Till the Last Breath . . .

by Durjoy Datta

  After taking time to compose herself, feeling like all the happiness in the world was concentrated in that tiny moment, like a hundred Christmases coming together on one single day, she said, ‘I have to say I am a little disappointed. I thought you guys knew me better. I have already read half these books, you know?’ Their shoulders drooped, defeated. ‘Obviously, I am joking! This is the best I could have ever asked for! You have no idea what it means to me. If you think you do, I feel about a millionfold better than that!’ she shouted and everyone laughed. The two girls who had cried hugged her and cried a bit more. ‘Though I wasn’t joking completely. I have finished a bit of it.’

  There was a fresh round of banter, after which the room slowly transformed into a college hostel room after the last exam for which no one had studied, everyone thankful that it was over. Pihu’s parents left. Soon, the room was what teachers in school describe as a fish market! They shouted, joked, laughed, cursed and fell all over each other. Pihu saw Dushyant grumble and mumble irritably in his sleep, but no one was in any mood to mellow down. They started to discuss their various professors, their quirks, the dissections, other medical-college stuff and uninteresting college gossip about who got caught making out and who was cheating on whom. In the middle of the conversation, she would close her eyes for a split second and imagine herself amongst frozen corpses, driving a knife through them, studying their slimy insides and taking elaborate notes. In those moments, she felt like she had lived a lifetime. Venugopal ordered pizzas, stuffed with molten cheese of three delightful kinds, for all of them and they ate like hungry cavemen. Pihu could really get people to talk and people loved talking to her. Except the guy on the other bed.

  ‘Can you guys just KEEP IT DOWN? FOR FUCKING HEAVEN’S SAKE!’ Dushyant shouted from the other side.

  ‘What the hell—?’ Venugopal replied.

  ‘If you don’t fucking leave this ward this very moment, I am going to kick you out. All of you,’ Dushyant warned.

  ‘Try it,’ one of them snapped.

  ‘Yeah, fuck you,’ added one of the girls who had cried earlier.

  Dushyant had blood in his eyes, like when those invisible veins in your eyes fill up and make their presence felt. ‘Fuck you,’ he sneered and ripped out the tubes from his hands. His forehead popped a vein as a stunned Pihu watched in horror. Before she could react, Dushyant had jumped at Venugopal and hit him with a left hook that landed squarely on his chin. Venugopal lay on the floor in evident agony. He moved swiftly to the next guy, filtering out the girls and charged with an open hand. It landed on the other guy’s head and he tumbled to the ground.

  ‘Anyone else?’ he yelled as he stood there, breathing heavily.

  ‘Such a dick,’ a girl finally murmured as everyone looked at him, dazed.

  As soon as he had hit Venugopal, Pihu had pushed the emergency button and two ward boys came barging into the room now. Along with them came Arman who was in the vicinity and had followed the ward boys inside. The ward boys instinctively grabbed at Dushyant, who hit them and they went crashing against the door. The other boys helped up Pihu’s friends who were sprawled across the floor, still overcome with fear and shock. Finally, after smashing the two ward boys to a pulp, Dushyant let them go and slumped on his bed. Arman, like the others, was too shocked to react.

  ‘What on earth is happening here?’ Arman grumbled as he looked at Dushyant and demanded an explanation. His fists were clenched and Pihu could tell he was restraining himself from boxing Dushyant’s face in.

  ‘They were fucking with me. I gave it back to them in equal measure,’ Dushyant replied, with fire in his eyes.

  ‘Take this bastard away and put him in the pathology test section,’ Arman ordered the three ward boys who were still reasonably scared of Dushyant. They grabbed his wrists. ‘I will deal with him later.’

  ‘I will go on my own,’ Dushyant snapped and broke free. ‘Assholes. All of you.’ He turned his back and headed to the door.

  ‘Hey, you, smart-ass,’ Arman called out. ‘The girl who you are calling an asshole saved your worthless life. Cadmium poisoning. No one else got it, she did. I wish she hadn’t and you had died on this bed.’ Dushyant looked back, surprised. The excruciating pain from his fall that day had numbed his brain—the fact that it was Pihu who had finally diagnosed him had not registered in his mind. Arman added, ‘Yeah, now fuck off before I throw you out of here.’

  Dushyant left the room without a single word. Pihu blushed as everyone looked at her in amazement.

  ‘Yes, she did,’ Arman proclaimed. ‘She is better than a few doctors here, I am sure.’

  ‘He is just sweet to a dying girl,’ Pihu purred.

  ‘Can you stop with that? Dying girl and bullshit like that. No one is dying here,’ Venugopal added.

  ‘YES,’ the others joined in.

  ‘Oh, by the way, I am Dr Arman Kashyap,’ Arman said and waved.

  There were appreciative smiles all around as most of them had heard of him somewhere or the other. For those who hadn’t, Pihu had told them in the last hour about the hot doctor in the hospital.

  ‘Pihu thinks you’re cute,’ one of the girls chuckled. The girl who had cried.

  Arman smiled at her and responded, ‘I think she is quite stunning too. Isn’t she?’

  No one replied, though the girls stared at him with unwavering eyes and batted their eyelashes. Pihu wasn’t really at ease seeing the other girls stare at him and flash their best smiles. He was all hers, she was the one who was dying, she deserved the searing-hot doctor who saved lives for a living. Oh wait, what, did he just call her stunning?

  ‘I think I should take your leave now,’ Arman said and picked up one of the books lying on her bed. ‘You’re feeding an addiction, I hope you know that.’

  ‘An addiction that you have too, don’t you?’ Pihu replied.

  ‘But you should be resting and not reading medical—’

  ‘And you shouldn’t be? When was the last time you slept?’

  ‘I don’t need sleep. I am too busy helping your kind,’ he argued.

  ‘And that’s not addiction?’

  ‘You should sleep,’ he said and put the book back down. ‘I will check on you later. Goodbye, guys. And really, if anything, you should have got her jewellery or something. Not that she needs anything to look prettier.’

  He turned and left the room. For the past few seconds, it was as if no one else existed. Slowly, conversation returned to the room and the topic hovered around the charismatic doctor who clearly had a thing for Pihu.

  ‘I think he is into you,’ one of the girls said.

  ‘He is a doctor, he is supposed to be nice to everyone!’ Pihu retorted.

  ‘Oh, c’mon. Did you see the way he looked at you? He is clearly into you. It was as if we didn’t exist!’ another girl added, disappointedly.

  ‘Whatever.’ Pihu shrugged and they moved on to other areas of discussion, even though she couldn’t really think about anything else but him. Pretty. Stunning. All in the same conversation. It really did feel like her birthday after all.

  They left after a little while. Everyone wished her luck, some for life, and others for her non-existent relationship with her doctor, Arman. They had come scared, thinking they would find a girl devoid of hope, but what they had found was a girl throbbing with more life than all of them combined. Venugopal hugged her the longest and told her that he had started to date. It was the girl who had cried. Pihu nodded approvingly.

  Alone in the room, she started to daydream again. This time Arman was the visiting professor and she was the bubbly, enthusiastic student in the front row who would do anything to get a good grade. Anything. She blushed in her sleep as she fantasized about kissing him in the staffroom. Slowly, she drifted off before things got nastier.

  It was late evening when she woke up to an empty room. She hadn’t slept that well with all the books around her distracting her, begging for undivided attention. Throughout her sleep, she had be
en tossing and turning, thinking about the time she would wake up and write her name in blue ink on each of the books she had been given. She really wanted to use the fountain pen Venugopal had gifted her too. And she was pleasantly surprised that Venugopal had started dating a real girl (after a slew of imaginary ones), a Punjabi at that, and imagined the girl who had cried today laughing at Venugopal’s terrible Hindi. She missed him, and she missed her college. At times, she really missed the physical part of studying medicine—cutting open a dead body and seeing what lay inside. Rotten lungs, shrunken pancreases, wasted livers—these were things that really got her skin to tingle and her face to light up. She got up and walked awkwardly to the bathroom, her feet and hands not really strong enough to support her, and washed her face. Her body might be giving up, but her spirit wasn’t. Plus, Arman had just called her stunning. She had every reason to be the happiest she had ever been. The warm, fuzzy feeling still tickled her and the shy grin refused to wash off her face.

  Once back in the room, she picked up a few of the books from the pile and dumped them on her bed. With the fountain pen she wrote ‘Pihu Malhotra, 2nd year, MBBS’ on each one of the books. Once that was done, she picked up a book on cancer and flipped through the pages. It had numerous coloured pictures interspersed with millions of bits of text. She flipped to a random chapter and started reading through it. There would be no exams and this only heightened her pleasure of studying medicine.

  She was on the fifth page when the door opened and she saw Dushyant walk in. He headed directly to his bed and clambered up. Two ward boys in white overalls walked in beside him and hooked him up to all the syringes, needles and drips.

  Despite what happened earlier that morning, she didn’t feel any hatred for him. In all of her nineteen years, she had never felt that emotion for anybody. Though she did have a good laugh when a furious Venugopal had said, ‘Had he not been sick, I would have taken him down.’ Pihu knew he would do no such thing. Venugopal was a nice guy. Dushyant, on the other hand, was battle hungry and war scarred. If anything, she felt sorry for him, for his anger, his lack of friends and his affliction. He could fight though, and girls love that in a man. Pihu was no different. Tense arms, anger in his eyes, pumped chest. All he was missing was a kind heart.

  17

  Dushyant Roy

  Dushyant winced in pain as a syringe plunged into his vein and a transparent liquid was pumped into his bloodstream. His eyes were stuck to the bed next to him—empty. Zarah overlooked the administering of the medicine and the subsequent blood draw.

  ‘You look distracted,’ Zarah noticed.

  Dushyant looked away from Pihu’s bed and replied, ‘Not really. You didn’t come in the morning. Why?’

  ‘My parents are living with me. They wanted me to spend some time with them. So I took the day off,’ she said and rolled her eyes.

  ‘You look sad.’

  ‘I can’t stay at home any longer,’ she said. ‘It’s okay when I go to their place … I mean where I used to live, but not when they come over.’

  ‘I can understand.’

  ‘I don’t think you can,’ she fussed.

  ‘Why don’t you make me?’ he asked. ‘Is it done?’ he asked the nurse who was constantly plunging needles into him. The nurse nodded and took her leave.

  ‘You look tolerable today. What’s the matter?’ she queried with a smirk.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Usually, it’s hard for people to stay around you. You’re aggressive and unnecessarily rude, and don’t tell me you don’t know that.’

  ‘I am not—’

  ‘Oh, please, you are,’ she cut him off.

  ‘Whatever. By the way, why didn’t you tell me that she diagnosed my illness? Did she really?’ he asked. ‘Or was Arman just blabbering?’

  ‘First, Arman never blabbers. And she did. She got it within minutes of you breaking your bone. Arman was impressed and he never gets impressed either,’ she clarified.

  ‘Fuck,’ he grumbled.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I think she had her birthday or something. There were a few friends of hers who came here this morning and were making a shitload of noise … and …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I might have hit a few of them,’ he murmured.

  ‘You WHAT?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘You know, I was irritated. I asked them to shut up and they didn’t. I punched a guy and hit another one,’ he shamefully admitted.

  ‘Are you crazy, Dushyant? What did Arman do?’

  ‘I think he wanted to hit me but he didn’t. He shifted me to a different room for a bit and then I was shifted back last evening. I feel so crappy now. Why did that girl have to diagnose me? It’s so irritating,’ he growled.

  ‘Why? Because if she hadn’t, we would have killed you by now. We were treating you for the wrong disease. You should be thankful to her,’ she said.

  ‘I think I should. She is a sweet girl after all. Why did she have to choose this room? So annoying,’ he squeaked and lay his head back. If he could have made himself disappear for a bit, he would have done that. Dushyant had done a million things he wasn’t proud of, but he was never sorry about it. But in those moments, he was. He looked over to Pihu’s bed and wanted to thank her. It really didn’t matter to him whether he lived or died; he was usually terrified of waking up the next morning and dragging himself through another day. But he felt a little odd about having thrashed the friends of the girl who had saved him.

  ‘I think I need a smoke,’ he croaked.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked and sat on his bed.

  ‘Yes,’ he asserted. ‘And I need to thank her. What’s her name again?’

  ‘Pihu. Don’t tell me you don’t know!’ she squeaked.

  ‘I mean … I did, I just forgot. Can we go?’

  Zarah unscrewed the drips and helped him down his bed. On their way out, Zarah picked up Pihu’s chart hanging on the entrance of the room and said, ‘Her birthday isn’t until two weeks from now. I think you should get her something.’

  ‘You think I will still be here after two weeks?’ he asked, his voice reeking of nervousness.

  ‘There are tumours in every place we see, Dushyant. You’re lucky to be alive. I think you will be here for a really long time,’ she said.

  ‘I really need that smoke.’

  Both of them left the room and walked through the corridor wordlessly and rode the elevator to the sixth floor and then went to the balcony. Zarah had a few joints—perfectly rolled—in her handbag and Dushyant was pleasantly surprised, if not downright impressed.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said after inspecting the joint carefully between his fingers.

  ‘What? You think I can’t roll a joint?’ she asked.

  ‘You don’t look the type. But anyway, you don’t look the type who would risk the life of a patient, too, by unhooking the meds and getting him high,’ he chuckled.

  ‘I am not risking your life. It’s to soothe your pain. This is medicinal marijuana! It’s totally legal,’ she claimed.

  ‘It would be legal if you weren’t stealing it, which is quite obviously the case here. And I don’t think they give it you so that you can pull a patient out of his bed and make him smoke it,’ he said and took a long drag. The smoke scraped his foodpipe on the way down and dulled his senses.

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Okay, fine. I agree this soothes my pain. And it’s incredibly strong,’ he noticed. ‘But what pain are you soothing?’ He passed the joint to her.

  ‘Nothing.’ She shrugged.

  ‘C’mon. You can tell me. I am almost a dead man. Your secrets are going nowhere,’ he pressed. ‘I am sure you can trust me. A few more days and you won’t even see me any more. And if you think I am not worth your trust, you can kill me in my sleep.’

  ‘No, junk it. It’s personal,’ she sneered.

  ‘I was just trying to help.’

  ‘I know. It’s just that I haven’t r
eally shared it with anyone. I don’t think it makes sense sharing it with you. I don’t even know you,’ she said, her eyes now glassy and distant. Dushyant knew she was vulnerable and she would spill it out and tell him everything; he just needed to push her over the edge.

  ‘You can. I was reading a book on war soldiers. Experiencing the horrors of war over and over again makes it easier to tolerate the pain. Sharing with me might help,’ he pestered.

  ‘I don’t know—’

  ‘You know you want to,’ he interrupted.

  Zarah hesitated and looked away from Dushyant’s inquisitive and piercing gaze. Dushyant wondered what she was hiding behind her glassy eyes and guarded exterior.

  ‘I was raped,’ she squeaked and a lone tear streaked down her cheek.

  Dushyant stood there, doubting what he had just heard. It reverberated in the space near him and he couldn’t bring himself to believe what he thought she had said. She has got to be kidding … The silence confirmed the matter’s seriousness. His throat dried up and he struggled to say something. What? Why? Who? When? What did you do? Nothing but a silent sigh escaped his lips as he stared at her, as if he had seen a ghost.

  Zarah said, ‘My father works in the army. During one of the many army parties, two of his drunken seniors raped me near the washroom. I was fourteen.’ All of a sudden, the tears in Zarah’s eyes vanished and the glum expression on her face was replaced by a calm, practised, nonchalant look.

  ‘Then what happened?’ Dushyant inquired as soon as he got his voice back.

  ‘Then, nothing happened,’ Zarah said with an air of finality to end the discussion.

  ‘What nothing? Didn’t you tell anyone? Your parents? Your mom? Dad?’ he questioned.

  Zarah gazed wordlessly at the glittering lights of the city while Dushyant waited for her answers. It felt like he had been violated, not her, and his fists clenched in anger. He stepped closer to her, Zarah’s hair brushing against his face. A part of him wanted to turn her around and envelop her in his arms but he didn’t know how she would respond.