by Durjoy Datta
She calls on that number. It still isn’t answered. Why hasn’t the cab reached yet? She leaves the soup unfinished and switches off the television. She calls again and there’s still no answer. She holds her head and is trying to tell herself that maybe he missed his flight, maybe the flight was diverted, maybe he slept in the cab . . . and just then, the doorbell rings. It’s like a weight lifted all her shoulders!
‘Thank God!’ Avanti’s eyes tear up.
In those brief moments she had imagined the worst things in the world. She imagined her world end with Devrat. She found herself trading with God, every good memory, every bit of happiness in the future, for Devrat to be at her door, unharmed. She checks herself in the blackness of the television and gets the door. Outside there’s a man hidden behind a huge bouquet of flowers. And he’s not Devrat.
‘This is for you,’ the man says. ‘Happy Anniversary!’ The man places the bouquet of flowers on the table and gives her a card which says, Can’t wait to be with you, Devrat.
Avanti hugs that bouquet of flowers, and though it might be psychological, she can smell him in those flowers. She reads the little card again. There’s something about Devrat’s words, even the ones that are seemingly mundane and boring, that stirs Avanti. Smiling, she calls Devrat again, already imagining him bursting through the door, sweeping her off her feet, dropping her on the bed, and kissing her till they are both out of breath. The call is received after five rings and she starts to scream. ‘I just got the flowers! They are beautiful. And so is the card. But just the seven words? That’s kind of unfair, isn’t it? Never mind! Where are you? It’s been so long! When you didn’t pick up the call, I got so scared. NEVER DO THAT TO ME AGAIN! I’m tired of you keeping your phone on silent. Now, where are you? I’m getting old just waiting for you!’
There’s silence on the other side.
‘Ma’am.’ It’s the voice of a woman.
‘Who’s this?’ asks Avanti.
‘This is the trauma centre of Eight Hills Hospital. The owner of this phone was severely injured in a road accident.’
Avanti sees her world crumbling. She falls to the ground and she passes out.
Twenty-Three
Avanti was the first one to reach the hospital and she was the first one to see Devrat’s broken and bleeding body. There was the police and the howling family of the dead driver nearby. Her heart was beating so fast that she thought she would faint soon. There were no answers given to her in the first couple of hours that she went rushing from one place to another, slowly losing her mind. She was the one who had called Devrat’s parents and told them about the accident. Her mother had shouted in a voice that echoed a grief that only a mother can feel. Devrat’s father, in his broken voice, had told Avanti that they would be there soon. Although Avanti felt like she had killed them already.
She hadn’t been able to say a word or even cry until her father flew down to Mumbai, and she broke down in his arms, crying like a hurt animal, crying for hours, remembering Devrat’s smashed jaw and his twisted leg and the pool of blood he was in. ‘He will be okay . . . he will be okay . . .’ she had kept muttering to her father.
Before her father had joined her, she was the next of kin to Devrat, running around, filling forms, trying to make sense of what doctors were trying to tell her and all she could make out were words that spelled doom—fracture, rupture, heart, rib cage, blood loss. She had just nodded, shaking her head in disbelief, just mumbling over and over again if Devrat would be okay, if Devrat would be okay, if Devrat would be okay . . .
The pain was physical, and she could feel it in her own body. She had seen Devrat, unconscious, lying on the bed, while they prepared the Operation Theatre. She had seen him bleed, and she had bled with him. Her puppy, her little puppy, was wrapped in blood-soaked sheets and she felt her heart explode and she felt she had just died.
When she saw his broken hand, the same hands she had held for hours, she couldn’t breathe. She had fallen to the ground gasping for breath, and she vomited. Those first few moments were of immense trauma and she kept going back to the OT door still thinking that all of this is a dream and Devrat is still out there singing and all the blood, that awful blood, was not Devrat’s but someone else’s.
For the next three days, Devrat underwent a host of surgeries to save his internal organs. He had already slipped into a coma, a defensive mechanism of the body to save itself from the pain, and all Avanti could think of was her pain, how every part of her wanted to die and never wake up, how she desperately strained her brain to wake up from this awful dream, how she cursed everything and everyone, how she still cried in disbelief that all this was truly happening.
Devrat was in there and they were slowly cutting him apart, making him bleed, putting him back together and the thought always made her sick in the stomach. On the second day itself, Avanti had fainted and contracted a fever and no matter how hard her father, or Devrat’s parents, who themselves were devastated to say the least, tried she refused all medication till the time doctors told them some good news.
Every time the doctors used to come and tell them that they were repairing some or the other organ or tissue or bone, Avanti would want to shout at them for even daring to touch Devrat. Avanti had lashed out against the doctor who had asked if Devrat had signed any organ donation forms; she had tried to hit the doctor and had asked him to shut up and do his fucking job even as her father held her back.
During the first week, she had wanted to barge into the OT and wanted to bellow at the doctors who were nothing but incompetent fools and she would often shout that outside till the time she was threatened to be thrown out. She wouldn’t sleep, she wouldn’t eat and she wouldn’t stop pacing around in the hospital.
Even after the seventh day, there were surgeries every day, there were doctors running to his room and performing emergency tests and operations and every time Avanti read panic on the doctors’ faces, she had wanted to go and hold Devrat’s hand and tell him not to go, to stay with her. There were times she would start laughing while was crying, still hoping that all this is a dream and she’s back in her room in Dehradun, and all this will be gone when she wakes up the next morning.
That day, Avanti was sitting on a corner bench, crying when a senior doctor told Devrat’s parents, ‘We have done the surgeries. He’s stable now. But he’s still in a coma. His body has started to heal but he still hasn’t gained consciousness. We will have to wait and see when that happens.’
‘Wait? What do you mean wait?’ asked Avanti angrily.
‘You can’t tell about these situations, Avanti. It could be today, tomorrow, next week or next month. We can’t say conclusively.’
‘WHAT do you mean you can’t say conclusively?’ grumbles Avanti and her father restrains her from standing up and hitting the doctor.
‘We are doing the best we can,’ said the doctor and asked if he could talk to Devrat’s father alone.
Avanti had slumped on the chair, and when everyone was talking to the doctors, she sneaked past them and entered Devrat’s room. The room’s quietude was punctured by the beeping sounds of the machines that had kept Devrat alive. Devrat was lying on the bed, barely alive, battered and bandaged almost beyond recognition. Avanti’s tears kept streaking down her cheek, uninhibited. He had been put together, there were bandages and stitches all over his body, her little puppy was barely in one piece. Quietly, she went and sat beside him and kissed him on his ear, the only part that was not bandaged, and whispered, ‘Happy Anniversary, puppy.’
She started to cry.
Twenty-Four
It’s been eighteen days and Avanti hasn’t stopped crying.
‘You should go home,’ Avanti’s father tells her. ‘I will stay here for the night.’
It has been eighteen days since the first anniversary of their relationship and Devrat is yet to wake up from his sleep and wish Avanti. Eig
hteen nights ago, Devrat’s cab was rammed into by a truck moving at a high speed. The driver died on the spot and Devrat’s body had to be fetched out from the mangled remains of the car using flame-cutters. His rib cage was shattered, the bones on his right leg were crushed to smithereens and he had multiple fractures in both his arms. The surgery took more than seventy-two hours and a team of doctors working in tandem to save Devrat’s, Avanti’s puppy’s, life. And though he was bandaged and stitched up, he still wasn’t awake. Excessive head trauma had sent him into a coma and he’s yet to wake up from it. His mind and his body are numb. He’s unconscious and he can’t feel anything. The doctors haven’t told them conclusively about when, if at all, he will wake up, if at all.
She has spent the morning talking to Devrat and he’s yet to answer her. ‘I have been counting days, Devrat. And I’m angry with you. We are still to celebrate our year end and you’re sleeping,’ says a crying Avanti. ‘I don’t know what I did wrong but you need to wake up and listen to me. It’s been eighteen days today and I haven’t left the hospital yet because I know you will wake up soon and I want to slap you when you do so. Probably I will kiss you before I slap you, but I will slap you, and you’re not getting away with this. Why are you doing this to me, Devrat? Please wake up!’ She slumps on the bed Devrat’s on, heavily bandaged. ‘Please don’t do this to me, puppy. I love you, please wake up. You have no idea how I have spent these eighteen days. I’m sorry for whatever I might have done wrong, but please forgive me and come back. I got your anniversary card, and also the flowers, but I need to give you my gift as well. You sleeping like this just isn’t fair. You not answering is not fair. How can you do this, Devrat? I don’t know what I would do without you. Your fans, even the ones in Dehradun, are angry that you’re doing this. Please drop the act and please wake up, baby. I swear I will be a good girlfriend and always talk about your masculinity loudly and passionately enough for people to believe me. I swear I will be everything you wanted me to be, but please wake up.’ She breaks down in tears and starts to howl when the nurses take her to waiting room.
In the past few days, every time she has seen him, he seemed to be teasing her, smiling in his sleep. Who knows what he’s dreaming about? Maybe he’s singing songs, or maybe writing long letters to other girlfriends, or enjoying the attention at the bar he’s performing—all the things that make Avanti envious. All she wants is to shake Devrat up from his sleep, or be with him in his dreams.
She has lost a lot of weight in the past few days; her eyes are bloodshot for she hasn’t slept properly in days. The first day she walked into the hospital, in the tracks she wore for Devrat, she sat crying on a steel bench for the entire time he was in surgery. The doctors had told her and Devrat’s parents that his condition was slightly improving. She has barely moved from that bench in the last eighteen days. She thinks it’s the key to Devrat’s recovery.
‘It’s been almost three weeks,’ says Avanti’s father. ‘You can come here tomorrow morning? I will get you.’
Avanti shakes her head. ‘I can’t go home.’
‘Yes, shona, you can go home. We will wait here,’ Devrat’s mother tells her. ‘Go and sleep and come here fresh tomorrow morning.’
‘She’s right. Don’t worry. If anything happens, we will call you,’ Devrat’s father says.
‘NO! NO! NO! Stop saying that! Why don’t you get it?’ howls Avanti. ‘I can’t move from here. The doctor told us that his health was improving and I was sitting RIGHT HERE! I CAN’T MOVE FROM HERE!’ She’s crying and bawling and the others in the waiting room look at her. A few nurses come to tell her to be a little quieter. Devrat’s father tells the nurse that he will take care of her.
‘I can’t go, I can’t go,’ a sobbing Avanti mumbles into her father’s shirt.
‘You don’t have to go,’ says her father and wipes the tears and running nose with his shirt, just like he used to when she was a little child.
Devrat’s parents are sitting on the bench facing Avanti. Devrat’s mother is holding Avanti’s hand and is trying not to break down. Avanti has spent most of the time with Devrat’s mother. They have taken turns crying on each other’s shoulders, while Devrat’s father has maintained a stoic demeanour and have done the running around, along with Avanti’s father. There have been times when Avanti has seen Devrat’s father on his knees, crying, in the dead of the night, in corners of empty corridors, his voice echoing through the still of the night. That’s what fatherhood means; to be a hero, no matter how old you are.
‘It’s cold,’ says Avanti, and her father wraps around a shawl around her. ‘I will stay here.’
Devrat’s mother sits next to Avanti, rubs her hand, and tells her that she can stay if she really wants to be here. Avanti puts her head on Devrat’s mother’s shoulder and both of them start sobbing softly. Both the fathers leave to check with the doctors.
An hour later, Devrat’s mother is sleeping with her head on Avanti’s thigh, and Avanti’s trying hard to recreate the first anniversary in her head. It should have been so different. If only she had not asked Devrat to come to Mumbai a day earlier, this would never have happened. Devrat would never have got into the cab, the car would have never driven into by the truck, and Devrat wouldn’t have been bandaged and lying like a corpse on a hospital bed. It’s because of her that this happened. She’s the guilty one. She should have been on the bed instead of him, she should have been in that accident, and she should have been the one being fed through tubes.
She should have been sleeping. He should have been the one mourning. She would happily switch places with him for the pain is too much to bear.
She sleeps by Devrat’s mother’s side. Another day passes by, and she still hasn’t heard Devrat talk. Slowly, it’s killing her. Her pity for Devrat is turning to anger and irritation. What does he have to lose? He’s sleeping like a child, like he always does, unmindful of what he’s making others around him go through. It’s like he’s back to the old Devrat again. The closed, pain-in-the-ass Devrat. Why doesn’t he hear his father’s cries? Why doesn’t he see that his mother is dying every day? Why can’t he see what he’s making Avanti go through? Why can’t he man up and just get up? What would it take for him to do that?
There are times through the day when Avanti breaks down in tears and starts shouting at Devrat’s door, and it takes quite a few nurses to restrain her and calm her down. In protest, Avanti mutters that she wouldn’t leave the hospital till Devrat wakes up.
And Devrat doesn’t wake up for the next sixty-two days.
Twenty-Five
Devrat has shrivelled up in the past twelve weeks that he has been lying in a comatose stage. He has lost over ten kilos. And with him, Avanti has shrivelled. She’s a shadow of her earlier self. Though the elders have tried to make her eat, she has become hard to talk to. She’s always on the edge, always a little angry, always a little suicidal, always on the verge of tears. Sometimes, she collects herself and acts mature and at others she’s howling in the middle of the night.
She has always been an overtly optimistic girl, but nothing about Devrat’s condition is optimistic. The frequent checks of the doctors have lessened to a trickle and there’s nothing modern medicine can do for Devrat. It’s an unending wait for him to wake up. She has spent days talking to Devrat, telling him how much everyone misses him, hoping that somewhere deep inside he’s listening. ‘I know you’re in there somewhere, Devrat. And this trick of yours is really sad. I’m closing my eyes now and the next time I open them, I should see you awake and singing my best song to me. Be the boyfriend this girl needs, not the boyfriend this girl deserves. I know, I know it’s a bad rip off of Batman’s line, but it’s the best I can come up with.’
The crying has now lessened a little, but the hurt hasn’t. Instead of a piercing sadness, there’s a sense of gloom that has descended over Avanti and Devrat’s parents that seems to have changed their DNA. Now it
’s like they have never been happy. Their faces, their bodies, their hearts, and their spirits have weathered, and they are broken now.
Avanti spends entire days Googling about people who have been in a coma and she knows people have woken up after years. So there’s hope, but the wait is slowly draining Avanti of all her strength. It doesn’t help to see Devrat treated a like a corpse by the nurses and the doctors. One cursory look, one tick on their papers and they move on; to them Devrat is just a few lines on the monitor of the ventilator.
‘He’s IN THERE!’ she had shouted at a nurse who was trying to flip Devrat on his side. It’s done to avoid bed sores but the nurses do it with a disgusted look on their faces and Avanti can’t stand it. ‘JUST GO! I WILL DO IT! DARE YOU TOUCH HIM WITH THAT SMUG FACE.’ Avanti had taken care of Devrat since that day. She doesn’t let anyone touch Devrat now. Be it cleaning his sores or massaging him, she’s clear that only she or Devrat’s mother will do it.
More days pass by. The wait for Devrat to wake up has been endless and unfruitful. Hope has been replaced by a fearful wait. Devrat’s condition has been more or less the same in the past three months and eighteen days. Avanti is yet to go home, and even though the doctors have tried to convince her to go home, she’s not giving in. She hasn’t walked out of the hospital since she came in. Her father has been talking to psychiatrists and other doctors to see if there’s anything wrong with her, if the trauma of seeing Devrat slowly die has affected her mental balance. The doctors have talked to her but have found nothing wrong. What could have they found anyway? What would they have diagnosed? That Avanti’s in love? Where’s the explanation to that? To everyone else, the notion of her sitting there, the girl on that steel bench, counting hours, is stupid. She just knew Devrat for 365 days. And it’s been ninety-eight days already that she has been away from him, that he has been sleeping, oblivious to the pain he’s causing the ones who are waiting outside.
