Till the Last Breath . . .

  ‘Aren’t you like the best young doctor in the country? A sensation in the field of medicine?’

  Her words made Arman a little uncomfortable, a little proud of himself and a little happy. The science conferences where people used to glorify his successes never mattered to him. Not even a bit. But her words did and he felt strange about that.

  ‘Some people say that.’

  ‘And won’t you be risking your medical licence, and probably find yourself in jail if anyone finds out about this?’

  ‘More or less,’ he answered.

  ‘So either you are crazy or very confident that this will work,’ she said. Arman noticed her forehead crease. He wished he could tell her that it was neither. Simply put, it was the only way to save her from dying.

  ‘A bit of both.’

  ‘I think it’s your call then,’ she said and smiled. Her doubtless confidence put him slightly off balance. If the treatment didn’t work, he knew he would just accelerate her deterioration and make her die sooner, if not instantly.

  ‘I will think about it,’ Arman said, shaken. He got up from the bed.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘If it doesn’t work?’

  ‘Let’s not talk about it.’

  ‘Like the lyrics of that song, What doesn’t kill you? “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”?’ she asked. He nodded.

  Arman shook her hand and said, ‘Our date is still due.’

  ‘I am looking forward to it. Though I might have a problem with choosing what I’ll wear. I am thinking of being a little bold and wearing the blue robe instead. Or … I don’t know. I am having trouble deciding.’

  They laughed till their stomachs hurt and till Dushyant writhed in his sleep.

  ‘I will be back soon,’ Arman said and headed for the door.

  ‘Dr Arman?’ she called out.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did you really call my college?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. But no one who’s dying would read all the books lined on your side table. Four out of those fifteen books are on surgery,’ he said.

  ‘You’re smart,’ she said and winked. ‘And you’re cute!’

  ‘People tell me,’ he replied. ‘And I am not thirty-five. I am younger. Much younger.’ He left the room.

  His steps were unsteady as he trudged back to his office. His head felt strange and for the first time in years, he didn’t feel like going with his gut. In other cases, he would have just started the treatment, putting everything on the line. Never ever did he think twice before putting a patient’s life at risk for what he believed in. He knew he would save them. Eventually.

  But this time, he wasn’t sure.

  The smile. The childlike wink with both eyes. The promised date. They haunted him, pricking him like little pins in his heart and in his head, a strange mix of pain and pleasure quite like acupuncture, through the day, as he mechanically worked around patients and reports.

  She is just a kid, he told himself.

  10

  Zarah Mirza

  Zarah woke up that day with a severe back pain and a blinding headache. If medical school was tough, working in a hospital was a nightmare. While hers was a 24/7 job, all her friends were now engineers and management graduates with jobs that ended at six in the evening, allowing them enough time to get sloshed, act silly and wake up in each other’s flats. Having said that, hers was a satisfying job. Sometimes. Mostly, she was just administering medicines. Being a doctor was tough; saving lives was a different ball game. Often in medical school, she had wanted to quit and aim to become a cosmetic surgeon. Or a dentist. Something that wouldn’t put anyone’s life in her hands. There were no holidays or margins of error in her profession. Other people’s sick days were her working days. She felt guilty for thinking the way she did. She had not become a doctor for making people beautiful but to relieve them of pain and suffering. But she was too damaged herself for that responsibility.

  She swallowed a couple of aspirins from the rapidly depleting bottle on her bedside. Alcohol had been a steady companion for the last few years. Over time, the sleeping pills had stopped working and doctors stopped prescribing them to her, calling it a worsening addiction. No matter what, she never visited a psychiatrist for her problem. Her hatred for men had only aggravated as the years passed by and she could see the perverse, animalistic instinct in their eyes every day. It was odd that she was at ease with Dushyant, the patient with the liver disease. His eyes were cold and it didn’t feel as if he was trying to despoil her in his head. He was one of the few men by whom she didn’t feel threatened. Maybe it was because he was weak and dying.

  She checked her cell phone. There were no missed calls or messages. She felt relieved. After lazing around in her bed for an hour, she stepped into the shower and felt the hot water spray against her skin. It felt good. She felt relaxed and thought about the good things in life. Years of self-administered therapy had taught her how to cope with pressure and pain. The water clung to her skin as she stepped out of the water. Drops of water slid down her toned legs and wet her kitchen floor. Wrapped around in her towel, she made breakfast for herself—scrambled eggs and toast with butter. Living alone had its own benefits. Even though she missed her mom a lot, she didn’t want to spend a lot of time at home. Her dad had just retired from the army and she felt it was better if she stayed away from him. Staying away from him meant staying away from the horrifying memories of the night she was chafed of her innocence by old, wrinkled hands on her frail body.

  She drove with the windows pulled down in her red Hyundai Santro. It was passed down from her mom to her when she earned her doctorate. The stereo blasted out old Shahrukh Khan songs. As a kid, people had a hard time explaining to her that it was not the actor who was singing.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, smiled at the receptionist and swiped her card at the reception. Her long dark-brown hair was a mess. She had shampooed it in the morning and let it dry during the drive to the hospital. Now, it was all over the place, but she managed to rein her tresses into a bun.

  She prepared the coffee to brew in the coffee maker, arranged the files of the patients she had to attend to that morning, and had just caught her breath when her phone rang.

  ‘Hello? Is this Dr Zarah Mirza? There is an emergency. Patient from room 509 is missing,’ the voice from the other side said.

  Simultaneously, there were announcements on the PA system regarding the missing patient. Dushyant Roy. Zarah rushed to Dushyant’s room and found the bed empty. Obviously! Pihu was missing too. Maybe she is undergoing some tests, she reasoned. Zarah rushed out and ran arbitrarily in the hallways of the hospitals. She checked the stairwells, waiting rooms and the lifts. He was nowhere to be found. The morgue, the pharmacy, the clinic. Nowhere. Exhausted, she went to the reception again to ask if anyone had found him. The receptionist shook her head. Half an hour had passed by and there was no sign of him anywhere. Her concern about him baffled her.

  With her head hung low, she left the lobby and went out for some fresh air. Mindlessly she walked towards the parking lot, wondering where Dushyant might be. The feeling that she would never see him again filled her with a strange, uneasy sensation. Normally, she would have been happy to have one less man in her life, a minuscule reduction of the hatred she held for men, but she was not.

  She had been out for just about a few minutes when she spotted him on a concrete bench. While still in his hospital robe, he was blowing smoke rings and smiling at them as they drifted away from him. Zarah ran towards him. A few steps from him, she slowed down. Her guard was up again, her eyes flitted around for the easiest escape just in case Dushyant decided to lunge at her.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, out of breath, her hands on her knees.

  ‘I thought I would excuse myself for a smoke,’ he said. ‘It’s good for the pain.’

  ‘Wait. Is that marijuana? How did you get it?’ Her heart rate slowed down, her fear melted away. His uninterested yet warm eyes confused he
r, even drew her closer.

  ‘A friend got it for me,’ he answered and took a long drag again. His eyes were glazed over. He was clearly high.

  ‘Don’t you want to get better?’

  ‘I want to, but you guys seem to be getting nowhere. My organ systems are behaving strangely. My body feels like shit and I am constantly in pain. Just two days back I was fine and now I am not,’ he complained and smoked.

  ‘You will be fine. Your insides are a cocktail of a million things that you have ingested over the years and it will take us time to find out what’s wrong with you,’ Zarah explained. ‘Can we go back in, please? We have to run a few tests.’

  ‘Tests again?’

  ‘Yes, we have to check for tumours,’ she said. She felt sorry for him. The first man she didn’t imagine or want dead.

  ‘Is there anything I don’t have?’ he asked.

  ‘We suspect the steroids you took could have caused the tumours in your kidneys and liver. Studies have shown it is a delayed side effect. We believe excessive drinking made it worse and that’s what’s taking you down.’

  ‘I never told you that I took steroids,’ he said and smirked at the perfect smoke ring he had just blown. The rolled-up joint burnt to its end and he threw it on the ground.

  ‘Arman knew.’

  ‘He knew? How?’

  ‘He looked at you and he could tell you had been a sports guy or a gym guy during some part of your life. He inferred that since you were a rash, irresponsible and impatient guy, you would take steroids to grow bigger or get stronger faster.’

  ‘Such a bastard,’ he muttered. Zarah saw a brief smile on his face.

  ‘Is he wrong?’

  He shook his head and lit another one. Zarah snatched it from him and threw it away. ‘Enough,’ she said.

  ‘But he could have been wrong,’ he grumbled and got up. They started to walk towards the hospital entrance.

  ‘He confirmed it. He talked to Kajal.’

  She saw the blood drain from Dushyant’s face. Whatever was left of it. He looked at her shocked, violated.

  ‘Why? That fucker!’

  ‘We took your medical history and you never told us anything about steroids. Had you told us, he wouldn’t have talked to her,’ she responded.

  Dushyant’s discomfort was apparent. Zarah wanted to ask him about Kajal but she didn’t want to poke around. They got into the lift and walked in silence to his room. His hands brushed against her a few times, but she didn’t panic. No sweating. No freaking out. No horrifying images in her head.

  ‘Next time you need a smoke, call me. Don’t do the disappearing act again,’ she said.

  ‘I will try not to,’ he answered and climbed up on the bed. ‘But the smoking is good for me. It numbed the pain and I feel better now.’

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Sure. You’re my doctor. That’s your job. I wonder if Dr Arman knows what his job is!’

  ‘Why don’t you tell your parents about this?’

  ‘They don’t need to know.’

  ‘I think they do. In any emergency of a transplant, they will have to be the first ones we’ll need to check for a match,’ she explained.

  Zarah was never a good liar. Over the years, she had bonded with whoever had a troubled relationship with their parents. Ever since she got to know that Dushyant had been hiding his illness from his parents, she felt a special connection. Two broken people make for a wholesome friendship. Even though she had never been friends with any guy.

  ‘You couldn’t possibly understand what I have been through.’

  ‘I will. You can try me,’ she said.

  ‘I am tired. Can I sleep now? It’s starting to pain again, unless you want me to run off for a smoke again.’

  ‘I will put you on some painkillers,’ she said and pushed a medicine into his IV.

  ‘We can talk about this later? At night?’ he said.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And am I dying?’

  ‘Too soon to tell,’ Zarah said, not wanting to assure him falsely.

  He closed his eyes. Zarah waited for him to drift off and then left his room. Talk about it later? Why would she ever talk to a man? Hateful, vile men who wanted their hands on her body and …

  Zarah was fourteen. It was the year 1999.

  She always felt out of place at the parties thrown by her father’s superiors at the huge farmhouses they owned, bought with money they had made from defunct arms deals. Her mom was drunk and playing poker with the other aunties. Dad was, as usual, drinking and discussing paltry pay cheques and cursing the government for being soft on Pakistan. All the army kids were too old for her, and they were all trying out vodka and rum and anything else they could get. The older kids were snogging behind the bushes.

  She felt bored. Her tummy felt strange after the gallons of aerated drinks she had gulped down out of boredom. A little later she couldn’t hold it in any more. At the far end of the farmhouse, there were washrooms for guests and she walked towards them. There were drunken generals, colonels and other rank holders all over the farmhouse grounds. She felt awkward and strange. Just a few yards away from the washroom, she felt a rough, overpowering hand on her mouth and another hand across her waist. She saw two men with demonic expressions on their faces.

  She only remembered partly what happened next. Over the years, she had tried to slowly erase that memory from her head and had succeeded to an extent. Her rape on that fateful night now seemed like a figment of her imagination. Something that had happened in a parallel universe. Though to this day, she still woke up in the middle of the night with a cold sweat, the faces of those old men—as old as her father—staring down at her, between her legs, scratching her bare body, grunting and moaning as they inflicted pain on her. They took turns for about half an hour. She still remembered the pain, she still remembered the curse words, and she still remembered the egging from one old man to the other, urging each other to violate her harder. She still remembered lying in her own sweat, urine and blood, crying and waiting for help. Her screams were hollow and soundless. No one came. She remembered how she had put herself together, looked at herself in the mirror and felt dead inside. She wondered if she had done something to deserve it. More than that, she clearly remembered how they had threatened to kill her family if she ever told anyone about what had happened. She had lived in fear ever since. For more than a year, she stayed quiet. But one day, she tried.

  The first time she tried telling her father about it, she was slapped across her face. And she just told him that a friend of his had tried to manhandle her. He refused to believe her and told her she was imagining things. Her own father denying her the right to get back at the people who destroyed her.

  ‘He is a respectable man and a senior of mine,’ he said. ‘Dare you talk like this again!’ He walked off.

  For months, Zarah was in severe depression. Her mother thought it was puberty which was causing it and brushed it off. She would shower five times a day, eat soap to cleanse herself from the inside and was referred to many doctors for OCD (Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder). Slowly, she cured herself. She shut her mind off to all her memories and created new ones.

  Sometimes, she felt vindictive. She tracked the two army men years after the incident. One of them died a year after the incident, three bullets to the chest in an attack on the army base camp in Srinagar. Since he was a veteran Kargil hero, his funeral was covered on television. She laughed demonically, faintly similar to how those men had that night at the farmhouse. Her father watched silently.

  The other man slipped into a coma after slipping on his bathroom floor five years after the incident and suffered a concussion. He got better with time but would be confined to a bed for life. Seeing him lie helpless on the hospital bed made her feel better. Telling her rapist’s nineteen-year-old daughter what he had done to her made her feel ecstatic. When the man’s daughter asked Zarah how she knew the whereabouts of her father, Zarah replied, ??
?I have never forgotten him. He is a monster.’ The horror in the daughter’s eyes quenched her vengeance. She laughed when she saw the man’s daughter confront him with her newly acquired news.

  She was over it now. Her rape did take away her innocence, but it also took her family away from her. Her father and she never looked each other in the eye after that day.

  As she sat in Arman’s office that evening, completing all the paperwork for the day, she wondered what Dushyant’s story was. She had visited him again that afternoon and had scheduled him for a full-body scan. During the entire procedure, they had not talked. There were other doctors overseeing the procedure and Zarah didn’t want to be seen socializing with a patient.

  Late at night, she headed towards room no. 509.

  11

  Pihu Malhotra

  The day had been exhausting. MRIs, nerve biopsies and a million other tests were carried out to track the progress of her disease. Arman oversaw every blood draw, every biopsy and every current wave that was made to pass through her body. It was comforting for her. The battery of tests, the pain and the constant tension were scary. In the middle of her third test, she asked her parents to leave. She knew she was the weakest with them around.

  ‘Are you still thinking about the stem cell thing?’ Pihu asked Arman again.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Arman responded. If they went ahead with it, it would be a long treatment that would require her to pop fifty pills a day till the time of her surgery.

  ‘These tests are off or on the record?’

  ‘You don’t have to worry about it. The medical expenses will be paid by the hospital. I got you into the pre-trials but I have told them we won’t be testing the stem cell treatment on you till we get the permission to do so … which we won’t.’

  ‘Fine,’ she said with a sad smile.

  ‘Let’s hope things go as per plan,’ he said and tried hard to concentrate on the screen. They were checking if the disease had won the battle against the antibodies.