Till the Last Breath . . . (11 page)

‘If you keep sneaking out like this, you will take more time to get better,’ she whispered.

‘More nights like these and I won’t mind staying here a bit longer,’ Dushyant said and felt someone else had said it. He
had just flirted with her.
Why did I do that?
Zarah smiled and told him she would see him tomorrow. They shook hands and she left the room. There was something about her, this doctor.

He knew she was hiding something from him, something about her parents. Whatever the reason for her sadness, it only made her alluring and desirable. Like an antique table that has character, the flaws—the tiny slit marks on her wrists—made her more beautiful. The layers to Zarah made her more intriguing. Even more beautiful than she was. For the first time since he had woken up in the hospital, he felt better.

He was still dazed from the weed and the calm Zarah had helped instil in him when he heard someone sobbing softly from the other side of the curtain. He leant in the direction of the sound and saw Pihu’s father sitting near her feet. Pihu was sleeping and so was her mom. The man just caressed the toes of his little girl and kissed them lovingly, with tears in his aching eyes. His eyes were pure, black sadness.

Dushyant’s breath stuck in his throat and he felt hollow inside. He wondered what Pihu had. He put his head back on the pillow and wondered if his dad would ever sit next to him and cry for having lost him.

Kajal was the third daughter of a rich business family based in Punjabi Bagh, New Delhi. Aseem Khurana, her father, dealt in converting unsuspecting animals into bags, shoes, clothes and the like. Getting into fashion and leather designing seemed like obvious career choices for the two elder daughters in the family. Kajal, younger by ten and twelve years to her sisters, was the spoilt one. By the time she entered college, both her sisters were happily married and, more importantly, incredibly successful businesswomen. The leather factory now had showrooms and boutiques all over the northern region. Money was never an issue. The smallest car she had ever driven was a puny Volkswagen Beetle that cost her father a small fortune. In spite of the abundant money and the cradling comfort, Kajal grew up to be a very sensitive, simple girl with a magical voice and a penchant for reading. She never shopped, never hankered for an iPhone or that awesome-little-black-dress-for-the-party-next-weekend, and was never comfortable in chauffeur-driven cars. Her only loves were music and books, which she indulged in with wholesome passion.

No one expected her to choose science after her tenth board examinations, but she did. The bigger surprise came when she cracked the entrance examination and made it to a premier engineering college. Her parents—not really impressed with their daughter getting into a
boys’
field—wanted her to go to London and study literature. But she was dead set on studying engineering. Her sisters, headstrong and no-nonsense, asked her to chase her dreams and make something of herself. They were sure Kajal would bring in the next wave of technology.

Three years later, Kajal was disillusioned and wanted to quit college. Fluid dynamics, Fourier transforms and the like were not things she was interested in; she was just good at them.

Kajal was the apple of her parents’ eyes; her wants were always put first. When she had first mentioned her discontentment—after her break-up with Dushyant—her dad had arranged for prospectuses of colleges in London where she could study literature. Or journalism. Or whatever young girls with kohl-lined eyes, dressed in kurtas, studied abroad. A little part of her had wanted to go. Not because it was the calling of her life, which she had conveniently ignored, but because she had wanted to run away. Only if she had left for London instead of continuing here, she would have never gone through the turmoil she faced now. The news of Dushyant’s illness had shattered her. The severity of his disease had been keeping her awake for days now. Varun hadn’t been helpful at all. With his eyes glued to the presentation on his laptop, he had asked her to
get over it
.
Dushyant would have listened to me and not asked me to get over it if the roles were reversed
, she thought. Against her good sense, she had gone to see him at the hospital, only to get ridiculed and be thrown out.

As she made her way back to the auto she had come to the hospital in, she felt her grief first swell her heart, and then her eyes. For more than two years, she had tried to cut off that part of her life which Dushyant had been a huge chunk of. But the moment she set her eyes on him, her heart called out to her, jolting it out of its slumber.

The contours of his face had hardened, the eyes were sunken, the beard was unshaved, but the sincerity in his eyes screamed for attention. The goodness of his heart, which nobody else but she could see, called out to her. It was as if two years had meant nothing, just a blip on the time–space continuum. Within an instant, she was back to the day he had first talked to her in the library. Since the break-up, she hadn’t gone back there. There were a lot of places they had been to together and a lot of things they had done together that had lost their charm once they parted ways. The library didn’t feel the same, the golgappas had lost their tang, and the late-evening walk in the park felt like a chore.

The autorickshaw drive to Varun’s place was shorter than she would have liked.
Don’t go
, a voice inside her screamed as she paid the auto driver and then climbed up the stairs to the lobby of the fifty-storeyed apartment building in Connaught Place where Varun lived alone. His apartment was on the thirty-eighth floor from where one could enjoy a brightly lit view of Delhi at night. She had lost count of the nights she had spent staring aimlessly into space while Varun prepared for his next big meeting.

‘What took you so long?’ Varun asked as he opened the door. He was still in his office clothes. A finely striped shirt, now hanging over his crisp, ironed trousers. Varun was ageing faster than normal and looked more like thirty-two. He was ageing gracefully, though; the greys in his hair were patterned and looked good on him.

‘I stopped by at the hospital. I wanted to see how Dushyant was doing,’ she said. She searched for any change in the expression on his face. Disappointed, she looked away.

‘Want a drink?’ he asked.

‘I don’t drink.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yes.’

Kajal was annoyed. He had known her for ever. How could he overlook such details? It wasn’t the only thing, though. Time and again, she had chosen to forgive him, blaming it on the age difference, on the difference in the kind of lives they led and the kind of people they inherently were. They were both born into money, but while Varun had grown up to appreciate the luxuries of life, Kajal still loved her novels, her music and the dirty spice of street food more.

‘Won’t you ask how he was? How things went?’ she said, trying to incite him, to elicit a reaction of any sort from him. His calm demeanour, his uncaring self and absolute lack of possessiveness irritated her. Sometimes, she wished he would shout at her, scold her and threaten to leave her. Do something that would make her feel important, loved. Anything that would make her feel more than a useless piece of furniture you turn to when tired. A few months back, she had even posted pictures of her with a guy Varun didn’t like, on Facebook. Still no response. Just a shrug and he moved on.

‘How’s he?’

‘He is alive. He has tumours and a failing liver.’

‘Will he live?’

‘I think he will, but he is in real bad shape,’ she said and added to exaggerate, ‘Though the doctors aren’t very hopeful. They are still to figure out many symptoms.’

‘I hope he gets well soon. He was always a little screwed up,’ he said and sat at a distance. One leg calmly crossed over
the other, and he reached for the remote. ‘Want to watch a movie today?’

‘Isn’t that what we do every day?’ she asked, now angry. ‘And I just told you someone is dying and this is your reaction?
Let’s watch a movie?
Do you even care about what I want?’

Her eyes sized up the guy she had been with for two years. He wasn’t the same guy she had known when she was younger—the older, wiser guy who could make everything all right with just a few kind words. Their perspectives were different now, and that had more to do with her discontentment than the seven-year age difference between them.

‘I am not having this fight again today!’ he growled, his voice rising.

‘WHY NOT? It’s not that we meet every day. Half the time, you’re out of town, and when you do have time for me, all you do is get drunk and fuck me. Or well, watch a movie.’

‘Excuse me—’

‘I am tired of this, Varun!’

‘Is this because of that guy you saw in the hospital?’

‘His name is Dushyant. Do you remember? Dushyant. I dated him before I dated you.’

‘I DO REMEMBER,’ he snapped. They were standing right next to each other. Varun towered over Kajal who was staring right at him. ‘The bastard who hit you and you came crying to me!’ he shouted, his hands flailing all over the place.

‘Just because he hit me doesn’t make you better, Varun. Day after day, I wait for you to come back to Delhi so that we can spend a little time together. And what do you do? You just call me over. I am done being your slut—’

‘I never said that.’

‘But you do treat me like that, Varun,’ she argued. ‘I wasted so many years on you. Understanding you, being with you when
your meetings didn’t go well, trying to get what you’re going through … and what do I get? The guy I am with still offers me a drink when he knows that I don’t drink!’

‘I am sorry—’

‘No,
I
am sorry!’ she said, tears flirting with her eyelashes. She got up and started walking towards the door.

‘You can’t go—’

‘I need some time,’ she said and closed the door of his plush apartment behind her. Deep inside, she knew she was never coming back. By the time she got into an auto to go back to her college, the tears had dried up. But the realization of what life had come to struck with full force. She decided she would go back to the hospital again some day. As the kilometres clocked in between her and the posh building Varun lived in, she wondered how far away they were from each other. She had never been the one for him. His work was his only passion. She was always the mistress.

The voices of her sisters rang in her head as she snuggled into bed that night. They hated Dushyant as much as they loved Varun. The news of Dushyant slapping her was hard for them to digest.
It’s just the start of an abusive relationship
, they had said. And she had believed them.
That’s how it all starts
, they had insisted.

During the years she had spent with Varun, she had missed the passion, the madness, her torrid relationship with the guy she knew the best—Dushyant—and most of all, she missed the way she was when she was with him.

The reports were a mess. A million different problems and a zillion possible reasons behind them. Treat one symptom and it might play havoc with the other problem. Arman’s brain had reduced to slush, concentrating on Dushyant’s case and isolating the primary debilitating cause. There were too many things tripping over each other in his head. He had been thinking about Pihu and her progressive condition. But it wasn’t just the disease he was thinking about, and that’s what bothered him the most. He was thinking about
her
.

He was itching to see her again, to watch her regale him with her silly stories, see her giggle like a little kid and get excited by the littlest of things. She was unbelievably alive for someone who was dying. He was thinking about the promised date but alternately, he was also thinking about adopting the tiny ball of cuteness.

The clinical trials were not the reason for his sleepless nights, it was
her
—the infectious smile, the exuberance, the will to live, the courage and the undying love for medicine. Being a specialist in ALS cases, Arman knew what lay ahead
of Pihu if the treatment didn’t work. Pihu knew it too. Just like the last time, she would die a slow, excruciating death … The very thought made him shift uncomfortably in his seat. Worse still, she would die on the operating table.

He had seen his patients lose the use of their limbs, breathe laboriously, lie on a bed for days, wallow in self-pity, curse their lives, and die. He shuddered.

Dushyant’s reports were leading him nowhere. A smattering of guilt crept in. Every minute he spent thinking about Pihu and her affliction meant a minute of extra suffering for the patient on the other bed. Not that he ever cared for patients like Dushyant who had a death wish. From steroids to drugs to other banned narcotics, his body was a noxious cocktail of toxic chemical compounds. Arman left the room to talk to Dushyant and check if he had missed something in the preliminary tests. He walked the empty hallways of the hospital alone. It was three in the night and he could hear the incessant snoring in the hallways, the creepy crickety sounds of the crickets and despite these noises, the deathly silence of the hospital. A handful of people still hung around. The night-duty ward boys, some odd doctors going through the motions like zombies, the nurses, and a few grieving relatives sprawled on the benches.

In the past month, he had been to his house just thrice, and that, too, when he’d run out of his white shirts. He had now resorted to ordering his shirts online from an e-retailer—
White Shirt, Large, Quantity: 5, Cash on Delivery.
It was convenient. Not having to choose what to wear meant a few hundred hours more to live. What would Dushyant and Pihu not give to have those extra few hours?

‘Still here?’ a voice said from behind. It was the Head of Department, Oncology.

‘Had something to do,’ Arman answered.

‘You always have something to do,’ the man said and walked off, smiling. He would probably go home, gorge on home-cooked rice and dal, and curl up with his wife and sleep. For Arman though, it was a constant state of insomnia. His body had adapted to endure long hours without complaint. A few hours a day of sleep on his couch sufficed. Of late, his mom had started flooding his inbox with the CVs and pictures of
Slim, Convent-educated, MBA/Engineer/Doctor girls from Good Family Backgrounds
whom he could get married to, but he never opened any. His family thought pinning him down in wedlock was the only way to slow him down.

He pushed open the door to the ward. The lights were switched off and he slowly adjusted himself to the ambient light of the room. He checked the numbers and the crooked lines on the small monitors. Dushyant was lying on his side, peacefully for a change. Arman picked up the chart and looked over the sheet.
What bullshit
, a voice screamed inside him.

‘Hi!’ a warm, fuzzy voice greeted him. He turned to see Pihu’s half-open, sleep-battered eyes on him. Her smile made him feel enveloped in a warm blanket with a hot coffee on a rainy Sunday, the kind of smile that shines on an office-goer’s wife’s face after he returns from a long, harrowing day at work.

‘Hi!’ Arman responded.

‘Did you come to see me?’ Pihu asked. Her expectant, doe-like eyes made him lie.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘You’re even cuter when you lie. I told Venugopal that. He said I was crazy.’

‘Who’s Venugopal? Should I be jealous?’ Arman played along. He hung the chart back on Dushyant’s bed.

‘You could be. He’s very good-looking, after all.’

‘Better than me? I doubt that. Did I tell you how many girls I dated back in college? I was pretty popular, you know?
I don’t think this Venugopal guy could beat me. So, is he better than me?’ Arman grinned playfully.

‘No, I lied.’

‘You shouldn’t lie to a doctor, you know?’

‘You shouldn’t lie to a patient, you know?’

‘I didn’t,’ Arman argued.

‘You did. You’re not here for me, are you?’ She scrunched her nose in fake anger.

‘What if I am?’ Arman asked and sat on Dushyant’s bed, facing her. It wasn’t really a lie. Going all the way to Dushyant’s room was his subconscious making a decision to be close to Pihu again.

‘I told you it’s hard to stay away from me,’ she said.

‘You never said that.’

‘I am saying it now and you better believe it,’ she quipped. ‘Will he be okay?’ The worry in her eyes bothered him, made him feel responsible.

‘You seem to be concerned. You picked this room after you met him, didn’t you? Zarah told me.’

‘You seem to be concerned about why I picked this room,’ she giggled. ‘Oh, now I get it! That’s why you never liked him—because you thought I have a thing for him. And you know, I
could
have a thing for him! He is quite a badass and badasses are cool. You know he snuck out of the hospital to have a joint? How ridiculously cool is that?’

Even in the darkness and the inherent depression of the hospital room harbouring two half-dead people, Pihu’s eyes shone bright. Her spirit was indomitable even when it stared at an inevitable death. But then, what choice did she have but to fight?

‘I never like any of my patients, especially his kind. The kind who ought to be dead before they reach the hospital.’

‘Now you’re just being mean! I don’t like him
that
much!
You really don’t have to be that possessive about me. Oh my God, I need some space. Like—
really
,’ she said and jerked her hands around like a spoilt, high-maintenance girlfriend with Gucci shades and razor-sharp five-inch heels. He laughed at her imitation.

‘I was serious though,’ he said finally.

‘You can’t be serious. Isn’t that why we took up medicine? To save lives and to heal people? No one deserves to die,’ she reasoned.

‘I am not being mean. And I am not saying he deserves to die. I don’t like people throwing their lives away.’

‘You’re throwing your life away too.’

‘I’m not.’

‘You work too much. I know you have a responsibility towards the patients who come here. But you also have a responsibility to take care of yourself, which you clearly aren’t doing.’

‘Fine, grandma! And this from a girl who keeps smiling all day just because she doesn’t want to see her family cry? Are you taking care of
yourself
?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘You’re taking care of
them
, Pihu. You and I, we are not that different.’

‘We are!’ she defended.

‘Don’t lie to me. I just told you that. Don’t tell me there aren’t times you want to cry out loud and curse everyone and everything, and throw stuff around, and break people’s heads. Don’t tell me that sometimes you don’t want to grab your crying father by his collar and ask him why it is happening to you and not the guy on the other bed, and that you don’t want to ask your mom to stop sobbing and let you sob instead and throw a tantrum as well,’ he said and fell silent. Pihu didn’t say anything and Arman realized his folly. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘It
just kills me to see you lying there, smiling at everyone, when I know it’s crushing you inside.’

‘I am smiling at you because I am glad you understand,’ she murmured. Arman took her hand in his and caressed the skin which had been punctured time and again with needles. ‘And yes, I do smile for them. But I smile for myself too. My memories of them will be gone as I leave; their memories will stay with them forever. Don’t we all smile for the pictures we click even on the worst picnics? That’s all I want to do. I want to smile for their last pictures of me.’

Arman didn’t know what to say to that. ‘By the way, I notice your parents have finally decided to go home?’

‘Yeah, I threatened them. They had to,’ she answered. Arman chuckled and she wasn’t pleased to see this. ‘Why are you laughing?’

‘You threatened them?’

‘Why? Can’t I? I can be very assertive if I want to be.’

‘I am sure you can. But just to confirm, you threatened real people? Like what did you do? Puffed your mouth and refused to breathe? Who would feel threatened by you?’ he barely suppressed a chuckle.

‘Whatever,’ she grumbled. ‘So tell me, why are you here?’

‘Didn’t you just say it? I found it hard to stay away from you.’

‘Oh, c’mon. I know I am cute and whatever but why would you want to see a dying girl?’ she said and added after an excruciating pause, ‘I am just kidding! You are here to see him, right?’

‘Yes,’ Arman said. ‘You want to know what’s wrong with him?’

‘That’s what I like the most about you. You just know how to turn me on!’ She batted her eyelashes.

‘I’m sorry to disappoint you but we are yet to figure out what’s wrong. I could use your opinion.’

‘Sorry? That’s like multiple orgasms! I can play a real doctor then,’ she said excitedly.

‘Here, then,’ he said and wrapped his stethoscope around her neck. She grinned.

He narrated the reports to her, explaining to her every detail of Dushyant’s case. For the next half hour, she shot dozens of questions at him and he was more than glad to field them. Arman let her put forth her ideas, and though a lot of them were stupid and inane, he didn’t shoot them down outright. After all, the disparity in experience and education was gigantic, and for her age and experience she was annoyingly exceptional.

‘I hope I am not wasting your time?’ she queried after her twentieth idea on how to treat the guy was shot down, after careful consideration and deliberation, by Arman.

‘No, you’re not. It’s good to get some external opinion. Anyway, the doctors around here are not that great!’ he said to encourage her. ‘And if you were to apply for a job here you would so get it. Though I do have to admit we have a strict sleep-with-the-boss policy here.’

She smiled shyly and said, ‘I would take up the job just to be applicable for the policy!’

They laughed till their stomachs felt like they would explode all over the ceiling. Their conversation went from how to treat Dushyant to their respective time in medical school. She regaled an amazed Arman with a multitude of stories from her brief stay in medical school, while a struggling Arman admitted he had no memories of professors, labs and operation theatres or the feeling of cutting open his first corpse. As she described her first incision on her virgin corpse, Arman started to feel as if he was there, with her, holding her hand and guiding the knife as it moved deftly along the ribcage. As if he was a part of that memory. He took pictures of her, of them and of the imaginary corpse.

Once finished, Pihu wanted to know more about the patients he had miraculously treated in his much-talked-about career. ‘There are no miracles, just logic and knowledge,’ Arman said pompously.

‘Fuck off,’ Pihu replied.

He knew he was gifted. He could see beyond the obvious and take radical decisions that no one else would dare take. People wondered at his competence and called him a freak and a genius, but he never gave it a thought and accepted his talents humbly as a gift.

‘So aren’t you worried about him?’ she asked.

‘You really like him, don’t you?’

‘No, I don’t. As a matter of fact, he never talks to me nicely. He abuses me and asks me to mind my own business every time I try to talk to him. I don’t know what his problem is. Maybe he doesn’t like me.’

‘You’re too sweet for your own good,’ he said and added, ‘Let’s teach him a lesson then? No painkillers for him tomorrow.’

‘No, you don’t have to be mean! He is too sick anyway.’

‘He will not be tomorrow. We will make him undergo a liver biopsy and see what’s killing his liver. The tumours or something else,’ he said. ‘For now—no more pain medication. How does that sound as payback?’

‘You’re not doing that!’ she exclaimed even as her lips curved into an impish smile.

‘Watch me.’ He winked, got up and pulled the curtain away. He was about to reach out to the drips but stopped when he noticed Dushyant reach out to his table for a glass of water. Startled to see Arman appear from behind the curtain, he panicked and rolled off the bed. With a loud thud, he fell face-first on the ground. Before Arman could react, Dushyant shrieked out loud, rolled over and clutched his hand.