Till the Last Breath . . . Read online

  ‘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.

  14

  Arman Kashyap

  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.

  ‘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.’
r />   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.