Till the Last Breath . . .

by Durjoy Datta

  She sensed that he was either uncomfortable or he didn’t like to talk when he was working. The creases on his forehead were incredibly sexy. The taut veins in his outstretched hands were signs of a man who had played some sport in his younger days. She started to imagine him on a football field, on a rainy day, his T-shirt stuck to his toned torso, his hair wet and his legs dirty. In her fantasy, she was with him on the field. Alone. Soon, they were rolling in the mud. I am losing it! Stop it! She snapped out of her wet 1990s Jeetendra-movie fantasy. It was only one of the dozens of various situations where she found herself being intimate with Dr Arman.

  ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ she asked with a twinkle in her doe-like eyes.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Why don’t you? You’re smart and successful. You should have one,’ she said and smiled at him. The nurse drew blood and she winced. Arman winced, too.

  ‘I don’t have the time.’

  ‘Oh yes, I forget! The great Dr Arman Kashyap. How can you have time when you’re too busy being a genius?’

  She chortled and Arman looked at her in fake anger. He said, ‘Are you making fun of me? I don’t think anyone has told you but you should know better than to fight with your doctor or your waiter. They can kill you or pee in your food.’

  Pihu felt good to see him joke and loosen up. Usually, he was too busy cranking his brain muscles to full capacity and bringing people back from the dead.

  ‘That’s gross!’

  ‘The pee thing? Yes, I know. That’s why you shouldn’t mess with us.’

  ‘Or what will you do? Kill me even faster?’ she said.

  Silence. Arman’s face contorted. She was happy to see that her absence would matter to him. Then, she immediately chided herself for thinking too much. Arman was at least a decade older, even though her mind reasoned that it only made him more desirable. Successful, sane men, with experienced hands and tongues make for better fantasies than young, immature boys. Going by the scores of Mills & Boon books she had read, older men always knew where to touch, where to place their tongues, where to hold and caress … Snap out of it!

  ‘I thought you would be used to people dying around you. You must see it every day, don’t you?’ she asked, breaking out of her imaginary world of muddy football fields, crackling fireplaces and deserted metro stations.

  ‘I thought so too,’ he said and walked away from her. He started to check the numbers and figures on the monitors.

  ‘Can you guide me through the numbers and things you’re checking for?’ she asked out of curiosity. It had been more than a year since she had attended medical school, but her thirst for knowledge was still insatiable.

  For the next one hour, they discussed her tests in excruciating detail. She felt good when Arman admitted that she was smarter and more knowledgeable than even a few medical-school graduates. At one point, he even called her a freak, a mutant with an extraordinary memory for medicine. Her schoolgirl cheeks turned scarlet as if he had complimented her smile.

  ‘I think we are done for the day,’ he said. ‘Now, we just have to compile the results and see what happens.’

  ‘Great!’ she said and smiled.

  ‘By the way, I talked to a few doctor friends in the US who are trying out the same treatment. They are very hopeful about its success. Who knows?’

  Arman didn’t look at her while he said that. He clasped his palms and rubbed them together, like a young kid lying to his parents.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You don’t have to thank me.’

  ‘I do. After a long time, I felt I was in a class again. It was perfect,’ she purred and wondered if she was still blushing.

  Arman leant towards her and held her hand. Her breath stuck in her throat. The warmth of his hand, the look in his brilliant black eyes and the creases on his forehead almost knocked her heart out. For a moment, she was back in the muddy football field, in front of a crackling fire in a big house, in a deserted metro station with just the two of them.

  ‘Everything will be okay,’ he assured her. She wasn’t listening to the words. The words floated in her ears and she turned her to him with a blank head and a rapidly beating heart.

  ‘I am sure it will,’ she said.

  Arman hugged her and she lost herself in his arms. ‘You will be okay,’ he muttered. He jerked his hands away as he saw Zarah walk into the room. ‘I will see you later,’ he said and left the room abruptly.

  Pihu was smiling as she stared at the ceiling. She could still feel his hands around her. Slowly, she closed her eyes and wished she could stay there for ever. Her daydreams knew no bounds that day. Her mom was sleeping scrunched on the tiny bed and Pihu didn’t want to wake her up. Her dad was at home. Venugopal cut her calls and she guessed he must be busy peering down cancer-ridden lungs or rotten pituitary glands. In the past few months, Venugopal and Pihu had spent hours talking to each other about her symptoms, his crushes, her fears and it always felt like they would be back together, on the last seat of the class, scribbling notes together, nudging each other whenever the class would hover around penises or anything of that sort.

  She texted him.

  The doctor hugged me today. I think I’m in love. Not like teenage-I-love-you-so-I-need-you love, but eternal, true, dying love.

  Venugopal:

  You’ve got to be shitting me. I thought I was your eternal love. We would be a perfect example for racist bastards.

  She laughed and remembered the times they had placed their hands together and compared her pale-white complexion to his smoky black tinge.

  She replied:

  Aw! You will always be the one. But he’s so cute! I mean, not really. He’s just hot. Like really hot. Like unbelievably hot. I wouldn’t think twice checking him for hernia.

  Venugopal:

  Nothing beats a tall, handsome and a really dark guy. Anyway, I get it. And stop being gross. Are you high on something?

  Pihu:

  No! Call me as soon as you get free. And tell me everything what you’re doing/cutting/reading/screwing up! Miss you.

  Venugopal:

  Miss you more!

  With no one to talk to about how spectacular her day was, she turned to Dushyant, who looked engrossed in a book. A part of her was surprised to see the brat with a book. He can read? It was hard to imagine him doing anything else but loitering around with an empty bottle of alcohol in his hands and a half-burnt cigarette on his lips. She wasn’t far from the truth though.

  ‘I heard you had gone missing today?’ she asked, trying to make small talk. She really wanted to tell him about the gooseflesh and how she thought she would faint when the doctor touched her.

  ‘None of your business,’ he said and turned on his side.

  ‘Why are you so bothered by me? Anyway, I am the only one who talks to you. Oh! Apart from the hot female doctor, that is. I tell you, having a background in medicine myself, doctors usually aren’t as gorgeous as her. Or Dr Arman,’ she said hoping he would latch on to the conversation.

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t like you in my room. Your parents wanted another room for you, why not take a single room? Why still be here and eat whatever is left of my brain?’

  ‘Are you still pissed at what my mom said?’ She recalled the time when her mom had labelled him a degenerate, profligate son. ‘I am really sorry about that. Sometimes, she is just—’

  ‘No, I am not. I just don’t see a reason why we have to talk.’

  ‘I am sorry for what she said. Can we—?’

  ‘You don’t have to be. Can I get back to my book?’

  ‘I don’t know what your problem is with me,’ she said, exasperated. Pihu never saw any reason to be rude to someone. Concepts like rudeness, jealousy, hatred, et cetera baffled her. People, for her, were either black or white, with no shades of grey.

  ‘I don’t like you. Do you get me? I don’t like the fact that you’re constantly smiling when my whole body feels like it’s burning up, turning to
ashes. I am scared to death and when I look on the other side, I see the smiling face of a carefree girl, with her parents hugging and kissing her. It’s irritating. Why couldn’t you just take another room and let me suffer in peace?’

  ‘You’re not dying. I talked to Dr Zarah. She just said you have some tumours. You will be okay,’ she assured Dushyant whose body shook in little tremors. Was he crying?

  ‘I coughed blood. I even peed blood today. They are clueless about what I have. Please let the real doctors do their jobs and don’t meddle,’ he bellowed at her.

  ‘You will be okay. I am sorry if my smile bothers you so much,’ she said, almost guilty. Like she always did, she rationalized his behaviour as an outcome of his frustration and fear.

  ‘Just get your treatment and get the hell out of here,’ he growled.

  ‘Fine,’ she said and drew the curtains between them.

  From the other side, she could hear Dushyant ring someone from his phone and call his room-mate—an irritating girl named Pihu … a bitch. Her eyes welled up. His tone was hurtful. She wanted to pull the curtain away and shout at him. You’re not the one who’s dying, I am! All of sudden, she choked up. She was no longer delighted by her thoughts of an imaginary romance. She was going to die soon. He was going to live. Her pain was going to be a lot more. She had been through it earlier and she was doubtful she had the strength to do it again. She hated her body and wished it had destroyed itself the first time. A dreadful time was staring right in her face and he reminded her of it.

  She couldn’t sleep. Her conversation with Dushyant had left her shattered. It reminded her of now now-numbered days. She picked up the book—a multimillion-copy bestseller and a guidebook for patients afflicted with ALS; it had been recommended to her by the first doctor who had diagnosed her—Tuesdays with Morrie. It was about a seventy-year-old man named Morrie who had the same disease as her—ALS. It was about the life lessons the old man shared with a student of his across a time frame of thirteen Tuesdays. He eventually dies, slowly and in pain, but content and victorious.

  She tried not to think about the time before the experimental drugs had worked, but that’s exactly how she started to think about it. When she had to be fed with someone else’s hand, when her tongue used to be paralysed and she would choke on it. She had been trying not to think about it, but Dushyant brought those memories flooding back into her head. She imagined someone cutting her throat open and inserting a tube so that she could breathe normally. She was crying now.

  Just then, she heard the door open. The curtain hid most of the person who had just come in, but she could make out from the silhouette that it was a girl. The lack of a doctor’s coat told her it wasn’t Zarah. She strained her neck to see who it was but couldn’t.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she heard Dushyant say.

  ‘I wanted to see how you were doing. I was worried.’ The girl’s voice quivered. It was a very feminine voice. Almost like whipped strawberry cream on chocolate. Sweet as hell.

  ‘You didn’t need to come. I don’t need you. And I am fine,’ Dushyant grumbled. Pihu noticed the same rudeness again.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ she said. ‘They called me up. Your doctors … They said you could have tumours. I was scared. What’s happening, Dushyant?’ she prodded, her sweet nightingale voice almost putting Pihu to sleep. Her voice was the truth.

  ‘Why do you care?’

  ‘Because I do.’

  ‘You don’t need to,’ he said. ‘Does Varun know you’re here?’

  ‘No, he doesn’t.’

  ‘Are you going to tell him?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether I do or not. I don’t think he needs to know,’ she said.

  ‘Are you guys still together?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good,’ he said and paused. ‘So now that you have seen that I am okay, I think you should leave.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be like this,’ the girl said. Her voice still shook as if she was scared of Dushyant. Pihu strained her ear to listen closely, Dushyant’s nails-on-a-blackboard voice in stark contrast to the girl’s opera singer’s voice.

  ‘It has to be like this.’

  ‘Why are you acting so difficult, Dushyant?’

  ‘I am acting difficult? You leave me and then don’t talk to me for two years and now that I am here, you come to me? Why? To make yourself feel better? I am not going to give you that pleasure. I had a hard time forgiving and forgetting you; please don’t make me go through that again. Go back to your rich, smart boyfriend you have always been in love with. I don’t care about you any more.’

  ‘We didn’t have to end up like this.’

  ‘You chose it to be like this. You walked out of my life and fucked your ex-boyfriend! It wasn’t me, it was your fault,’ he growled.

  ‘I didn’t … but I am sorry; after what happened, I couldn’t have stayed and you know that. After what happened between us …’

  ‘Had you loved me enough, you would have stayed. You definitely wouldn’t have gone running into his arms. I was begging for you to come back. I almost destroyed myself to get you back. What didn’t I do to catch your attention? For a little pity? Why didn’t you come when I was drinking myself to death? Why? Didn’t you think for once how I would feel?’

  ‘I did—’

  ‘Fuck off. Please. I don’t want you here. I would rather die than talk to you,’ she heard Dushyant shout.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Just get out.’

  ‘Dushyant—’

  ‘One last time, GET OUT.’

  She heard the rustling of the bedsheet and saw the feet leave the room. She felt sorry for the girl with the hypnotic voice who had just been disparaged by Dushyant. Too bad, she couldn’t see her beyond the soft, beautiful ankles. For the first time, her judgement about Dushyant changed. Maybe it wasn’t the disease or the tumour, maybe Dushyant had always been a sick person.

  12

  Dushyant Roy

  The needles tugged at his skin as he rolled over and tried to get some sleep. He knew he wouldn’t get any that night. The pain had slowly become permanent. Painkillers were less effective now and the pain was now a part of him. He tossed and turned, thinking about Kajal and the argument from moments earlier. He wondered why she had bothered after all these years. Was it because she still loved him? Did she still think of him when in bed with Varun? Maybe it was because she felt guilty about what she had done.

  It was ten. The curtain was still drawn between them. The girl on the other bed had been a constant source of irritation. His skin crawled every time he looked at her. Even on the verge of death, he wasn’t at peace. The last thing he wanted was to have the image of a chattering young girl gnawing at his eyes in his last moments. Instead, he needed a smoke.

  There were still twenty rolled joints safely tucked into one of the books a friend of his had dropped at the hospital. He took three of them out and stuffed them into his robe. Slowly, he unscrewed the drips on his hand and pulled them off. He walked out gingerly, trying not to attract attention to his tottering self. He had taken just five steps away from the room when someone called out his name. He turned around to see Zarah leaning against the wall, her eyebrows knitted and her lips curved into a sinister smirk.

  ‘Going for a smoke again?’ Her voice a measured mix of sternness and playful exuberance. He nodded. ‘What did I tell you about not vanishing again?’ she asked.

  ‘Come along? I have enough for both of us,’ he responded. Usually unmoved when challenged, his eyes were like a cowering dog who had pooped in the hallway.

  Zarah smiled and motioned him to follow her. Together, they went to a rarely used balcony on the sixth floor. Usually, patients want to get out of the hospital as soon as they enter and don’t look for hang-out spots to smoke. But Dushyant was different. The lack of direction or purpose soothed him, made him feel unshackled. The need to get high and fucked up ruled him.

  Zarah took one of the ro
lled joints from his hands and lit it up. As the pungent fumes snaked up from the smouldering joint and hid her face momentarily, Dushyant stood there, ogling. The irritating girl’s words hung uncomfortably in the air. The hot female doctor. With a lit joint in her hand, a careless strand of hair wandering aimlessly around her face, she leant dangerously close to the edge of the railing. An air of unabashed freedom surrounded her.

  ‘You shouldn’t be smoking, should you?’ he queried. Zarah didn’t answer; instead, she looked at the neon-lit city, her eyes already glassy from the weed. She closed her eyes, let open the bun and allowed the breeze to play with her hair. She took another long drag and let the smoke curl out from her slightly parted lips. She is a regular smoker, he thought. Long drags of a joint as potent as the one in her hand often made even old-timers wheeze and choke. Not her.

  ‘Neither should you,’ she said and turned towards him. The joint was working its way into her body. He could see it in her elegant and almost sexual turns and the deliberate flips of her hand while managing the unruly tufts of hair around her face. ‘You fought with her?’ she asked.

  ‘Her? Her, who?’

  ‘Oh, well. The girl who shares your room and the girl who came to see you today,’ she answered. Another long drag. She wasn’t an amateur, even by Dushyant’s standards.

  ‘I had my reasons,’ he said. ‘The girl in the next bed irritates me. She behaves like a life coach. She fiddles with things, gets excited as if she has just checked into a spanking new hotel suite and not a hospital ward. I can’t stand her.’

  ‘And what happened with Kajal? The other girl?’

  ‘How do you know I fought with her?’

  Another drag. Her responses were getting slower. So were his. It wasn’t the weed clouding his senses that drew him to her. It wasn’t her overpowering scent, her piercing brown eyes, the olive skin or the supple body that he wanted to feel in his rough hands and leave savage bite marks on. What drew him to her was her nonchalance, the hidden anger, the restlessness in her eyes, the tiny slit marks on her wrists and the belief that she belonged to the same tribe as his. One of dejection, longing and crushing loneliness. ‘I was standing outside when I heard your voice. I couldn’t help but eavesdrop. I told you I would see you in the night, didn’t I?’