Till the Last Breath . . .

by Durjoy Datta

  ‘I think I should talk to his parents,’ she said and left the room.

  It was time for Arman to accept the truth, too. He had most likely failed. She might or might not survive the next surgery. From the cabinet he hardly ever opened, he took out a bottle of Scotch and poured himself a drink. The tan-coloured liquid slipped down his throat smoothly, burning it a little, soothing it a little. He picked up the phone and asked for Pihu’s parents to be sent to his office. As he waited for her parents, he downed two more drinks. The pain, the agony was still there. He saw the parents walking to his door, her father stoic, her mother hysterical.

  ‘What happened to her?’ her dad asked, his forehead riddled with criss-crossed lines.

  ‘I am afraid our treatment didn’t work,’ he said, trying to be as doctor-like and straight-faced as possible.

  ‘What do you mean?’ her mom said, looking at him with the veins in her eyes popping out.

  ‘We have to do another surgery and see if we can make her live a little longer,’ he said. ‘There are chances … but they are minimal. She might not have more than a few days.’

  ‘YOU KILLED HER!’ her mom shouted all of sudden and lunged at Arman, her hands flailing wildly at him as she tried to grab him. Her father tried his best to stop her. Arman just sat there waiting to get hit, thinking it was just. He felt responsible, and if in any way he could assuage the pain of her mother, he was up for it. Her mother kept shouting and repeating that her daughter would have been much better without him, even though her father knew she wouldn’t have. For five minutes, she kept trying to swing at Arman. She threw an odd stapler and the punching machine at him, both of which hit his head as Arman sat there unflinchingly. Finally, tired and wanting to spend time with her daughter, she left the room on the insistence of the father.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Arman said, shaking his head.

  ‘You did all you could do,’ the father responded. ‘Had it not been for you, we wouldn’t have seen her walk again. We would have lost her a long time ago. It’s all thanks to you. I am sorry for my wife. She knows it, too, but you know how it is. She is …’ His voice trailed away as he looked everywhere but at him. If he had worked hard at anything in his life, Arman knew it had been easier than not breaking down in front of Pihu’s dad. Gathering himself together, he patted the shoulder of the father whose eyes, too, had glazed over. And then Arman watched as Pihu’s father couldn’t keep the barrage of tears from streaming down his face. He had spent a year controlling himself, trying to be strong as people around him showered them with sympathy, ignoring the crushing pain inside his chest as he saw his daughter become progressively sicker. Arman looked at him and his own pain seemed like a needle prick. The loss of an only child is the worst pain any one can endure. After all, what do our parents live for? With the best years of their youth gone by, they don’t have any yearnings for comfort or money or fame; all they want is to see us grow up as happy, healthy human beings with all the luxuries that they couldn’t afford. To see years of love, care and upbringing reduce to dust, burnt and buried, takes away everything from a parent. Slowly, the sobs became softer, the shoulder shrugs became more periodic and her father wiped his face with his handkerchief a few times before he thanked Arman.

  ‘Can you tell her? I think she is happy when she is around you,’ he requested, turned and left the room to join his wife.

  The stress ball in Arman’s hand was crushed to the maximum. Darkness enveloped him as he tried to imagine what it would be like to tell her that she might not have long to live. He had practised the speech many times in his head before and it never became easier. He thought he would wait for the test results to come through. Maybe, he had just panicked. It was just one seizure, one blockage, after all. For the next hour, he paced restlessly around the room. After the first few calls, the test lab assistants asked him to wait in the stern voice usually reserved for junior doctors. Finally, the results arrived. He mailed them to his doctor friend immediately. The results were unambiguous and clear. She was dying, and she was dying fast. The next surgery had to be performed as quickly as possible. He braced himself and left for room no. 509.

  He entered the room and found the bed next to Pihu empty. He remembered Zarah’s words: he needs a transplant. Almost to distract himself, he tried to think about how at least Dushyant could be saved. A few more steps and he looked straight at Pihu. She met his eyes and smiled. He knew that she knew, so he decided he wouldn’t beat around the bush. It was as difficult for him as it was for her, he thought.

  ‘Your test results are back,’ he said, his face glum and devoid of happiness. ‘We have to schedule you in for another surgery.’

  ‘I know. What are my chances?’ she said in a very throaty voice. It wasn’t easy for her to talk any more. Her breathing was laboured and she looked drained and tired.

  ‘I don’t know, I can’t say. Your immune system is a little weak for the procedure, but there is no way out,’ he clarified.

  Her eyes glazed over as she looked at the ceiling. ‘I will die,’ she whispered and tears flowed. Arman felt like cutting out his heart and giving it to the little girl whose spirit to live was undefeatable. There she was, confined to the bed, most of her limbs useless, and she still wanted to live.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ he said and put his hand on her cheek.

  ‘I am not afraid of dying,’ she said. ‘I have seen that happening to me before. I am ready for that. I am afraid of being forgotten. I am scared of where I will go after this is over. I am afraid of what will happen to my parents. All these months, I have stayed up nights, crying, thinking of how my dad will react when I am gone. I know he doesn’t show much, but I know, inside, he is a broken man. My mother, who brought me up, whose only dream was to see me as a beautiful bride with many kids, what will happen to her? All they lived for was me. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be, is it? Why do they have to suffer? Haven’t I suffered enough? What had I done wrong? I had always been a good girl. Why me? Why my family? Why should I die? Why can’t I get married? Spend another night with you? I … am just going to die? Not be here any more?’

  And then, she broke down into sobs; her tears rolled down and wet her pillow. Arman bent over and kissed her forehead.

  ‘Everything will be okay,’ he said, knowing that his promise was empty. He choked on his words.

  ‘It will not be,’ she said from behind the stifled sobs.

  ‘I have something for you,’ he said and reached into his pocket.

  For a moment, Pihu stopped crying and looked straight at him. Had she been able to get up and hug him, she would have. She would have hugged her mom, her dad. She was leaving them behind and going to a world unknown. And though she didn’t know what would happen to her after the last shred of breath would leave her, wherever she would go, she would miss them.

  Arman took out what he had been carrying with him for weeks now. He dangled it in front of her. It was a gold chain. The yellowness of the gold had somewhat waned away, and hanging beneath it was a small diamond of 3 carats, and it was beyond beautiful.

  ‘This is for you,’ he said and gingerly took Pihu’s hand into his and wrapped it thrice around her limp, senseless wrist. Pihu’s eyes sparkled as she gazed at her newly acquired possession.

  ‘That is beautiful.’

  ‘It pales in comparison to you. You’re the most beautiful thing I have ever considered my own. Before you came along, I was a loner, someone who didn’t care about anything but himself, his work, his obsession. But one fine day, you walked into my life, with the help of crutches, no less, and turned it upside down. For the first time, I loved someone more than I have loved myself,’ he said.

  ‘You make even dying beautiful,’ she purred. Her eyes roved around the room and she saw her parents walk inside. Arman noticed their presence, too, and it was his cue to leave.

  ‘I will see you in a bit,’ he said and turned.

  ‘Arman?’ she called out. ‘To whom did this belong?’
She pointed to the chain and the pendant.

  ‘It was my great-grandmother’s. She wanted my beautiful wife to have it,’ he said and left the room with tears in his eyes. Pihu looked at her wrist and the words rung in her head, a beautiful wife. Her life had suddenly changed into an old, predictable movie from the ’90s.

  27

  Kajal Khurana

  Kajal sat in the passenger seat, rubbing her hands together, disappointed. It turned out her blood group wasn’t the same as Dushyant’s. Zarah had reasoned that guys in love often lie about having the same blood groups to make it sound like they are meant to be. Zarah drove on, without saying much. Kajal could sense that she was disturbed.

  ‘Have you ever talked to his parents, Zarah?’ Kajal said trying to break the uneasy silence, though even she was nervous. If Dushyant was ever intimidated by someone, it was his parents, and everyone knew Dushyant wasn’t an easy person to intimidate.

  ‘No, I haven’t. He doesn’t like them. I figured it would be better not to talk to them. I wouldn’t have if we had found a match amongst ourselves,’ Zarah said, her eyes still stuck firmly on the road.

  ‘Ourselves?’ Kajal looked at her in shock. Zarah was caught off guard for a minute—her left hand fumbled with the gear and her eyes roved around nervously.

  ‘I thought I would help out,’ she finally said.

  Kajal didn’t say anything. Slumped back into her car seat, Kajal looked at Zarah’s face. It was apparent that she was no longer just Dushyant’s doctor, she was much more. That night, when Pihu had narrated every detail of every day since Dushyant was first admitted, Kajal had conveniently ignored the parts where she had described a nameless, faceless doctor who never left Dushyant’s bedside. As she saw Zarah’s contorted face, the protruding vein on her forehead, the tense hand that clutched the steering wheel tightly, she knew the faceless doctor was her. And she knew Zarah was not next to Dushyant because her responsibilities as a doctor demanded her to be.

  ‘After the transplant … do you think he will live?’ Kajal asked Zarah, who was lost in her own train of thought.

  After a long pause, Zarah said, ‘Only a slight chance.’

  ‘You didn’t test your compatibility as a donor because you wanted to help out … It was much more, wasn’t it?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Anyway, the two of you seem to be happy around each other. I have seen the look on his face when he talks about you. So this conversation means nothing,’ Zarah said.

  ‘We have a history. I was his only friend,’ she responded.

  ‘Good for you,’ Zarah snapped.

  Kajal was taken aback at Zarah’s curt, almost rude, reply. At a sudden loss for words, she looked away from her and outside the window. It went without saying that in the two years that had passed by, Kajal had missed Dushyant. Even when in Varun’s arms, she used to close her eyes and think about Dushyant and how he was doing. Occasionally, she would get snippets of the fights Dushyant used to get into, the drunken brawls, the skirmishes with hostel guards and the like. Incidents like these had been on the rise after their break-up. Kajal could think of just two reasons for it. Either Dushyant was destroying himself or he was trying to catch her attention, after she had snapped all ties with him. Or both. After a while, he’d stopped. The breaking of college furniture and water coolers, the burning of staff offices, all of this stopped. Or so she thought.

  The gossip died. The bad-boy legend of the college retreated to his room to die a quiet death. There were younger, meaner students baring their teeth in college. Dushyant was no longer trying to catch her attention; he had just spiralled down deeper into his addictions. Alcohol, weed, marijuana, ice, heroin … master of all drugs, jack of none.

  Sometimes, they did cross paths on the streets of the college—Dushyant, often with a cigarette in his hands, Kajal with her eyes dug into her toes. They never talked, avoiding each other in the hallways and the corridors and the labs, if and when there was any crossing of paths. For all she knew, the break-up was a lot harder on Dushyant than it was on her. After all, months after, she was dating Varun with all her heart. Dushyant was the one who moped, cried, drank, destroyed himself further after the break-up, not her.

  The car reached the address. They were modest apartments where people live on for generations, adding a room or two against the government regulations. Zarah double-checked the gate number before she rang the bell. The Diwali lights from last October still hung on the door. There was no conversation between Zarah and Kajal.

  A middle-aged woman opened the gate and asked who they were.

  ‘I am Dr Zarah Mirza, GKL Hospital.’

  ‘What do you want?’ the woman asked.

  ‘We have been treating your son, Dushyant Roy, for the last few weeks. I am afraid his chances are slim and he needs a liver transplant. If things get worse, he might need a kidney transplant too,’ Zarah laid out the facts threadbare, her tone stern. No false assurances.

  The mother looked at her in disbelief and then the truth sank and her knees buckled and her eyes rolled up and she fainted. Both of them reached out to her and prevented her from falling head first on to the concrete floor. They carried her to the sofa inside the house, which was even more modest (or poor looking) than the apartment buildings from outside. A ragged sofa, an old box-type television, a chunky desktop on a table, a rusty single-door fridge and a landline on the small side table. The rest of the evening was easier. Dushyant’s dad appeared, duly shocked to see two girls and his half-conscious wife. Zarah explained the same to him and his eyes had more annoyance and fury than sympathy. He asked for more details and as Zarah told them, the mother kept tugging at the father’s sleeve to take her to the hospital.

  Fifteen minutes later, the parents were following the red Santro to the hospital. The mother had packed lunch for her son who was far from consciousness. During the whole ordeal, Kajal had stood there motionless and not a word had escaped her mouth. Zarah, on the other hand, had been brave and stoic and had managed the father’s anger and the mother’s impatience. Kajal felt insignificant. Guilty. A liability.

  As they reached the hospital, Zarah asked them to wait in Arman’s office and told Kajal to find her own way around. Still taken aback with how Zarah was behaving with her, she felt lost. Or perhaps she had always been lost … ever since that day when she had decided she wouldn’t be with him any more.

  Maybe it was for the best.

  28

  Pihu Malhotra

  Time had stopped for Pihu. Contrasting emotions flooded her head as she went through the motions of the day. Her surgery—the second one—was scheduled for the next day and her fear clawed at her. As long as Arman was with her, she felt calm, but now, alone in the hospital room, she was petrified. Later she would be wheeled into a hospital room and she wouldn’t come out. The thought terrified her. How would her parents react? She started to see herself as a corpse lying on a surgical table with surgeons around her, shaking their heads in disappointment. She was dead. What if she wasn’t? What if she was still trapped inside the dead body, shrieking and trying to catch the attention of the doctors who would just leave the room? Trapped inside her body, what would she do? Beads of sweat trickled down her forehead. She wished her parents were around. Her mother had told her that she would be back. They had some paperwork to take care of. She was sure there would be plenty.

  As she lay there, moving her head restlessly from side to side, three ward boys and a doctor wheeled in a stretcher. Dushyant was back, worse than ever. Just gaining consciousness, his head bobbed from side to side as he groaned in obvious pain. His pain only made it worse for her. Big, round tears peeked out from her eyes. She tried to move her hand to wipe her tears, but she knew that she couldn’t. The doctors left him on the bed and hooked him on to the monitors. They checked for his stats and nodded their heads before leaving the hospital ward. She kept looking at him, wondering if he would ever look her way. And he did.

  ‘How are
you?’ he groaned.

  She smiled. ‘I am good. Or well—as good as I can be.’

  ‘Are you scared?’ he asked.

  ‘Are you?’

  Dushyant nodded. She nodded in return.

  ‘What are the doctors saying?’ she asked.

  ‘I need a transplant. Liver, for sure. Kidneys, too. And still … Anyway, what’s with you?’ he asked.

  ‘Thank you for saving me. I almost died.’

  ‘It was nothing,’ he said.

  ‘You saved my life. It means a lot. But that also proves one thing. Although I am sure you would beg to differ,’ she said with a grin.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘We are room-mates, and we will always have each other’s backs. We are 2-1 now. You’re a better room-mate than I am!’

  ‘Oh, c’mon. My favours were small.’ Dushyant blushed. ‘But fine, if you say I’m leading by 2-1, how can I disagree?’

  Dushyant looked at her and smiled and then they both laughed. They laughed till their stomachs hurt. Days or even hours before their probable last breaths, they shared their first moment of camaraderie.

  ‘What does Arman say?’ Dushyant asked. ‘Are you getting any better?’

  ‘Worse,’ she said and told Dushyant about the surgery and about the possible outcomes. Pihu hadn’t really expected any reaction from Dushyant and was positively surprised when his face turned pale and it looked like he had seen a ghost. He was agitated even behind the pain, his fists were clenched and his face was a tense tangle of muscles and veins. It was only after Pihu repeatedly assured him that she would be okay that he relaxed a bit.

  ‘But at least I am not dying unloved,’ she said and added, ‘No offence.’ With her eyes she pointed to the gold chain and the pendant on her wrist. ‘Arman gave it to me. It was meant for his wife.’ Her face was a million shades of scarlet. ‘And should I add, he used the word beautiful.’