Till the Last Breath . . . (12 page)

‘FUCK ME!’ he shouted as he clenched his fist and banged
it on the floor. Arman saw him wince in pain and rushed to his side. Dushyant wouldn’t let his hand go, even as Arman bent over to get a better look. He was sweating now, his face was flushed red, and his whole body was trembling in pain as he kicked wildly.

‘LET ME HAVE A LOOK,’ Arman said sternly, but Dushyant kept rolling from side to side, frothing at the mouth.

Overhearing the commotion, Pihu got down from her bed. ‘Let him see it,’ she implored and Dushyant let his hand free.

Arman took a cursory look and said, ‘I think it’s broken.’

‘But I didn’t FUCK FUCK FUCK fall that hard,’ Dushyant said, his face wet with tears and sweat. ‘Arghhhhh. It’s hurting!’ he shouted.

‘Your bones seem to be a mush,’ Arman noticed.

‘I think I know what it is,’ Pihu reasoned and added, ‘It’s cadmium poisoning which is killing his liver.’

Even as Dushyant watched Pihu in disgust, Arman’s brain cells tingled and he was stunned. It made perfect sense. She was right.
How could I not see it?
Dushyant whined in pain as Arman smiled at Pihu.
YES!
Pihu seemed to say with her eyes.

Later that night, Dushyant was scheduled for surgery to get the bone in his left hand fixed. Arman went over all his reports again. Cadmium poisoning fitted and all the vital symptoms could be accounted for. His other problems wouldn’t have been so hard on his liver, if acting alone. Finally, after days of groping in the dark, they had an approach that could get Dushyant better.

It took Arman a long time to get Pihu to sleep. She had beeen smiling from ear to ear ever since she got the diagnosis right. For the last three hours, he had been making constant
trips to her room to keep a check on her. A strange feeling of being dependent—even if it was in a small way—disgusted him a little. But the contentment of seeing her sleep calmly stirred something much more human in him. With time, he had come to see only patients, not people, not problems but diseases, not emotions but weaknesses, and fallible human character. Something had changed in him; something that reminded him of a life he had left behind.

The operation was to last two and a half hours and the treatment for cadmium poisoning wouldn’t start until the next day. Arman felt like he had just closed his eyes when someone knocked on his door. It was Zarah.
Isn’t she early?
He looked at his watch and found that it was already eight. He had been sleeping like a baby for four hours, with his legs sprawled on his table, dreaming of Pihu in a doctor’s coat, like a hopeless romantic.

He staggered to his feet and asked Zarah to come in. After excusing himself for a moment, he trudged to the washroom, washed his face, brushed and came back. For a change, he picked out a shiny new white shirt (that he had ordered off the Internet) from the locker room, put it on and wondered if Pihu would like it.
It’s a white shirt for heaven’s sake!
he told himself. A cup of steaming coffee was waiting for him on his table when he got back and Zarah was going over Dushyant’s file.

‘He had a fracture?’ Zarah asked, shocked. ‘The operation went well?’

‘As if you don’t know. You went to his room before you came here, didn’t you? And you checked all the charts, too. Clearly, you care about him,’ he smirked.

‘How do you—?’

‘Leave that. I just know,’ he said and sipped his coffee. He knew one thing for sure and it was that Zarah was an excellent choice as soon as he took a sip. ‘Brilliant coffee, I
have to admit that. You’re weird, Zarah, and you know that, but I like your coffee.’

Quite often, Arman had noticed her reluctance to hold men’s hands to pump in medicines and how she tried to keep her distance from male patients—except Dushyant, of course. There was something eerie about this girl, but Arman had chosen to ignore it.

‘Okay,’ she said. Arman knew he had put her a little off balance by his rare politeness. Zarah shrugged off the anomaly and asked him, ‘What really happened with Dushyant?’

‘He fell down, but that didn’t break his arm. His bones were soft and withering away. We tested him for cadmium poisoning and he tested positive. That’s what is eating his liver. We have to treat him for that first before we can start treating the tumours.’

‘That’s brilliant!’ she exclaimed as she always did whenever Arman came up with an improbable idea like this. ‘Keep me around for the coffee, but please do keep me around.’

‘I didn’t come up with it,’ he clarified. ‘Pihu did.’

‘Pihu? Pihu Malhotra? The patient?’

‘Dushyant’s ward mate. She was there, too, when it happened. It took her just a split second to realize what was wrong,’ he explained with a hint of pride in his voice.

‘Umm …’

He saw her run out of words and could understand her disbelief. They sipped on their creamy coffees. Finally, she said. ‘What were you doing there so late in the night?’

Arman didn’t answer for a few seconds and then said, ‘I was checking up on Dushyant. And I ask the questions, not you. You make coffee.’

‘But—’

‘I thought I was pretty clear,’ he interrupted to avoid further questions. It wasn’t the discomfort he felt when others prodded
him about his personal life, it was the uneasiness he felt thinking about his dysfunctional relationship with Pihu. He had been through the same thing before and it distressed him to think he was going down the same road again. A relationship with a patient was always a road spiralling downhill.

Zarah smiled and Arman knew she had assumed what there was to assume on her own. She picked up the files and prepped herself up for the first round of patient check-ups. Arman tried to avoid her eyes.

‘Are you starting to see your patients now?’ Zarah asked and chuckled.

‘I think I have to, since my patients are coming up with better explanations for diseases. I don’t know why we hire interns and doctors any more. We should just ask patients to come up with solutions, shouldn’t we?’ he smirked. Zarah didn’t flinch and the smile was still pasted on her face. By now, she was used to the condescending taunts. He left his office and headed to the cafeteria for breakfast. And, more importantly, to avoid Zarah’s piercing questions, and some of his own.

He also needed to see how she was doing.

Zarah lived fifteen minutes away from the hospital and usually the roads were deserted by the time she got home. That night was no different. She was tired, both mentally and physically, after a long day of injections, tests and complaining patients. She parked her car at her usual place—outside the apartment complex. After six months of fighting and haranguing with neighbours and other flat owners for parking space, she realized it just wasn’t worth her time. It was just a car! Parking feuds were common in her neighbourhood and she felt lucky she wasn’t a part of them any more.

She dragged herself up the stairs of her apartment—something she did regularly to keep herself in shape—and put the key in. She tried it again. She kept jemmying the keys for the next thirty seconds but the lock didn’t budge.
Locked from the inside? Oh no. This can’t be happening.
Reluctantly, she rang the bell and waited for the worst. The sound of approaching footsteps made her belch. She wanted to run away. The door was flung open. She could feel the vomit in her mouth.

‘Hey, beta!’ her mom shrieked and then hugged her. The dupatta wrapped around her nose and mouth indicated that she had been mopping and cleaning the house.

‘You come home so late? Every day?’ she asked as Zarah walked inside the flat, her shoulders drooping, and threw her bag on the shoe rack. The house was much cleaner, and smelled fresh. She had never been messy—given her cleanliness-obsessed mom—but her mom still made the house look a lot cleaner. She wondered what had happened to all the bottles of alcohol—stacked in neat rows beneath her bed—she had duly collected to empty them into herself—or herself into them.

‘There is just so much work,’ she said.

‘It’s not safe at all. And this area is so dangerous. Only yesterday there were reports of a chain-snatching incident in the neighbourhood. I think you should get married. At least then we wouldn’t have to worry so much about you.’

‘So you would have someone else to worry about me, and not you?’ she snapped.

‘You know what I mean.’

Her mom’s rants went on and on. She told Zarah about the overage girls in their family who were having trouble finding a suitable match, and Zarah chose to ignore her concerns with a brief smile. In the corner of the room, her dad was watching television and had not noticed that she was in the room too.

‘And the house is so dirty. Doesn’t the maid mop the floor? And the bathroom mirror looks like it has never been cleaned. How much do you pay her? I will talk to her when she comes tomorrow. Why don’t you say anything to her? And you leave hundred-rupee notes lying everywhere. I am sure the maid flicks a lot of them. She will take all your money and run away some day!’

‘I am busy, Mom. I don’t have three hours to look over what the maid is up to,’ she argued and lay back flat on the drawing room sofa.

Her dad noticed her. ‘Oh, you are here? When did you come? Your mom has been cleaning the house. I asked her not to, but you know your mom.’

And I know you.
‘Yes,’ she said, met his eyes and looked away. Her mom rolled her eyes. She had always wondered what Zarah’s father had done wrong. He was a good man, a good Muslim, but his relationship with Zarah had been strained for as long as she could remember. That one summer long ago, things had been quite all right … great, even. And over the course of one day, they had become as bad as they could have been. She had waited for it’s to sort out on their own, assuming every father–daughter duo goes through such a phase, but things never looked up.

‘I will go and change,’ she said and went to her room. She closed the door behind her and bolted it.
Michel de Montaigne once said—‘Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.’
She knew this better than anyone else.

If only she could snuggle into her bed and stay there till her parents left the house, the building, the apartment and were
far far far far
away. She wished she could do that. After splashing some water on her face, she sat down with her newly bought and inexplicably expensive MacBook Pro, which she hardly had the time to use. She logged on to Facebook and scrolled down her newsfeed mindlessly. Some friends were getting married. Others were on vacation. A few had pictures in short dresses, partying in glitzy clubs with rich-looking, fat boyfriends.

On the other hand, her life had a sense of overbearing inertia … slow and moving at a dreary, constant pace. But she was sure no one else looked at her life like that. After all, she was the lucky one who was interning at a renowned hospital known for its unparalleled research facilities and labs wielding the most cutting-edge technology. She was the one who had
got a chance to work with one of the best doctors one could have asked for. A few years in the US and her success would be a coffee-table conversation topic amongst her peers for years to come. Disappointed, she switched off the laptop and cursed her wretched life. She desperately wanted a smoke, but her mom was persistently banging on her door. She thought of Dushyant and how he had managed to shed his family and move ahead.

After changing into her night clothes, she joined her mom in the kitchen and helped her out a little. Her mom had managed quite a spread in the little time she had. Dal makhani, paneer kofta, butter chicken, boondi ka raita—the only things that made her want to go back home and stay with her. They sat on the table and she tried hard not to meet her father’s searching gaze. She hoped it would be over soon. For her, the incident that had scarred her for life was her father’s fault and she had accepted it as God’s honest truth.

‘How’s the doctor you are working under? I heard he is pretty good,’ her dad said.

‘Yes, he is.’

‘Tell your dad more about him,’ her mom nudged to encourage conversation between the two. She had been the silent sufferer all these years.

‘There is nothing more to it. He is a great doctor and a brilliant teacher.’

There was silence again. Her mom tried to bring up topics like when she planned to get married, and whether she was in love with someone, and she shot everything down with disdain. Her parents had stunned expressions on their faces, wondering what they had done wrong to deserve such hostile treatment from their daughter.
What do they know?
She, on the other hand, felt nauseated sitting next to her father. After dinner, her father opened up a bottle of whisky he had got
and invited Zarah to join him. She refused, even though she really wanted that drink.

It took her three hours and two potent joints to fall asleep. Stoned, she even dialled Dushyant’s number, but couldn’t get through. The network in the hospital had always been suspect. Her eyes were sore and the pillow was wet by the time her eyelids swept down. She wished her dad had understood her when she really wanted it … No, needed it. At times, she wondered if he still remembered that day when she had mentioned the incident to him. Did he really not know that their discord had stemmed from the moment when he had not believed his own daughter? Was he such a coward that he couldn’t stand up to his seniors?

Every time she thought about forgiving her father, horrifying images of a young Zarah dragging herself through the washroom, blood trickling down her thighs, crying soundlessly, waiting for her hero—her father—to save her flooded her mind. If her dad had not been there to support her through that
then
, she certainly didn’t need him
now
.