Till the Last Breath . . . (5 page)

Pihu looked around the room she had grown up in. The room on whose walls she had always imagined she would hang her diplomas and degrees. She looked at the photo frames with pictures of her as a toddler, the bedsheets and the tonnes of books she had so lovingly arranged. She wondered if she would get to read even a third of them. She was distraught. For all the times she had craved to be in a medical school, she got only three months. It had been nine months since then. The loss of sensation meant she had to drop out of medical school as soon as four other hospitals—one in Delhi, two in Bangalore and one in Mumbai—gave the same verdict, each one with more finality than the last. Her disease had progressed faster than anyone had anticipated. Within two months of detection, she had trouble walking without crutches. Soon, eating had become a problem and she couldn’t chew for very long. Fifteen minutes of activity made her breathless and tired. Her muscles were slowly losing their strength and integrity. The paralysis slowly set in. Life for her became a constant battle for survival—to see the next morning. To see her parents around her, to hold their hands
and recount memories till it felt like she had lived them twice. It became a constant struggle to forget what was coming for her. She had committed herself to her impending death sentence. She had just a few excruciating months to live.

All this while, she made sure she sent across a mail every day to the young doctor, who was a part of the research team looking for a cure for ALS, in New Delhi. Sometimes, it was about the pain of being an ALS patient. On other occasions, it was something interesting she had read in a medicine book. His mailbox had become like a personal online blog-cum-punching-bag-cum-stress-ball for her. She knew for sure that he must have marked her mails as spam after the third one. But she kept sending them …

Pihu Malhotra >

To Dr Arman Kashyap >

Hi Dr Arman,

My mom still hasn’t stopped crying. She tries not to cry in front of me, but she doesn’t make it. Dad is a lot better. I got myself checked again. Six months, they say.

Give or take a few months. I can’t walk for very long.

Regards

Pihu Malhotra

Pihu Malhotra

To Dr Arman Kashyap

Hi Dr Arman,

Sorry to disturb you again. But I am crying. For the past two days, I haven’t been able to sleep. I think of all the bad things that are going to happen to me. Why? Why
me? I didn’t do anything wrong to anyone. Neither did my parents. I just … I am sorry.

Regards

Pihu Malhotra

Pihu Malhotra >

To Dr Arman Kashyap

Hi Dr Arman,

I finished the book on cancer diagnosis. It’s very nice. Wish I was in the lab and could see the carcinomas myself. I envy my classmates. They must be having so much fun. I wonder how Venugopal is doing and whether he still misses me. And I hope he has made good friends there. I wish I was there. I am sorry to disturb you again. I am sorry.

Regards

Pihu Malhotra

Pihu Malhotra >

To Dr Arman Kashyap

Hi Dr Arman,

I can’t walk any more. I see a shining new wheelchair in the corner of the room. I don’t want to use it. I want to stay in bed. I am scared. I also choked on my food once. People say I am dying. They tell me time is running out. Why doesn’t it feel so? Why does it feel that time has slowed down? Every moment lingers like it will never pass. It feels like death is moving away from me and I am running to get there soon. The sooner it comes, the
better. I just want to be put out of my misery. Is a dead daughter better than a dying daughter?

I am sorry.

Regards

Pihu Malhotra

The mails never stopped. It was like a vent for her frustration and her growing anger.

Four months after the first email, she received a mail from
Dr Arman Kashyap, GKL Hospital
. She jumped at the sight of it! And had wondered later why she had done so. Arman Kashyap was a handsome man, tall, fair and with rimless spectacles that made him look very intelligent. But the short-cropped hair made him look like a badass and he stuck out like a sore thumb in the group photograph of all the doctors at GKL Hospital.

There was no formal introduction, no asking how she was or even who she was, instead there were a set of questions he wanted her to answer. She had answered them to the best of her ability, like she would do as a student. Along with her answers, she attached a report on what she thought about the various researches that had been done on ALS. She wondered if she was being a smart-ass, but then thought she had too little time to care.

To her surprise, Arman had replied almost immediately. The language of the mail suggested he was impressed, but it was cleverly concealed. It was late in the night and Pihu typed out a long mail. It took her four hours to type it, one slow clumsy letter at a time. She had to take breaks because it was hard for her to sit up straight for that long. She didn’t forget to mention
that in the mail. Minutes after she had hit the send button, exhausted, she crawled to her bed and drifted off.

The next morning, the first thing she did was to log into Gmail and refresh it till her fingers hurt.
Inbox (1).
The mail contained just one line. It was a link to a website and beneath it was a combination of letters, numbers and special characters. She clicked on the link, which took her to a zealously protected website, and punched in the combination in the field that asked for a password. The website opened up like a whore’s legs on a payday and lay open a world of information on her disease. In the next few hours, she had devoured whatever she could find on the website. What really grabbed her attention were the clinical trials GKL Hospital was carrying out on ALS patients. They were only moderately successful. Just as she was reading through it, she received another mail that explained how she was ineligible for it.

Dr Arman Kashyap >

To Pihu Malhotra

I am sure you have gone through the clinical-trial reports. Unfortunately, you’re not eligible for it. Section 5. Para 6. I apologize.

Regards

Dr Arman Kashyap

Pihu looked for Section 5. Her face drooped. Since it was a disease which only inflicted older people, clinical-trial permissions had not been granted for anyone below the age of thirty. She had slumped in her chair and switched off the computer. She was tired.

For the next two months, she hadn’t sent a single mail to the doctor in GKL Hospital and she didn’t receive any. Her condition had been worsening steadily, her spirit and body slowly dying. She and her parents had braced themselves for the inevitable. She was going to die. Her parents were going to cry and lament for the rest of their lives. There was nothing that could have changed that. She was in a wheelchair. Only liquids were allowed, chewing food was out of the question. There were times she had tried to eat solid food and had choked on it as the muscles in her food pipe gave way. One day when her suffering had reached a peak, she sent a mail to Arman, updating him about her pitiable condition. She wanted it to be a long mail, but her body gave up within half an hour.

Pihu Malhotra >

To Dr Arman Kashyap

Hi Dr Arman,

This could be my last mail. To you or to anyone. The disease has progressed to its last stage. It took me twenty minutes to type this. I am constantly exhausted. It’s like a big boulder is crushing my lungs, snuffing the life out of me. I need assistance for everything now. I can’t even clean myself after going to the washroom. I am sure you know what happens. My parents are being brave. They don’t cry in front of me. I spend my hours sleeping or smiling at my relatives. They know I am dying too. It’s a strange feeling. I am scared at times. Sometimes I think about how I am going to die. Will my lungs collapse? Or my heart? And then I am relieved at times. It’s going to be over. I ask my father to read me my books from medical school.
Maybe I will be a doctor in some other life, if there is anything like that. I just want to thank you for replying to my mails and showing me your research website. It meant a lot. Thank you. I need to go now. Best of luck.

Regards

Pihu Malhotra

From what she had learnt about the disease, she knew she didn’t have more than three months to live; some doctors gave her even less. The fear in her parents’ eyes multiplied every day, their grief slowly becoming unbearable for them. During those days, her relatives and cousins had started to drop in to see her for the last time. Pihu, confined to her bed, would smile at them. And cry when she would be alone. For the most part of the day, she would sleep. Her body, whatever was left of it, was constantly tired and exhausted.

She began to get bedsores. Her mom would spend hours shifting and rolling her on the bed to prevent the infections from the bedsores from spreading. They only became worse. She would stay up and cough for hours on end. Saliva drooled from her mouth but she couldn’t bring a hand up to wipe it. Day after day, she would spend all her time lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling as her father read to her from medical books and journals. She could only talk in mumbles; her tongue had become weak too. She was trapped in her dying body, waiting for death to come.

Her father clicked pictures of her every day, trying to capture his daughter for the last few times. Visiting doctors always left the home with their heads hung low. They knew the next time they could find her dead.

A few days after she sent her last mail, a package arrived at the front door with Pihu’s name on it. Her father opened the box gingerly. The contents were wrapped very carefully in bubble wrap. There was a spiral-bound file of papers and a box with syringes, bottles of coloured liquids and capsules.

‘What’s this?’ her father asked as he sifted through the contents.

She shook her head and looked at the letter that lay with everything on the bed. Her dad read the letter, which stated in clear, simple words that these were the medications they were trying out on the clinical-trial patients at GKL Hospital. The handwriting was lucid, not like a doctor’s.

Dear Pihu,

Follow the instructions as written in the file. Keep it to yourself and your family. Don’t get doctors involved. The drugs have a reasonable success rate at our hospital. They stall symptoms in some cases. They reverse the effects in others. Think before you decide. Don’t hold me liable.

Regards.

Her father looked at her for an explanation and she told him about the mails and the website. She asked her dad to read the file that had all the details about the progress of the patients the medicines had been tried on. They spent the whole night reading through every case, every patient and every dosage that she had to take. Whether she should take the medication or not was a no-brainer. She was dying. She had just three months to live, give or take a few weeks. A 20 per cent chance of living was an infinitely better option than to continue living like the undead for the next few months,
and then, in any case, die. She made her father learn how to use the syringes. After a few times of puncturing his own veins, he got the hang of it. From the next day, she was on the medication. For the first few times, his fingers trembled every time he had to pierce Pihu’s flesh. And then it became easier.

Slowly, things changed. Two months later, she mailed the doctor again.

Pihu Malhotra >

To Dr Arman Kashyap

Hi Dr Arman,

I am better. It is working. For the first time, I took solid food. Thank you.

Regards

Pihu Malhotra

With the mail, she attached a report she and her father had maintained for tracking her progress. The experimental drugs were working on her. She wasn’t coughing relentlessly any more and had regained some of her strength. She could sit up and read on her own. The sensation in her hands was coming back, though they were still far from being perfect. Her parents were happy they were getting their daughter back.

But things weren’t as rosy as they seemed to be. A month later, Dr Arman asked her father to get her admitted to the hospital. The symptoms had shown relapse in the case of many patients in the clinical trials.

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
diya
s 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 failed her. 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.
Within minutes 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 it. 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.