guys in college. The guys he had got sloshed with that day. None of
them had called, let alone visited. The sound slowly came to a stop.
'Done,' she said and instructed the ward boys to pull him out from the
machine.
His eyes never left Zarah's lithe body as her shapely behind sashayed in
front while he was being wheeled back to his room. Zarah was engrossed in
the few printouts she had in her hand. The stretcher was pushed into a lift.
Zarah followed; her eyes still hadn't left the sheets in her hand.
'Oh, by the way, your girlfriend called,' Zarah said. 'She sounded
concerned.'
'I don't have a girlfriend.'
'Well. I just guessed. Kajal, if I remember correctly. Sister? Friend?'
'We used to date. She called? Here? At the hospital?'
'Yes, why?''We haven't talked in years. She is dating her ex-boyfriend now. What
did she say?' he asked, desperately trying to hide how crushed he felt.
Zarah's eyes seemed to see right through him, her sharp gaze looking for
their own answers. He felt naked, his secrets spilling out.
'She wanted to know if you would live.'
'What did you say?' he asked. A montage of black-and-white Polaroid
images of his life from two years back flashed in front of his eyes. He felt
guilty. Ashamed.
'I told her there's nothing to worry about.'
'Anything else?'
'No,' she said, her frosty voice giving nothing away.
Zarah left for Arman's office after they reached the fifth floor. Before
leaving, she said she would check on him in the evening and update him on
his condition. He nodded. His mind was clogged with the sudden
reappearance of Kajal, and the images of his brain in Zarah's hand. What
was that he saw on Zarah's face? Concern? Was he dying? Or was she
always this cold?
The lack of answers from the doctors, the indistinguishable expression
from Zarah and the battery of tests confused him. For the first time, he was
scared. He wanted to see Kajal and tell her he was sorry. Then he brushed
the negative thoughts away, cursing himself for thinking too much. He tried
to think about the good things in life—weed, alcohol, poker and the young
female doctor with caramel skin and taut muscles.
As he climbed into his bed, he wondered what might have driven Zarah
to try to kill herself. In the elevator they had taken to the fifth floor, he had
noticed the tiny slit marks on both her wrists.
Arman had left by the time Dushyant was in the room again. He was
thankful and felt relieved. Next time, he would punch the guy in his face,
but only after Arman figured out what was wrong with him. First they said
liver and now the brain. He was freaking out a little. Hospital, MRIs, tests,
diagnosis—you see these in movies; they never happen to you.'So, did they do an MRI?' the irritating girl on the next bed asked him as
soon as he was in his bed.
Give me a break, he thought. 'Do you just have to talk?' he asked as the
niggling pain came back. It started in the stomach, then travelled to the
limbs, the tips of the fingers and slowly, his entire body started to throb
with pain. 'Do you have to play the nice girl? It's just irritating! Don't you
have a boyfriend to call? Or anyone?'
'Excuse me?'
Pihu's face shrivelled. The upturned lips didn't melt Dushyant, for he
hadn't asked for her company. She, her parents and her effervescent happy,
optimistic face made him nauseated.
'I don't want you to ask me how I am doing or what they did to me. I
have no interest in talking to you or anyone around you. Just keep to your
business and don't bother me!'
'But—'
'You're irritating me. So are your parents. Go, choose another room.
Your mother will like it. She thinks I am scum and a bastard. Do her and
yourself a favour and just fucking stop talking to me,' he grumbled. Pihu
cowered. He smirked. The girl scrambled for words, made a face, and
pulled the curtain between them. Dushyant felt good venting it out. Little
did he know that the cute ball of energy on the next bed was more persistent
than he would have ever imagined.
The outburst reminded him of the times he had shouted at Kajal. Kajal
used to shout back and eventually break down into uncontrollable sobs. He
thought he could hear little sobs from the other side of the curtain. Or were
they in his head? What had Kajal wanted when she called?
He didn't feel pity for Pihu or sorry for what he had just done. Instead, he
loved the silence. Of the medical equipment. Of the drips of medicine.
Beep. Drip. Beep. Drip. His own uncertain heartbeat. Lub. Dub.
It was late at night. Dushyant was writhing on his bed with pain. It felt as if
his stomach was being ripped apart and hung to dry. He was sweating and
the bed was wet with his perspiration. He had to adjust the temperature ofthe room twice. There was no relief. He had rung the bell twice for
painkillers but no one had come. He wanted to drive a broken bottle
through Arman's throat. He wanted to jam an injection in his arm. Pop a
pill. Snort a line of cocaine. Get fucked up again. He had tried getting down
from the bed but had fallen. His body went numb with pain.
He started to cough violently, and pressed the button twice. Reluctantly,
he pulled the curtain away and groaned, 'Pihu.'
'Huh … Yes?' Pihu woke up from her sleep.
'I coughed.'
'So?' She rubbed her eyes, trying to shake the sleep off.
'It's blood,' he said and pointed to a pool of blood at the foot of his bed.9
Arman Kashyap
Arman crushed the stress ball in his hands as he paced around the room. He
was annoyed. A few more patients had shown relapses, and Pihu would
show the same signs too. The next step in their research—the stem cell
approach—was progressing like bloody snails on a rainy day. No one in
their hospital thought it would work. Treatments of the sort had been tried
on patients in the US and a few patients had had their lives extended by a
year or two. A few had died on the operating table. To make his day worse,
the asshole in room no. 509 had just vomited more blood than he could
have had in his alcohol-ridden veins. He, too, seemed to be dying.
But even then, Pihu was top priority. He had noticed Zarah standing at
the door with a file of reports, while he struggled with the analysis of the
research results. It was one way or the other. The stem cell approach was a
huge risk, a risk that he was willing to take.
'Yes? Are you waiting for something?' he asked.
'Dushyant is not doing that well. He has a fever now. The pain in the
stomach is getting worse. His liver is getting worse. He has had two
seizures in the last two hours. His systems are shutting down.'
'But the antibiotics made him cough blood.'
'So what do we do now?' she asked.
'Exactly. I want an answer and I want it from you. And give him the
sedatives. Make him shut up and take down a list of every drug that he has
done in his lifetime. Let's see if we get something there,' he said without
flinching, his mind somewhere else.
Zarah nodded and left the room.Arman frantically pored through the research reports in front of him one
more time. They were wasting time. People were losing to the disease
without even a shred of hope. But he knew that it would take him and his
team years, if not decades, to ascertain and prove that the stem cell
approach could work. The girl he thought he had saved, the girl who
thought she had been saved, would be long dead by then. He saw her file
lying across the table and flipped through it. Pihu Malhotra. 19. Medical
Student. The words floated in his head, refusing to settle down in an
undiscoverable corner. Why was he so hell-bent on trying the treatment
before it was time? Was it desperation? Was it the guilt from having
someone believe that he had cured them? He didn't know. With her file in
his hand, he left his office and headed for the third floor. In the lift, he read
through her file twice, nervously flipping through the pages, wondering if
she had lost herself in the disease. He wondered if she, like the many
patients he had seen dying, had let the disease define her.
'I was diagnosed three years back.'
'I first noticed it when I was driving.'
'Is there a cure?'
These were often the first responses Arman heard from his patients who
had lost to the disease way before it eventually consumed them. From the
little he knew of her, she was different.
He entered the room and saw Dushyant lying on his bed, his eyes rolled
over, sleeping under the effect of the powerful sedatives. Such a burden, he
thought. On the other side of the curtain, he saw Pihu reading a book. Her
mom was reading a book too.
'Hi. I am back,' he said and smiled. Arman knew exactly when to put his
charm on. He was quite the guy to date back in medical school. Since he
had grown up around medical books and people from medicine, expecting
him to excel in medical school was like expecting a fish to swim. With
plenty of time on his hands and with big wads of cash from his father's
hospitals, he was the perfect guy to be with. But the girls who dated him
back in those days admitted that his charm didn't lie in his wealth or his big
brain. It was in his disarming smile and his perfect behaviour. Even as acollege student, he dressed impeccably. Characterized by his crisp white
shirts, traditional dark-blue jeans and white sneakers, one could easily spot
him in a crowd. To this day, he had stuck to his dress code like a priest—
white shirt and a pair of blue jeans. He wouldn't be caught dead wearing
anything else.
'Hi, Dr Arman,' Pihu said. 'I see you are not wearing your doctor's coat.'
'I am off duty. This is my free time,' he answered and sat beside Pihu.
'I am glad you think of me in your free time.' Pihu giggled, and Arman
was sure she winked. Not like grown-ups wink, but like little kids do—
closing both their eyes and smiling, hoping they have closed just one.
'Are you flirting with me, Ms Pihu?'
'I am just making the most of my time here,' she said. Her cheeks were
now a deep shade of pink, her eyes glinted with life and she bared every
one of her thirty-two pearly teeth. Arman could no longer look at her like
the diseased body he had seen the last time. Like a physical manifestation
of the words in her file. He had looked at her eyes to look for imperfections,
her skin for lesions and her body for flaws. But this time, he looked at her
and saw a person brimming with childlike fervour. The cute face with the
high cheekbones promising a beautiful woman in the future, the perfect
eyes, the short hair that covered one half of her face, and the smile that
never left her.
'I am glad to hear that from you. Often patients lose hope a little before
we would want them to,' he said. He fell silent. Had he not felt Pihu's
hopeful eyes on him, he would have been a lot more comfortable doing this.
'Is there something you want to say?' she asked.
'Yes. In fact there is,' he answered and paused. 'Do you understand the
progress of your disease?'
'Yes, I do, Doctor. I was almost dead when you saved me,' she beamed.
Why did she have to say that?
'I didn't save you. A few more cases of relapses have been recorded
today. It's only a matter of time before you start showing the same
symptoms too. I thought I should let you know. There is only so much that I
can do.''What you have done for me is more than enough, Doctor. In those days
when I was dying, I used to stay up all night thinking that I would choke
and I wouldn't even be able to call for help. I was confined to a bed for
months. I couldn't eat, I couldn't talk, I couldn't even do the smallest thing
without someone helping me … My body was dead. You gave me a few
extra days to live. I don't think you will ever know what that meant for me.
I won't ever be able to thank you enough for what you did for me. You had
no obligation to save me. In fact, you could have lost your licence if you
were caught. You still can get barred. I don't think there is anything more
you could have done.'
'It's sweet of you to think like that,' he said, barely recovering from what
he had just heard. Beneath the chirpy, smiling demeanour, there was a
grown-up girl, armed to fight the disease with all she had. All of a sudden,
he didn't want to talk about her disease any more. He didn't want to be
responsible for snuffing out the glimmer from her eyes. 'So, how was your
college? Did you like being there? Why don't you tell me about it?'
Her grin got wider. After that, she was unstoppable. She told him
everything there was to know about her fascination with medicine right
from the eighth grade when she first decided that she would become a
doctor. Arman heard her out patiently. Not much registered in his mind.
Lost in the narrator's boisterous laughter and enthusiasm, he couldn't keep
track of the conversation. Just to stamp his presence in the conversation, he
started to ask her a few trick questions about medicine. After she got twenty
of them right, she said irritably, 'Everyone knows these!'
Even I didn't know the answer to a few of them, Arman thought and
looked at her in awe. She was brilliant. She reminded him of a young him,
who was hated because he was annoyingly brilliant.
'How was yours?' she asked.
'Huh?'
'Your college? You went to AIIMS, right? I've read all about you,' she
said.
'Yes. And then I went to a medical school in New York. I worked there
for a few years and then came back.''Oh. How old are you?' she asked with an impish smile.
'How old do I look?' Arman played along.
'Your educational details say thirty-three, but you don't look a day older
than twenty-five!' she blurted out.
Arman chortled and tried to hide his happiness on hearing that. It wasn't
the first time though. Arman had often had problems in the past making
people take him seriously because of his boyish looks. Luckily, he was
finally growing up.
'So?' she asked again. 'How old are you?'
'A little older than twenty-five, but young enough to date you,' he said
and smiled. He saw her blush and melt into giggles.
'Let's go out some time, then. You can carry the drips and the injections
for me. I am sure it's more interesting than carrying handbags. Plus, I won't
really take time to get ready. I have come to like this robe.'
Arman nodded and tried to ignore the hint of dejection in her voice.
'There is something I wanted to talk to about,' he said. 'I called up your
college.'
'You did? Why?'
'I wanted to know about you. They told me that you were a brilliant
student. Surgery, that's what you wanted to get into, right?'
'Yes. Since always. You have no idea how many carrots I ate because
they told me that you need a 6/6 vision to be a surgeon. My mom always
said carrots were good for the eyes!' she chuckled. Arman laughed with her.
She was strangely amusing for a girl.
'You would have made a funny surgeon.'
'Not with these hands,' she said and pointed out.
'We can get you all right,' he mumbled.
'Can you? Because I would hate to operate on someone like this.'
'We are not sure though.'
'I know what you're talking about,' Pihu purred. 'The stem cell research,
right? But that hasn't been approved yet, has it? Has it ever been tried on
anybody?''It will take twenty years to confirm that the treatment works,' Arman
replied. He was impressed at the girl's retentive power. The research
website had published a few articles on the stem cell research and how it
should only be tried on patients in their last stages because of the high risk
involved. Arman never bought the argument and thought it was stupid.
'So?'
'We can do it on you,' Arman weighed his words. He didn't want Pihu to
freak out since those articles clearly stated that deaths resulting from those
procedures were far too many to try it on comparatively healthy patients.
'Aren't you like the best young doctor in the country? A sensation in the
field of medicine?'
Her words made Arman a little uncomfortable, a little proud of himself
and a little happy. The science conferences where people used to glorify his
successes never mattered to him. Not even a bit. But her words did and he
felt strange about that.
'Some people say that.'
'And won't you be risking your medical licence, and probably find
yourself in jail if anyone finds out about this?'
'More or less,' he answered.
'So either you are crazy or very confident that this will work,' she said.
Arman noticed her forehead crease. He wished he could tell her that it was
neither. Simply put, it was the only way to save her from dying.
'A bit of both.'
'I think it's your call then,' she said and smiled. Her doubtless confidence
put him slightly off balance. If the treatment didn't work, he knew he would
just accelerate her deterioration and make her die sooner, if not instantly.
'I will think about it,' Arman said, shaken. He got up from the bed.
'Fine,' she said. 'If it doesn't work?'
'Let's not talk about it.'
'Like the lyrics of that song, What doesn't kill you? "What doesn't kill
you makes you stronger"?' she asked. He nodded.
Arman shook her hand and said, 'Our date is still due.''I am looking forward to it. Though I might have a problem with
choosing what I'll wear. I am thinking of being a little bold and wearing the
blue robe instead. Or … I don't know. I am having trouble deciding.'
They laughed till their stomachs hurt and till Dushyant writhed in his
sleep.
'I will be back soon,' Arman said and headed for the door.
'Dr Arman?' she called out.
'Yes?'
'Did you really call my college?'
'No, I didn't. But no one who's dying would read all the books lined on
your side table. Four out of those fifteen books are on surgery,' he said.
'You're smart,' she said and winked. 'And you're cute!'
'People tell me,' he replied. 'And I am not thirty-five. I am younger.
Much younger.' He left the room.
His steps were unsteady as he trudged back to his office. His head felt
strange and for the first time in years, he didn't feel like going with his gut.
In other cases, he would have just started the treatment, putting everything
on the line. Never ever did he think twice before putting a patient's life at
risk for what he believed in. He knew he would save them. Eventually.
But this time, he wasn't sure.
The smile. The childlike wink with both eyes. The promised date. They
haunted him, pricking him like little pins in his heart and in his head, a
strange mix of pain and pleasure quite like acupuncture, through the day, as
he mechanically worked around patients and reports.
She is just a kid, he told himself.10
Zarah Mirza
Zarah woke up that day with a severe back pain and a blinding headache. If
medical school was tough, working in a hospital was a nightmare. While
hers was a 24/7 job, all her friends were now engineers and management
graduates with jobs that ended at six in the evening, allowing them enough
time to get sloshed, act silly and wake up in each other's flats. Having said
that, hers was a satisfying job. Sometimes. Mostly, she was just
administering medicines. Being a doctor was tough; saving lives was a
different ball game. Often in medical school, she had wanted to quit and
aim to become a cosmetic surgeon. Or a dentist. Something that wouldn't
put anyone's life in her hands. There were no holidays or margins of error
in her profession. Other people's sick days were her working days. She felt
guilty for thinking the way she did. She had not become a doctor for
making people beautiful but to relieve them of pain and suffering. But she
was too damaged herself for that responsibility.
She swallowed a couple of aspirins from the rapidly depleting bottle on
her bedside. Alcohol had been a steady companion for the last few years.
Over time, the sleeping pills had stopped working and doctors stopped
prescribing them to her, calling it a worsening addiction. No matter what,
she never visited a psychiatrist for her problem. Her hatred for men had
only aggravated as the years passed by and she could see the perverse,
animalistic instinct in their eyes every day. It was odd that she was at ease
with Dushyant, the patient with the liver disease. His eyes were cold and it
didn't feel as if he was trying to despoil her in his head. He was one of the
few men by whom she didn't feel threatened. Maybe it was because he was
weak and dying.She checked her cell phone. There were no missed calls or messages. She
felt relieved. After lazing around in her bed for an hour, she stepped into the
shower and felt the hot water spray against her skin. It felt good. She felt
relaxed and thought about the good things in life. Years of self-administered
therapy had taught her how to cope with pressure and pain. The water clung
to her skin as she stepped out of the water. Drops of water slid down her
toned legs and wet her kitchen floor. Wrapped around in her towel, she
made breakfast for herself—scrambled eggs and toast with butter. Living
alone had its own benefits. Even though she missed her mom a lot, she
didn't want to spend a lot of time at home. Her dad had just retired from the
army and she felt it was better if she stayed away from him. Staying away
from him meant staying away from the horrifying memories of the night
she was chafed of her innocence by old, wrinkled hands on her frail body.
She drove with the windows pulled down in her red Hyundai Santro. It
was passed down from her mom to her when she earned her doctorate. The
stereo blasted out old Shahrukh Khan songs. As a kid, people had a hard
time explaining to her that it was not the actor who was singing.
'Hi,' she said, smiled at the receptionist and swiped her card at the
reception. Her long dark-brown hair was a mess. She had shampooed it in
the morning and let it dry during the drive to the hospital. Now, it was all
over the place, but she managed to rein her tresses into a bun.
She prepared the coffee to brew in the coffee maker, arranged the files of
the patients she had to attend to that morning, and had just caught her breath
when her phone rang.
'Hello? Is this Dr Zarah Mirza? There is an emergency. Patient from
room 509 is missing,' the voice from the other side said.
Simultaneously, there were announcements on the PA system regarding
the missing patient. Dushyant Roy. Zarah rushed to Dushyant's room and
found the bed empty. Obviously! Pihu was missing too. Maybe she is
undergoing some tests, she reasoned. Zarah rushed out and ran arbitrarily in
the hallways of the hospitals. She checked the stairwells, waiting rooms and
the lifts. He was nowhere to be found. The morgue, the pharmacy, the
clinic. Nowhere. Exhausted, she went to the reception again to ask ifanyone had found him. The receptionist shook her head. Half an hour had
passed by and there was no sign of him anywhere. Her concern about him
baffled her.
With her head hung low, she left the lobby and went out for some fresh
air. Mindlessly she walked towards the parking lot, wondering where
Dushyant might be. The feeling that she would never see him again filled
her with a strange, uneasy sensation. Normally, she would have been happy
to have one less man in her life, a minuscule reduction of the hatred she
held for men, but she was not.
She had been out for just about a few minutes when she spotted him on a
concrete bench. While still in his hospital robe, he was blowing smoke rings
and smiling at them as they drifted away from him. Zarah ran towards him.
A few steps from him, she slowed down. Her guard was up again, her eyes
flitted around for the easiest escape just in case Dushyant decided to lunge
at her.
'What are you doing here?' she asked, out of breath, her hands on her
knees.
'I thought I would excuse myself for a smoke,' he said. 'It's good for the
pain.'
'Wait. Is that marijuana? How did you get it?' Her heart rate slowed
down, her fear melted away. His uninterested yet warm eyes confused her,
even drew her closer.
'A friend got it for me,' he answered and took a long drag again. His eyes
were glazed over. He was clearly high.
'Don't you want to get better?'
'I want to, but you guys seem to be getting nowhere. My organ systems
are behaving strangely. My body feels like shit and I am constantly in pain.
Just two days back I was fine and now I am not,' he complained and
smoked.
'You will be fine. Your insides are a cocktail of a million things that you
have ingested over the years and it will take us time to find out what's
wrong with you,' Zarah explained. 'Can we go back in, please? We have to
run a few tests.''Tests again?'
'Yes, we have to check for tumours,' she said. She felt sorry for him. The
first man she didn't imagine or want dead.
'Is there anything I don't have?' he asked.
'We suspect the steroids you took could have caused the tumours in your
kidneys and liver. Studies have shown it is a delayed side effect. We believe
excessive drinking made it worse and that's what's taking you down.'
'I never told you that I took steroids,' he said and smirked at the perfect
smoke ring he had just blown. The rolled-up joint burnt to its end and he
threw it on the ground.
'Arman knew.'
'He knew? How?'
'He looked at you and he could tell you had been a sports guy or a gym
guy during some part of your life. He inferred that since you were a rash,
irresponsible and impatient guy, you would take steroids to grow bigger or
get stronger faster.'
'Such a bastard,' he muttered. Zarah saw a brief smile on his face.
'Is he wrong?'
He shook his head and lit another one. Zarah snatched it from him and
threw it away. 'Enough,' she said.
'But he could have been wrong,' he grumbled and got up. They started to
walk towards the hospital entrance.
'He confirmed it. He talked to Kajal.'
She saw the blood drain from Dushyant's face. Whatever was left of it.
He looked at her shocked, violated.
'Why? That fucker!'
'We took your medical history and you never told us anything about
steroids. Had you told us, he wouldn't have talked to her,' she responded.
Dushyant's discomfort was apparent. Zarah wanted to ask him about
Kajal but she didn't want to poke around. They got into the lift and walked
in silence to his room. His hands brushed against her a few times, but she
didn't panic. No sweating. No freaking out. No horrifying images in her
head.'Next time you need a smoke, call me. Don't do the disappearing act
again,' she said.
'I will try not to,' he answered and climbed up on the bed. 'But the
smoking is good for me. It numbed the pain and I feel better now.'
'Can I ask you something?'
'Sure. You're my doctor. That's your job. I wonder if Dr Arman knows
what his job is!'
'Why don't you tell your parents about this?'
'They don't need to know.'
'I think they do. In any emergency of a transplant, they will have to be
the first ones we'll need to check for a match,' she explained.
Zarah was never a good liar. Over the years, she had bonded with
whoever had a troubled relationship with their parents. Ever since she got to
know that Dushyant had been hiding his illness from his parents, she felt a
special connection. Two broken people make for a wholesome friendship.
Even though she had never been friends with any guy.
'You couldn't possibly understand what I have been through.'
'I will. You can try me,' she said.
'I am tired. Can I sleep now? It's starting to pain again, unless you want
me to run off for a smoke again.'
'I will put you on some painkillers,' she said and pushed a medicine into
his IV.
'We can talk about this later? At night?' he said.
'Sure.'
'And am I dying?'
'Too soon to tell,' Zarah said, not wanting to assure him falsely.
He closed his eyes. Zarah waited for him to drift off and then left his
room. Talk about it later? Why would she ever talk to a man? Hateful, vile
men who wanted their hands on her body and …
Zarah was fourteen. It was the year 1999.
She always felt out of place at the parties thrown by her father's superiors
at the huge farmhouses they owned, bought with money they had madefrom defunct arms deals. Her mom was drunk and playing poker with the
other aunties. Dad was, as usual, drinking and discussing paltry pay
cheques and cursing the government for being soft on Pakistan. All the
army kids were too old for her, and they were all trying out vodka and rum
and anything else they could get. The older kids were snogging behind the
bushes.
She felt bored. Her tummy felt strange after the gallons of aerated drinks
she had gulped down out of boredom. A little later she couldn't hold it in
any more. At the far end of the farmhouse, there were washrooms for guests
and she walked towards them. There were drunken generals, colonels and
other rank holders all over the farmhouse grounds. She felt awkward and
strange. Just a few yards away from the washroom, she felt a rough,
overpowering hand on her mouth and another hand across her waist. She
saw two men with demonic expressions on their faces.
She only remembered partly what happened next. Over the years, she had
tried to slowly erase that memory from her head and had succeeded to an
extent. Her rape on that fateful night now seemed like a figment of her
imagination. Something that had happened in a parallel universe. Though to
this day, she still woke up in the middle of the night with a cold sweat, the
faces of those old men—as old as her father—staring down at her, between
her legs, scratching her bare body, grunting and moaning as they inflicted
pain on her. They took turns for about half an hour. She still remembered
the pain, she still remembered the curse words, and she still remembered
the egging from one old man to the other, urging each other to violate her
harder. She still remembered lying in her own sweat, urine and blood,
crying and waiting for help. Her screams were hollow and soundless. No
one came. She remembered how she had put herself together, looked at
herself in the mirror and felt dead inside. She wondered if she had done
something to deserve it. More than that, she clearly remembered how they
had threatened to kill her family if she ever told anyone about what had
happened. She had lived in fear ever since. For more than a year, she stayed
quiet. But one day, she tried.The first time she tried telling her father about it, she was slapped across
her face. And she just told him that a friend of his had tried to manhandle
her. He refused to believe her and told her she was imagining things. Her
own father denying her the right to get back at the people who destroyed
her.
'He is a respectable man and a senior of mine,' he said. 'Dare you talk
like this again!' He walked off.
For months, Zarah was in severe depression. Her mother thought it was
puberty which was causing it and brushed it off. She would shower five
times a day, eat soap to cleanse herself from the inside and was referred to
many doctors for OCD (Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder). Slowly, she
cured herself. She shut her mind off to all her memories and created new
ones.
Sometimes, she felt vindictive. She tracked the two army men years after
the incident. One of them died a year after the incident, three bullets to the
chest in an attack on the army base camp in Srinagar. Since he was a
veteran Kargil hero, his funeral was covered on television. She laughed
demonically, faintly similar to how those men had that night at the
farmhouse. Her father watched silently.
The other man slipped into a coma after slipping on his bathroom floor
five years after the incident and suffered a concussion. He got better with
time but would be confined to a bed for life. Seeing him lie helpless on the
hospital bed made her feel better. Telling her rapist's nineteen-year-old
daughter what he had done to her made her feel ecstatic. When the man's
daughter asked Zarah how she knew the whereabouts of her father, Zarah
replied, 'I have never forgotten him. He is a monster.' The horror in the
daughter's eyes quenched her vengeance. She laughed when she saw the
man's daughter confront him with her newly acquired news.
She was over it now. Her rape did take away her innocence, but it also
took her family away from her. Her father and she never looked each other
in the eye after that day.As she sat in Arman's office that evening, completing all the paperwork for
the day, she wondered what Dushyant's story was. She had visited him
again that afternoon and had scheduled him for a full-body scan. During the
entire procedure, they had not talked. There were other doctors overseeing
the procedure and Zarah didn't want to be seen socializing with a patient.
Late at night, she headed towards room no. 509.11
Pihu Malhotra
The day had been exhausting. MRIs, nerve biopsies and a million other
tests were carried out to track the progress of her disease. Arman oversaw
every blood draw, every biopsy and every current wave that was made to
pass through her body. It was comforting for her. The battery of tests, the
pain and the constant tension were scary. In the middle of her third test, she
asked her parents to leave. She knew she was the weakest with them
around.
'Are you still thinking about the stem cell thing?' Pihu asked Arman
again.
'Yes, I am,' Arman responded. If they went ahead with it, it would be a
long treatment that would require her to pop fifty pills a day till the time of
her surgery.
'These tests are off or on the record?'
'You don't have to worry about it. The medical expenses will be paid by
the hospital. I got you into the pre-trials but I have told them we won't be
testing the stem cell treatment on you till we get the permission to do so …
which we won't.'
'Fine,' she said with a sad smile.
'Let's hope things go as per plan,' he said and tried hard to concentrate
on the screen. They were checking if the disease had won the battle against
the antibodies.
She sensed that he was either uncomfortable or he didn't like to talk
when he was working. The creases on his forehead were incredibly sexy.
The taut veins in his outstretched hands were signs of a man who had
played some sport in his younger days. She started to imagine him on afootball field, on a rainy day, his T-shirt stuck to his toned torso, his hair
wet and his legs dirty. In her fantasy, she was with him on the field. Alone.
Soon, they were rolling in the mud. I am losing it! Stop it! She snapped out
of her wet 1990s Jeetendra-movie fantasy. It was only one of the dozens of
various situations where she found herself being intimate with Dr Arman.
'Do you have a girlfriend?' she asked with a twinkle in her doe-like eyes.
'No, I don't.'
'Why don't you? You're smart and successful. You should have one,' she
said and smiled at him. The nurse drew blood and she winced. Arman
winced, too.
'I don't have the time.'
'Oh yes, I forget! The great Dr Arman Kashyap. How can you have time
when you're too busy being a genius?'
She chortled and Arman looked at her in fake anger. He said, 'Are you
making fun of me? I don't think anyone has told you but you should know
better than to fight with your doctor or your waiter. They can kill you or pee
in your food.'
Pihu felt good to see him joke and loosen up. Usually, he was too busy
cranking his brain muscles to full capacity and bringing people back from
the dead.
'That's gross!'
'The pee thing? Yes, I know. That's why you shouldn't mess with us.'
'Or what will you do? Kill me even faster?' she said.
Silence. Arman's face contorted. She was happy to see that her absence
would matter to him. Then, she immediately chided herself for thinking too
much. Arman was at least a decade older, even though her mind reasoned
that it only made him more desirable. Successful, sane men, with
experienced hands and tongues make for better fantasies than young,
immature boys. Going by the scores of Mills & Boon books she had read,
older men always knew where to touch, where to place their tongues, where
to hold and caress … Snap out of it!
'I thought you would be used to people dying around you. You must see
it every day, don't you?' she asked, breaking out of her imaginary world ofmuddy football fields, crackling fireplaces and deserted metro stations.
'I thought so too,' he said and walked away from her. He started to check
the numbers and figures on the monitors.
'Can you guide me through the numbers and things you're checking for?'
she asked out of curiosity. It had been more than a year since she had
attended medical school, but her thirst for knowledge was still insatiable.
For the next one hour, they discussed her tests in excruciating detail. She
felt good when Arman admitted that she was smarter and more
knowledgeable than even a few medical-school graduates. At one point, he
even called her a freak, a mutant with an extraordinary memory for
medicine. Her schoolgirl cheeks turned scarlet as if he had complimented
her smile.
'I think we are done for the day,' he said. 'Now, we just have to compile
the results and see what happens.'
'Great!' she said and smiled.
'By the way, I talked to a few doctor friends in the US who are trying out
the same treatment. They are very hopeful about its success. Who knows?'
Arman didn't look at her while he said that. He clasped his palms and
rubbed them together, like a young kid lying to his parents.
'Thank you.'
'You don't have to thank me.'
'I do. After a long time, I felt I was in a class again. It was perfect,' she
purred and wondered if she was still blushing.
Arman leant towards her and held her hand. Her breath stuck in her
throat. The warmth of his hand, the look in his brilliant black eyes and the
creases on his forehead almost knocked her heart out. For a moment, she
was back in the muddy football field, in front of a crackling fire in a big
house, in a deserted metro station with just the two of them.
'Everything will be okay,' he assured her. She wasn't listening to the
words. The words floated in her ears and she turned her to him with a blank
head and a rapidly beating heart.
'I am sure it will,' she said.Arman hugged her and she lost herself in his arms. 'You will be okay,' he
muttered. He jerked his hands away as he saw Zarah walk into the room. 'I
will see you later,' he said and left the room abruptly.
Pihu was smiling as she stared at the ceiling. She could still feel his hands
around her. Slowly, she closed her eyes and wished she could stay there for
ever. Her daydreams knew no bounds that day. Her mom was sleeping
scrunched on the tiny bed and Pihu didn't want to wake her up. Her dad was
at home. Venugopal cut her calls and she guessed he must be busy peering
down cancer-ridden lungs or rotten pituitary glands. In the past few months,
Venugopal and Pihu had spent hours talking to each other about her
symptoms, his crushes, her fears and it always felt like they would be back
together, on the last seat of the class, scribbling notes together, nudging
each other whenever the class would hover around penises or anything of
that sort.
She texted him.
The doctor hugged me today. I think I'm in love. Not like teenage-I-love
you-so-I-need-you love, but eternal, true, dying love.
Venugopal:
You've got to be shitting me. I thought I was your eternal love. We would
be a perfect example for racist bastards.
She laughed and remembered the times they had placed their hands
together and compared her pale-white complexion to his smoky black tinge.
She replied:
Aw! You will always be the one. But he's so cute! I mean, not really. He's
just hot. Like really hot. Like unbelievably hot. I wouldn't think twice
checking him for hernia.
Venugopal:
Nothing beats a tall, handsome and a really dark guy. Anyway, I get it.
And stop being gross. Are you high on something?
Pihu:
No! Call me as soon as you get free. And tell me everything what you're
doing/cutting/reading/screwing up! Miss you.Venugopal:
Miss you more!
With no one to talk to about how spectacular her day was, she turned to
Dushyant, who looked engrossed in a book. A part of her was surprised to
see the brat with a book. He can read? It was hard to imagine him doing
anything else but loitering around with an empty bottle of alcohol in his
hands and a half-burnt cigarette on his lips. She wasn't far from the truth
though.
'I heard you had gone missing today?' she asked, trying to make small
talk. She really wanted to tell him about the gooseflesh and how she
thought she would faint when the doctor touched her.
'None of your business,' he said and turned on his side.
'Why are you so bothered by me? Anyway, I am the only one who talks
to you. Oh! Apart from the hot female doctor, that is. I tell you, having a
background in medicine myself, doctors usually aren't as gorgeous as her.
Or Dr Arman,' she said hoping he would latch on to the conversation.
He shrugged. 'I don't like you in my room. Your parents wanted another
room for you, why not take a single room? Why still be here and eat
whatever is left of my brain?'
'Are you still pissed at what my mom said?' She recalled the time when
her mom had labelled him a degenerate, profligate son. 'I am really sorry
about that. Sometimes, she is just—'
'No, I am not. I just don't see a reason why we have to talk.'
'I am sorry for what she said. Can we—?'
'You don't have to be. Can I get back to my book?'
'I don't know what your problem is with me,' she said, exasperated. Pihu
never saw any reason to be rude to someone. Concepts like rudeness,
jealousy, hatred, et cetera baffled her. People, for her, were either black or
white, with no shades of grey.
'I don't like you. Do you get me? I don't like the fact that you're
constantly smiling when my whole body feels like it's burning up, turning
to ashes. I am scared to death and when I look on the other side, I see the
smiling face of a carefree girl, with her parents hugging and kissing her. It'sirritating. Why couldn't you just take another room and let me suffer in
peace?'
'You're not dying. I talked to Dr Zarah. She just said you have some
tumours. You will be okay,' she assured Dushyant whose body shook in
little tremors. Was he crying?
'I coughed blood. I even peed blood today. They are clueless about what
I have. Please let the real doctors do their jobs and don't meddle,' he
bellowed at her.
'You will be okay. I am sorry if my smile bothers you so much,' she said,
almost guilty. Like she always did, she rationalized his behaviour as an
outcome of his frustration and fear.
'Just get your treatment and get the hell out of here,' he growled.
'Fine,' she said and drew the curtains between them.
From the other side, she could hear Dushyant ring someone from his
phone and call his room-mate—an irritating girl named Pihu … a bitch.
Her eyes welled up. His tone was hurtful. She wanted to pull the curtain
away and shout at him. You're not the one who's dying, I am! All of sudden,
she choked up. She was no longer delighted by her thoughts of an
imaginary romance. She was going to die soon. He was going to live. Her
pain was going to be a lot more. She had been through it earlier and she was
doubtful she had the strength to do it again. She hated her body and wished
it had destroyed itself the first time. A dreadful time was staring right in her
face and he reminded her of it.
She couldn't sleep. Her conversation with Dushyant had left her shattered.
It reminded her of now now-numbered days. She picked up the book—a
multimillion-copy bestseller and a guidebook for patients afflicted with
ALS; it had been recommended to her by the first doctor who had
diagnosed her—Tuesdays with Morrie. It was about a seventy-year-old man
named Morrie who had the same disease as her—ALS. It was about the life
lessons the old man shared with a student of his across a time frame of
thirteen Tuesdays. He eventually dies, slowly and in pain, but content and
victorious.She tried not to think about the time before the experimental drugs had
worked, but that's exactly how she started to think about it. When she had
to be fed with someone else's hand, when her tongue used to be paralysed
and she would choke on it. She had been trying not to think about it, but
Dushyant brought those memories flooding back into her head. She
imagined someone cutting her throat open and inserting a tube so that she
could breathe normally. She was crying now.
Just then, she heard the door open. The curtain hid most of the person
who had just come in, but she could make out from the silhouette that it was
a girl. The lack of a doctor's coat told her it wasn't Zarah. She strained her
neck to see who it was but couldn't.
'What are you doing here?' she heard Dushyant say.
'I wanted to see how you were doing. I was worried.' The girl's voice
quivered. It was a very feminine voice. Almost like whipped strawberry
cream on chocolate. Sweet as hell.
'You didn't need to come. I don't need you. And I am fine,' Dushyant
grumbled. Pihu noticed the same rudeness again.
'Don't say that,' she said. 'They called me up. Your doctors … They said
you could have tumours. I was scared. What's happening, Dushyant?' she
prodded, her sweet nightingale voice almost putting Pihu to sleep. Her
voice was the truth.
'Why do you care?'
'Because I do.'
'You don't need to,' he said. 'Does Varun know you're here?'
'No, he doesn't.'
'Are you going to tell him?'
'It doesn't matter whether I do or not. I don't think he needs to know,'
she said.e a lonely little girl being ravaged by two big army generals as she