This is what happened yesterday.
I've just woken up feeling tender, as if my skin peeled off me. As if I were just born. The windows and doors have been shut, for noise penetrates and disturbs me. The fan is off, even the mildest breeze feels harsh. I'm cold, sensitive and at lunch I couldn't taste my food.
This morning as I woke up I felt sad. Not recognizably so, just tired, spacey, dazed. There was no real reason, so I pinned it to finding mentions of a former lover with a new woman on a website. This anger- sadness turned around in me as I tried to sense where it was and what it was. But it was time to get ready and leave for the hospital where my father had undergone a Bronchoscopy yesterday.
On route to the hospital I told my cousin that I'd woken up on the wrong side of the bed. It hadn't been long since I stopped seeing somebody and eventhough I've willingly let him go, knowing we're not the best for each other, him meeting another woman still stirred a reaction in me. I guess its ok, I'm only human. He asked me to play music off my phone and when his compositions played, I felt a denseness consume the car. My eyes were caught in a daze and I'd left the car. No matter what I thought, mental solutions are just that, the feeling of loss was there, evidently. Though somewhere I felt, it wasn't the original cause of the my feeling.
As we inched closer this feeling morphed like a cloud blowing one way in the wind. It morphed but persisted.
We reached the hospital and met father. He was fine, primarily concerned about the Rs. 20,000 he'd spent in one test and one night stay at the hospital. Feeling cheated and accounting for everything that had been paid for, he realised a comb and thermometer had not been claimed.
Somewhere around this time, I remembered what was so rotten about this morning. The second before I woke up, I heard on the phone "he's dead". It was part of a dream. It was about papa. I've had these dreams many times and people said if you dream death, you add time to their life.Well, I just left it at that - a dream.
At this moment, a nurse walked in and said Papa needed to get a shot of Vitamin D but the billing was done, so we had to purchase it from the hospital pharmacy and get it administered at the Casualty Dept. After expressing concerns on how much it would cost and why and who and how, we proceeded.
Papa and me got into the lift, while my mother and cousin said they'd come after checking all was done. We got to the ground floor of the hospital and sat on the seats next to the lift. The sadness returned, stronger than before and almost paralyzed me. Even as I write this I can feel the tightness in my belly, shooting pain in my wrists and a collapsedness. I remember getting teary and feeling like a camera panned across the room and settled over me with great focus. A stillness.
A family walked down the stairs. Each of them holding at least 2 plastic bags. A boy, of about 8 or 9, a woman who's face my eyes wanted to caress , a older woman and man, who faced away from me.
The woman by whom my eyes felt called seemed beautiful at first. Her rounded eyelids, nose and lips. The way the eyelids shut and opened had a softness and smoothness. Once the whole picture appeared - soft steps, droopy posture I figured she was extremely exhausted , her eyelids were swollen because she'd probably been crying or awake all night. When she turned to away, I felt she'd given up.(just don't know what)
The doors of the lift opened and people walked out, including mother and cousin. They pulled out a stretcher on wheels with a frail main on a breathing machine. Late thirties. She was his wife, the boy was their son, the older woman his mother. We could hear his breath amplified through the ventilator. I thought he was going to be well, because they were taking him out of the hospital.
Meanwhile mother returned with the injection and we proceeded to the Casualty Ward. "Yes, it cheaper to the get the injection here than with Dr. Palrecha, plus we'd have to go to him, he doesn't visit homes and he'd charge us his usual fee".
We passed the Radiology Room, X-ray, CT Scan and Pathology Lab and I felt a lot of "heavy stuff" happens here. I've never liked the thought of screening someone with these waves. When the door of the lab was opened I felt as if some of this stuff was leaking.
The Casualty Ward, a large room, no patients, mostly machines. We waited as the nurse said someone would do the injection for us. A lot has happened here, my sadness had a place.My eyes circled the rims of channels for curtains that curved around each bed.
Then we heard a stretcher being dragged in, inefficiently so, as they bumped it against the walls of the room. They were in a hurry. On the stretcher was the same man we'd seen outside, with his eyes and mouth wide open. This time we couldn't hear him breathe.
They hurried to move him from the stretcher to the bed opposite my father's. They gathered his lifeless arms and legs together before they lifted him. He didn't seem to register anything. The nurse said over the phone "Dr. Amit, please come down immediately". They spoke frantically
- Where were you taking him? Why? Where is he from?
- He's from your ICU. He's your patient only. We were shifting him to another hospital in the ambulance.
- He's got no pulse.
This hit me. They noticed us and closed the curtains. Where I stood I could still see the monitors. Mother was impatient and wanted our work done so we could leave. I was frozen, a mix of curiosity and concern ran through me. On the monitor I could see 3 flat lines, no movement, no sign of life.
I realised I was clutching my bag very hard. A nurse approached and asked us what we were here for. My mother found a person to be urgent with. I was very angry at this. Somebody was dying next to us, may be was already gone, how could we be concerned about time and a vitamin injection! Every word she said made me angry, also because it asked for my attention against what was happening. Finally, I asked her to keep quiet.
- Does anybody know him?
- Who's he with?
-Where is his family?
I felt I did know him as I stood there. Then she came, his wife, walking very slowly as we were walking out.
I wanted to stay, I felt as if I was part of this. I shared her loss.
I didn't know how. Unexplainable things happen in the middle of these events, underneath the things that happened. They spread like explosions over my body, shinning a strong light, shaking out a sense of knowing. Time waited, moments were longer and there are no words for those moments, and no words, actually there is not much understanding of what was witnessed. In a flash of a second, a life gone. Gone where?
Courage and invisible support to the family.
