Till the Last Breath . . . (20 page)

Pihu couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night. She couldn’t stop replaying the night in her head. That and the niggling chest pain and the rising difficulty in breathing kept her awake all night.
Nothing is wrong
, she told herself and closed her eyes.
This is my life
, she told herself,
and tomorrow is just a sick leave.

It was late and Dushyant hadn’t gone to sleep. For the last two hours, he had been waiting for Pihu to come back from her
magical
date. It had been long, so it was going well, he guessed. He would have no one else to blame but himself if anything went wrong. After all, the stethoscope, the doctor’s coat, the case files of interesting patients—it was all his idea for a perfect date for Pihu. Earlier that day, when Arman was doing a routine check-up, he had seemed to be a little tense. Dushyant wouldn’t have talked, but he asked what was bothering him. Arman had asked him to fuck off and be busy killing himself, but Dushyant had insisted. Long story short, Dushyant had
suggested
what the perfect date for Pihu should have.

Earlier that night, when he saw Arman execute the date just like he had suggested, he smiled and prayed for her. On second thoughts, he knew a touch of flowers and candles wouldn’t have been that bad either. It was two in the night when he saw Arman walk in, carrying her in his arms.
How heavy must she be?
As soon as Arman left, he wanted to go over and talk to Pihu. He also had to apologize and he had not got the time
to do so till then. But better sense prevailed and he thought he would let her soak in the moment.

As he lay down his head on the pillow, he wondered how different his life would have been had he respected the one girl to whom he meant the world. Unable to curb the urge, he took out his cell phone and called the number he should have called long back. The phone rang.

‘Hi, Kajal. Dushyant,’ he said and waited. It had been long since he heard her voice and he wondered if the raw, sugary sweetness of her voice was still there.

‘Umm … Hi. How are you?’ she responded.
Still so sweet!

‘I am good. The medicines seem to be working for now,’ he lied. ‘How are you?’

He wanted to ask her why she had come to the hospital but didn’t know how to approach the topic.

‘I am good, too. I came to the hospital that day,’ she said.
Phew!
‘You were sleeping, so I ended up talking to your roommate. Pihu.’

‘Yes, she told me. I wish I could have seen you,’ he replied. He wondered if it showed his vulnerability, but he was allowed to be so. He was dying, after all.

‘I wish so too,’ she said.

‘Can you come over?’

‘Now? Are you sure?’

‘Can you?’

There was silence on the other side. An unending, torturous time between when he finished and she responded. He didn’t know why he had asked her to come over. Was it because he had just seen Pihu come back smiling from a date? Did he want the same? As he weighed the possibilities of his womanlike proposition, Kajal said she would be there in a bit. He did a happy little dance in his head. For the first time since he had come to the hospital, he got up from his bed,
dragged himself to the washroom and looked at himself in the mirror.
I hate myself.
He hadn’t shaved in days, but that wasn’t the only problem. Over the last month, he had lost a lot of weight and he no longer looked the guy whose bench press had touched 190 pounds in his bodybuilding prime. He even tried flexing his biceps in the mirror but a skinny arm stared back at him. No more of that protein-supplement-pumped, steroid-injected-in-the-bum bloated hands that would scream out of his XL-sized yet tight T-shirts. He shaved. Washed his face. Twice. Still looked as bad as he did before. Exasperated, he even washed his face with Pihu’s strawberry-flavoured facewash, which left his skin surprisingly fresh.

He walked back to his bed and started to count time backwards. It hadn’t been long when the door was knocked upon and Kajal walked in. In a blue tank top, slightly torn jeans and chappals, she didn’t look like an engineering student at all. And then it struck him; Kajal may no longer be an engineering student after a few days. Although rich, she had never seemed like the type who would quit engineering midway because life was too short to do uninteresting shit and go dancing to London to do a course which had no academic value. And of course, to have sexual intercourse with white men with different accents. But then again, Pihu had added that Kajal’s decision had something to do with her break-up with Varun.
That bastard!

Dushyant’s hatred for Varun was multilayered and very complex. The most obvious reason was Varun sleeping with his girlfriend. But then again, it wasn’t the only reason. Varun was rich and accomplished beyond any girl’s criterion. He came from a family of millionaires, but he had added a few millions of his own, too, into the bulging accounts of his father’s clandestine bank accounts in countless European countries.
He hated almost everything about him. The cars. The places he went to. The first-class flights he took. The opulent flat he never lived in. The slicked hair. The perfect tone of talking. The first time he met him—and that’s when Dushyant and Kajal were dating—he had decided not to like the guy and the feeling of revulsion had only grown with time.

‘You look amazing,’ he said as Kajal sat down by his side.

‘You don’t look too bad either. A little thinner, but I never liked your muscles anyway,’ she chuckled. Dushyant saw her eyes rove over all the drips and needles that plunged deep into him and kept him alive.

‘You loved them! You couldn’t keep your hands off them!’ he poked.

‘Naah. That was just because you worked so hard and I didn’t want to disappoint you.’

That was correct. She had never disappointed him.
I am an asshole.

‘Are you feeling any better?’ she asked.

‘A little. Though there is a shooting pain every time the effect of the painkillers wears off. My liver and kidneys are shot. They have put me on the transplant list, just in case,’ he said. He conveniently missed out the fact that he might not make it to the next month.

‘Transplant list?’ The shock on Kajal’s face was off-putting. He regretted saying it. He was no stranger to saying things he shouldn’t.

‘Oh … there is just a one-in-a-million chance of that happening. Nothing is happening to me,’ he lied. Even though Arman’s words rang clearly in his head.
We will get you on the transplant list, but I don’t know if it will be any good. The list moves slowly and your record of abuse will not go down well with the people who decide. I think you should tell your parents. Maybe there is a match there.

‘Your room-mate thinks you’re dying, too,’ she said, her voice cracking.

‘Are you crazy?’ He put his hand across to comfort her. ‘She is just a wannabe medical student. And moreover, she is the one who’s dying, so quite obviously, she is slowly losing her mind.’ He laughed. The room reeked of death and disappointment but there was still laughter in their hearts. She laughed.

‘I heard you’re going to London? Why is that?’ he asked.

‘Just like that.’

‘Are you sure it’s got nothing to do with Varun … or me?’ he pried.

‘Why would it be like that? Both of you are assholes. You cared too much, he doesn’t care at all. I have always been wrong with my choices in men. Remember Charanpreet? That sardar guy who told me in first year that he would wait for me till the end of eternity? The guy with the big black SUV?’

‘Yeah, the guy we beat up,’ Dushyant said with pride.

‘Yes, the same guy. But he was alone and you were with ten other guys.’

‘I had to get extra help! He was big, wasn’t he?’ he defended himself. It was odd how the mention of other guys still made him squirm. Just imagining Kajal with someone else was distressing. During the period of time that they were together, Dushyant routinely found himself in drunken brawls and fist fights with guys who made passes at her. Sometimes, they blew up to the magnitude of fifty-people-a-side showdowns. His side usually won. He could get beat up and he could smash heads in.

‘Yes, he was big. Maybe I should have gone to him. You know—he’s still waiting? I still get flowers and chocolates at my doorstep every birthday and Valentine’s Day. That’s cute, isn’t it?’

‘Frankly, that’s creepy and a waste of money!’ he mocked.

They laughed again. In an instant, they were back to the times they had spent together, holding hands in the empty corridors of the department of mechanical engineering or the third floor of the library. Soon, they started gossiping and reminiscing about all the times they had spent together. A couple of hours had passed when Dushyant felt the pain shooting up from his stomach again. He grumbled and growled inside but didn’t let it show on his face again. But just as the pain crept up, he thought he should call for assistance. The last thing he wanted was to bleed in his bed in front of Kajal and freak her out.

‘I think I need help,’ he snarled. ‘The pain …’

‘Oh, I will just call someone!’ She panicked and rushed out.

Dushyant clutched his stomach as his insides burnt up; he heard choked sounds from the other side of the curtain. He pulled himself away from the bed and pulled the curtain away even as his body seemed to slowly disintegrate. On the bed, he saw Pihu wildly flapping her hands around, her eyes rolled over and her body furiously shaking. Before he could pull himself to her bed, she had stopped. Still. He cried out loud as he saw her stop moving. He shouted and shook her, but she didn’t respond. Panicking, he slapped her a few times but her face just flopped from one side to the other. He screamed for help. With the last bit of strength left in him, he climbed over her bed, put both his hands to her chest and started to push it down. It was something he had seen on television many times before. He bent over her and breathed into her open mouth and again pounded her chest. The pain in his body rose. The legs. The stomach. The chest. He was falling. His eyes closed as his body slumped and fell from the bed on the cold, hard ground. Darkness.

It was a gloomy morning, like many before. Muted light from the tinted windows of her bedroom made patterns on the mosaic floor. Her parents were back again and finally, she had figured out the reason behind the uncalled-for surprise drop-ins. Last night, her mother had dropped in five names, all doctors, who were really fond of the picture they had been sent. It was a picture of her from a wedding she had been dragged to by her mom. She was in a red embellished saree and carried a Chanel handbag—a gift from her mother—which her mom had bought for herself during her trip to Europe the year before. The photo had all three of them, but it had been cropped.

The recent visits had been bothersome. Her dad had tried to initiate conversation with her every time they were alone and she would feel queasy and nauseated.

Groggily, she stepped out of her room and called out to her mom. She was nowhere to be seen. After checking the kitchen, the balcony and the washrooms, she finally asked her dad.

‘Where is Mom?’ she asked.

‘She has gone to the nearby masjid to pray for you. I think she will be back in half an hour,’ he said and put the newspaper by his side.

‘Okay,’ she acknowledged and turned on her heel.

‘Zarah?’ her dad called out.

‘Yes?’

‘Can we talk? Will you sit with me for a while?’ he asked. Zarah looked at him with revulsion. Every inch of her body wanted to run away from the man who wouldn’t believe his daughter, but his questioning gaze kept her from going.

‘Fine,’ she said and plonked down on the sofa. ‘But it better not be about the guys whom you have chosen for me. I am too busy to get married right now,’ she declared.

‘I am not talking about that,’ he said. ‘I want to talk about
us.
’

This can’t be happening.
Zarah felt someone had pulled the rug from beneath her feet. All of a sudden, she started to feel light-headed. She wanted to run from him.
Why? Why does he want to talk about us?

‘Why do you want to talk?’ she asked.

‘There are some things that I know that you think I don’t. And things that you don’t know.’

Oh no.
This was only getting only worse. She wished he would stop and not go any further. It had taken her years to put what had happened that night behind her, and him digging out the past would only mean it was real. She looked at him with rapt attention and saw his eyes glaze over.

‘I have been a coward.’

Yes, you have.

He continued, ‘I know what happened that night. I have wanted to talk to you about this for very long, but I have never found the words. I tried to get close and make you understand how wrong I had been, but it never helped. I understand your
hatred for me. I understand that it’s hard for you to sit in the same room as me. I know I have failed as a father.’

‘Can I go?’ she asked. Her eyes had started to well up and she didn’t want to cry in her front of her father. Despite all the years she had spent hating her father, she also had the lovely memories of her childhood when her dad doted on her and loved her like a little newborn baby. She didn’t want to be reminded of all that.

‘Yes, you can. I understand why. I know I should have believed you, but I didn’t. Years later, I came to know what happened from the daughter of my senior and about what he had done to you … She told me that you had gone to the hospital when her dad was in a coma and told her that her father was a monster, a disgrace, a paedophile, a depraved pervert …’ His voice trailed off. ‘I was consumed by guilt. I was no less a monster than that man. I didn’t know how to come to you and apologize. I didn’t know what I could have done to make it better … I needed to die.’

‘I need to go,’ she said as a lone tear trickled down her cheek. She got up and turned her back on him.

‘I tried to kill myself,’ he mumbled.

She turned to look him in the eye, still fuming but a mush of emotions inside. Almost instinctively, her searching gaze caught his hands—both wrists had huge scars running through and through. Someone must have found him quickly after he did that because the wounds appeared deep enough to prove fatal within fifteen minutes. They were determined cuts that ran deep, not superficial grazes that suicidal teenagers have.

‘Did you cut …?’ Her voice trailed off.

‘Nothing worked. I drove our car off a flyover. I ate a bottle of sleeping pills … I lived. I lived to face you,’ he whimpered like a little girl.

‘When was that?’ she asked with a trace of emotion in her voice. ‘Wait? Was it when you and Mom …?’

‘We never went to Europe. I was in a hospital for a month,’ he clarified.

‘And Mom? You never thought about her? Does she know? Had you died, what would she have done? She has a daughter who doesn’t talk to her and a husband who constantly tries to kill himself? WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING? And just because you tried to kill yourself doesn’t mean I will forgive you. How can I forgive all those years you were right in front of me and I couldn’t tell you anything. HOW DO YOU THINK I FELT when you were going to parties with the SAME MEN WHO RAPED ME! How can I forget all that? JUST BECAUSE YOU TRIED TO KILL YOURSELF? You know what? I wish you had died!
You deserve to!
’ she bellowed and melted into a big pool of tears.

She slumped on the couch, scrunched herself into a little ball and hoped she would disappear. She wept and she could hear her father sob like a little child. She was angry, distraught and vulnerable. Slowly, a montage of pictures with her father and her started to float in front of her eyes, interspersed with images of her dad lying on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood, lying with broken bones in a hospital bed, frothing at the mouth because of an overdose of sleeping pills. Slowly, she felt the anger melt away. She couldn’t help but think about what it would be like not to have her dad around. It was a sinking feeling.

She didn’t know how it happened, but she found herself in her dad’s arms and both of them wept profusely. Every passing second made the presence of her father near her easier to bear. With every tear that she shed, she could feel the animosity melt away. The flood of tears slowly reduced to a trickle. Zarah
didn’t know what to say, all she knew was that after years of bitterness and hostility, this tiny moment of love made her feel alive again. Just then, the door bell rang.

Zarah stood up straight. Both of them wiped their tears away and she felt her lips curve into a little smile. Next, she smoothened out her clothes and walked to the door. She opened the door and hugged her mother. ‘Good morning,’ she whispered. Her mother looked at her, shocked.

‘I got aloo-puri for breakfast,’ her mother said and held out the polythene in her hands.

‘I will just take a bath and come back,’ Zarah said and smiled. As she walked to her room, her eyes met her father’s and they smiled. She blushed. In more ways than one, it was one. The shower went on for a little longer than she had intended. For the longest time, she stood there and thought about how life would have been different had her father come out earlier and apologized. She realized her anger was aimed at her father keeping mum about the whole matter.

She came to the living room after she dried herself and dressed. Her parents were already waiting on the table for her. The salty, yummy aroma of the aloo-puri overwhelmed her senses. She sat down and started to eat, her mother slightly perturbed by the glances and small talk between Zarah and her father.

‘When do you have to go to the hospital today?’ her mom asked.

‘Late night,’ she said and reminded her mother of her weekly day off.

‘You’re staying at home today?’ she asked.

‘No, I am going out with friends for a movie. The new
Avengers
movie is out. People are saying it’s hilarious. So, I might go catch that. Plus, Robert Downey, Jr is really nice
looking,’ she said. Her mother was still perplexed at her daughter’s sudden chatty mood.

‘And what about the guys we have chosen for you? Beta, you’re anyway too busy on the days that you’re working. At least meet them? There is this really nice guy—’

‘Oh, c’mon! She is still young. Let her live her life for now. She can get married later!’ her dad interrupted.

‘See? At least someone has the sense!’ she said and laughed with her dad. Her mother’s face contorted in utter bewilderment.

‘And who knows, maybe she has already found someone she wants to be with? Zarah, is there somebody in your life that you really like?’

‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ she said with an evil smirk. ‘Though I am not really sure about it.’

It looked as if her mom was struck by lightning. She froze like a mother from an ’80s shoddy Hindi movie who had just learnt that her daughter had been impregnated by her college sweetheart.

‘What?’

‘I am just kidding, Maa. There is just this very cute patient in my ward.’

‘So, you like someone who is not well? Whoever he is, he is sick. How can you like him? I hope he is not a Christian or a Hindu. Oh, God. Why didn’t you tell me that before?’ she asked frantically. ‘You knew about this?’ She looked at her husband, who shook his head vehemently.

‘Maa. Calm down. It’s nothing but a crush,’ she clarified.

‘God knows what I have done to deserve this,’ she grumbled. For the rest of the meal, she found some or the other reason to curse her life, which Zarah found adorable. After a while, both she and her dad ignored her and talked about other aspects. Since her mom was never interested in her work—in fact,
she never wanted her daughter to be a doctor and be around diseases—it was a relief for her to actually discuss her work with someone from her family.

After dilly-dallying for a bit, because she didn’t want to leave the family she had regained after so many years, she left the house. She met her school friends after a really long time and they were surprised to see Zarah in an ecstatic mood. After making them cancel the plan to watch the movie, she dragged them from one shop to another to get her father a gift. Careful consideration and rebukes from her friends, who progressively got more impatient, made her decide on a beautiful Tag Heuer watch that she had seen Shahrukh Khan wear in an advertisement.

It was a day of colossal shocks for her mother as she saw her daughter give her father a gift far more expensive than anything he had ever owned. Had she been carrying a tray of teacups, she would have promptly dropped it like the quintessential soap-opera mom.

On the watch, there was an inscription which said,
‘We still have time.’

Later that night, her father offered to drive her to the hospital but she refused. She got into her car and left, and her parents waved her goodbye from the balcony like they used to in her schooldays. As her car lazily zipped through the traffic, she wondered about all the times she had cursed her father for her wretched life. Everything that didn’t go according to her plans was attributed to a failed father. But that day, she was amazed at how easily she had forgotten everything and had gone running into his arms. She argued that it had been too long and her father had suffered enough. Probably even more
than she had. As penance, he had tried to kill himself thrice and none of them were half-hearted attempts.
The guilt must have driven him to madness
, she thought.

On certain levels, she even felt guilty about it. Maybe things would have returned to normal a lot earlier had she mustered up the courage to pick up that topic again. All said and done, there was a sinking feeling in her stomach that all the years of hatred and loathing would never come back. She parked the car and as she entered the hospital building, a winning smile found its way to her face. She wanted to shift in with her parents. It was a crazy thought and it would in no certain way be pleasurable, but there was nothing to lose.

The spring in her step and the glow on her face, even when it was one in the night, were apparent. She put a new pot of coffee in the machine and waited for it to brew. Her body sprawled across the couch, she was thinking about a vacation they could go on. Maybe, this time for real … Europe. Just as she closed her eyes and imagined her family on a gondola ride in Venice, she heard a commotion in the corridor and saw a doctor and a few nurses run past her office. Instinct told her they were running towards the all-familiar room no. 509. She jumped up and ran in their direction.

She was there fifteen seconds after the nurses and saw the door ajar. Pihu was coughing violently on the bed while Dushyant lay on the floor, his hand twisted in a strange angle, motionless. On the door, she saw Kajal with her hands covering her mouth as the nurses and the doctor made a mad scramble for the two patients. Zarah froze, her legs numb, unable to move or think.

Dushyant was put on a stretcher and rushed out of the room towards the Intensive Care Unit; he had suffered a major bleed again. From the little experience that she had, she knew Dushyant’s liver had given up. The alternatives started to crop up in her head.
Transplant? Living donors? Dead donors? No
insurance? Maybe his parents?
She just sat there on Dushyant’s bed, petrified, as the doctor got Pihu to breathe normally again. She called Arman to let him know about his patient.