Till the Last Breath . . . (6 page)

‘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 and cruelly 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.

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 me. 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 was swallowed 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 of the 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.