Side by Side

by Anita Kushwaha

  “It’s Sunil.” Something about hearing her husband’s voice weakened her. Kavita felt her belly fill with tears. But now wasn’t the time to fall apart. Sunil needed her to be strong. She willed the tears into a block of ice, and told Nirav the details of Sunil’s plan, mechanically, realizing there was no other way to deliver such news.

  “He can’t be serious?”

  “He handed me a bag of pills a minute ago. I flushed them.”

  “I don’t know what to say, darling. But really, I’m sure he doesn’t mean it.”

  “Can you bring over a bag of my things?”

  “I’ll come right after work.”

  “Will you stay over too?”

  Now, as Kavita rubs heat into her arms, she feels her belated anger rise, degree by degree. Would an extra pair of eyes have made a difference the next day? Eyes that could have helped her keep watch over Sunil. Eyes that still remain offensively dry.

  “Why didn’t you spend the night when I asked you to?”

  “I told you, I had a meeting early the next morning.”

  “You didn’t believe him.”

  “No, I did.”

  “If you had believed him, you wouldn’t have been able to stay away, meeting or no meeting.”

  “I—”

  “Why haven’t you cried?”

  “I don’t know,” Nirav shrugs. “Maybe it’s shock.”

  Kavita shakes her head. Where was her husband’s sympathy for her brother? Why wasn’t he slowly crumbling like she was?

  “If I do feel anything right now, it’s awful, for you and your parents. That you have to go through any of this at all.”

  You, Kavita notes. Not us. Not we. Married only a year, and already, there they were, facing a crisis that would have strained even the longest and strongest of marriages.

  “Because of Sunil? Is that what you mean? Are you trying to blame him?”

  Nirav averts his eyes. “It might seem foolish now,” he offers, after a brief silence. “But honestly, I didn’t think he meant to go through with it. I believed he was in distress, but since he came to you, I thought that meant he didn’t really want to hurt himself in the end. I thought he was reaching out.”

  The heat rising inside of Kavita stops. She can’t be angry at her husband for this reasoning, at least. She knows it is possible to believe someone is in as much danger as they insist, and also believe the danger will not come to pass. The conceit of it sickens her now. Or is it the ignorance? What can she say in her defence, other than, she didn’t know what she was really up against at the time. After a few moments, when her larynx softens, she manages to mutter, “So did I.”

  Kavita sat vigil on the basement stairs—the couch was too comfortable—watching Netflix on her iPad, the waterline of the coffee pot, slowly lowering, as daylight rose.

  They were the GP’s first appointment of the day. Kavita sat with Sunil in the examination room, while their parents waited outside.

  He dangled his legs back and forth over the edge of the examination table, rustling the crisp white sanitary paper. Over the years, he had confided in her about his aversion to doctor appointments, a hostility he had carried since childhood. He hated the undressing and weighing and measuring. Having to stick out his tongue, breathe deeply, endure the pricks of needles. The power of doctors made him nervous. A relative stranger who told him if he was too heavy or too light, if his blood pressure was too high or low, if he needed to be switched to this or that medication. Always, the doctor judged if he was normal or abnormal, within the curve or an outlier.

  Fifteen minutes later, Dr. Jones tapped on the door. He was a silver-haired, middle-aged man with a sombre countenance. Not unfriendly exactly, just to the point, like a hastily written prescription. Sunil saw him every few months. The GP made him fill out quizzes to verify that his symptoms were still in remission and wrote him new prescriptions and told him to keep doing what he was doing—eat right, exercise, take his pills, get enough sleep. Sunil had thought of him more as a pharmacist than a doctor, really.

  “So,” Dr. Jones said as he took a seat at the desk. “What can I do for you today?”

  Sunil spoke to the tiles.

  “You shouldn’t have tried weaning off your medication by yourself,” Dr. Jones said. “By the sound of it, you did it too quickly. It can take months to wean properly. And you did it in, what? About a month?” Dr. Jones shook his head. “Some people have to stay on medication for their whole lives.”

  “I know.”

  “Of course, having said that, you can come off them at any time. They aren’t the problem.”

  There was a puzzled pause. Anyone with Internet access could look up the side effects of the drug online, which Kavita had done last night while evading sleep. Oh, there were problems: blurred vision, high blood pressure, chest pains, chronic sleeplessness, excessive sweating, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and on and on.

  Kavita was about to ask for clarification when the doctor asked, “Have you had any suicidal ideation?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a plan?”

  Sunil nodded.

  The doctor crossed his arms and tucked his chin, emitting a hint of disapproval. “Tell me what it is.”

  Kavita went rigid, not only from having to bear witness to Sunil’s plan for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, which would have been reason enough, but also because as her brother—her private, gentle, careworn brother—confessed to the cold doctor the darkness of his desperation, Kavita could feel Sunil’s vulnerability, his nakedness, as though disrobed herself. The way he spoke, with his eyes down and his shoulders slumped, as if he had something to be ashamed of, made Kavita want to scream at the doctor for his disapproving looks, and cry with her brother, as she reassured him that being in crisis was nothing to be ashamed of, so he should hold his head up, because he was brave, he was doing what most people didn’t, he was putting himself out there, and asking for help. Could the doctor see the courage sitting in front of him through his narrowed eyes? Did he ever stop to consider what it cost?

  “Do you want to be admitted to the hospital?” Dr. Jones asked.

  “To be honest, the thought of it scares me.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly. It just scares me.”

  “Hmph,” Dr. Jones grunted. For a second, it seemed to Kavita that the doctor was more perplexed by Sunil’s aversion to psychiatric wards than by his plan to end his life.

  Regardless, now was her chance to speak up. Pushing her displeasure aside, she said, “Going to the hospital might be our best option, though, isn’t it?”

  “I really don’t want to go.”

  “What do you think, Doctor?” she asked.

  Dr. Jones gave Sunil an appraising look. “Well, there’s a big difference between thinking about suicide and acting on those thoughts. Have you ever attempted?”

  Sunil shook his head.

  “No, chances are if you had, you wouldn’t be sitting here with me now. Well, in that case, I suppose you might as well wait for your appointments at home. At least you’ll be comfortable there. You seem to have a good support system around you.” Dr. Jones shifted his attention to Kavita. “Just keep an eye on him.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “I mean, he might not have made any attempts, but he has a plan. Isn’t that supposed to be a red flag?”

  “I’ve seen worse,” Dr. Jones said, flat. Then he turned away from Kavita and started tapping at the keyboard, adding a few lines to Sunil’s file. “I’ll write you a new prescription, since you didn’t like my last recommendation.”

  “It’s not that I didn’t like it.”

  Dr. Jones jerked his head to look at Sunil, his gaze a piercing challenge. “Pardon me?”

  Sunil seemed to shrink. “Never mind.”

&n
bsp; “As I was saying,” Dr. Jones went on, once again facing the computer. “We’ll try something else, and I trust you’ll stay on the medication this time. We don’t want to go through this again, now do we? I’ll also write you a script for some sedatives to help you sleep, to be administered by your family, of course. After a few solid nights of rest, you’re bound to feel better. You should probably take some time off work, too, if you can. Do you have benefits? Okay, good. Well, I’ll write you a note for that as well.”

  Dr. Jones arranged appointments with a social worker and a psychiatrist for the following week.

  “Are these the earliest appointments we can get?” Kavita asked. “I was hoping for something today or tomorrow.” But according to the cards, Sunil wouldn’t see the social worker, the first of his appointments, until next Wednesday, six days from now. Keeping Sunil safe for six days felt like an epic task. As Kavita thought about the length of time between now and then, by some cruel magic, time expanded, days becoming longer than days, hours longer than hours.

  “What can I tell you? The waiting lists are long, even for cases like yours. There’s always someone who’s worse off.”

  “When will Sunil see you again?”

  “Oh, well, I think we could touch base in about five weeks or so. We should know if the medication suits him by then. The ladies at the front desk will help you arrange a follow-up on your way out. And try to get in before I go on vacation.” Dr. Jones rose from his chair, signalling that their allotted time was up. They had already backed up the rest of his appointments for the day. “Hang in there, Sunil,” the doctor said as he opened the examination room door. “It’s a good sign that you came in today.”

  As they left the doctor’s office with the appointment cards in hand, despite the bumps during the consultation, Kavita nevertheless felt a lightness swell in her torso, a buoyancy that could only come from their new course of action, their new plan of hope, which they would use to replace that of Sunil’s hopelessness.

  Kavita winces against the glare of a passing car’s headlights.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have gone along with it.”

  “What?”

  “Not admitting Sunil to the hospital.”

  “But he didn’t want to go.”

  “He was scared. But I should’ve found a way to reason with him.”

  “Didn’t the doctor say he would be fine to wait at home?”

  “The fact is,” she says, numb. “If Sunil had gone to the hospital, he would be alive right now.”

  “Kavita—”

  “It’s the truth, isn’t it?”

  That moment in the doctor’s office was pivotal. An instant that could have changed their fates. But they chose another path, which at the time, seemed like the right one.

  “When we left the doctor’s office, I swear to you Sunil seemed more optimistic. I didn’t just imagine it.”

  “I suppose none of us really knows what goes on in another person’s head. You can’t blame yourself for that, though.”

  “I must’ve missed something.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We left the doctor’s office on the same page. Sunil seemed more at ease. But then something happened. Something changed his mind.”

  But what?

  From the doctor’s office, they drove to Sunil’s work, so he could fill out the paperwork for his leave of absence. Being there reminded Kavita she needed to work things out with her own office, too. She had taken a week of personal leave, but she would have to talk to her manager about a more long-term arrangement.

  They sat in a couple of chairs outside of the HR department cubicles. As Sunil filled in the forms, he said in a low voice, “It won’t be long before everybody knows.”

  “They wouldn’t talk about you behind your back. Would they?”

  “HR is the worst. Cathy in particular has a bad rep for gossip.”

  “That’s so toxic? How is that even allowed?”

  Sunil bounced his shoulders.

  “Well,” Kavita told him, “who cares what they think, right?”

  “It would make it a lot harder to come back to work.”

  “Then we’ll find you a better job.” In a better place.

  “Yeah,” he said, doubtful. “’Cause that’s so easy. I’ve worked hard here. It’s taken me a long time to get to where I am now with my job.”

  Kavita could see his point, perhaps in the sharpest relief she ever had. He had spent the last five years climbing the company ladder, and now he was finally the supervisor of the IT department. Why should he have to start over?

  “I can’t stand the idea of people looking at me differently or treating me differently after this.”

  “Don’t worry about that now,” she said. “First, we need to get you healthy. We have time to figure out everything else.” Maybe there was an opening in IT at her office. Kavita made a mental note to look into it later that day, when she planned on calling her boss.

  As she watched him fill out the paperwork, Kavita sensed his hesitation. He had created clear boundaries between his professional and personal lives. And to him, his life with his condition, while not a source of shame, was nonetheless, personal. It was his to talk about, or not talk about, as he chose. He had never bought into the idea that people living with mental health issues should out themselves in order to change mainstream perception. The mainstream could broaden its own mind, as far as he was concerned: his hands were full. Now, it seemed, the cost of accessing the help he needed in order to heal, would come at the expense of his right to privacy.

  Reason for absence, she read on the form. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the doctor’s note, and scanned it. Kavita noticed his expression darken. Then he hastily folded the paper in two.

  He hovered his pen over the empty black line. She wondered what the doctor had written, what prognosis could make Sunil reluctant to even write it out. Medical, he scribbled finally. See doctor’s note.

  On the way home, they stopped at the pharmacy to fill his prescriptions. They were about to pull out of the parking lot, when Sunil asked, “Can we go somewhere?”

  Kavita looked at him, surprised. “Aren’t you tired?”

  “I just don’t feel like going home yet.”

  “What do you want to do?” their mother asked, watching him from the rear-view mirror.

  “How about the marina?”

  It was their family’s favourite picnicking spot from when Sunil and Kavita were little. They would pack a cooler of drinks, a tiffin of aloo jeera and puris, and spend the day collecting clam shells, building sand castles, and skipping stones. “We haven’t been there in ages,” Kavita said.

  “I think it’s a good idea,” their father agreed. “Some fresh air might help you sleep, raja.”

  “Marina it is,” their mother declared, and they were off.

  The marina was about thirty minutes away. Stepping out of the car, Kavita took in the view. The river glimmered in the distance as though flecked with mica. Gazing at its gleaming waters, she remembered the stories their parents had told them about the rivers in India—the Ganga, Yamuna. About people who would travel to bathing ghats to dip in the sacred waters in search of absolution and the healing powers of gangajal. She wondered if the river in front of them flowed with mysticism too. If her brother bathed in its waters, would it cleanse him of his troubles?

  They strolled towards the pier as if drawn by the lighthouse. Along the way, they passed an old man fishing, a young family of four feeding fries to seagulls, a woman sitting on a bench reading a book. At the end of the pier, their parents stopped to rest on a bench and watch the sailboats. Kavita was impressed by how well her parents were tolerating each other. They were even sitting at the centre of the bench, not at either end, as they tended to, which to her exemplified the separate togetherness that defined the
ir marriage. Maybe it was true that crisis drew people together. Maybe their family was on the brink of a new beginning too, just as Sunil was.

  “Feel like skipping stones?” Sunil asked her.

  A flood of childhood memories made it impossible for Kavita not to smile. “Let’s go.”

  At the lighthouse, they hobbled around the pebbled shore, rummaging for stones, as they had done countless times before. When they were young, Sunil had taught her which stones had the right thickness and weight, how to flick rather than throw.

  Holding a handful of rocks, Kavita stood a step away from her brother and watched as he cast. The pebble skipped once, twice, three times.

  “Not bad,” she grinned.

  “Let’s see you do better.”

  “Challenge accepted.”

  They fell into a tranquil rhythm, their snug silence punctuated by the occasional plim plim plom of their stones on the water.

  After a while, Sunil stopped casting stones. He gazed at the water with a faraway look, at the ship sails in the distance like triangles of paper.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. She was glad her parents had stayed behind.

  “I’m just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  He flicked a glance at her, then resumed his watch of the sails. “The doctor’s note.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  He pressed his lips together.

  “You know you can tell me anything.”

  “I know.” He lowered his gaze to the shoreline, and the gentle push and pull of the water’s edge over the slick pebbles. “He said I’m completely debilitated. Those were his exact words in the doctor’s note.”

  She blinked. “Oh.”

  “Yeah, oh.” He launched a stone. “How am I supposed to come back from that?”

  “Well,” scrambling for something comforting to say, “I bet that’s just doctor speak. Something they say all the time. Remember, he wrote you that note so you could get time off from work. You know what insurance companies are like. He probably had to make it sound worse than it is.”

  “Maybe.”