Till the Last Breath . . .

by Durjoy Datta

  ‘As I told you, he is misunderstood! And you don’t have to worry about me. I have my eyes on someone else!’ she smiled and winked, and Kajal was caught off guard by an unnaturally excited Pihu.

  ‘Truly?’ Kajal responded, not knowing what to say.

  ‘Yes, I know it’s crazy and I know I am dying … Well, that’s a problem. But he is so great and enormously gorgeous,’ she ranted in front of a confused Kajal.

  ‘Oh. That’s nice.’

  ‘He is a doctor, and you wouldn’t guess who he is!’ she continued.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dr Arman!’ Pihu screeched and waited for Kajal to react.

  Kajal looked at her dumbfounded, and said, ‘I don’t know him.’

  ‘Oh. Okay,’ she whimpered disappointedly and added, ‘He is my doctor, and he is treating him, too.’

  Although Kajal thought of Pihu as a little bit loony, she noted that her tears had dried up and she felt a little better. She almost felt guilty for feeling better because Dushyant wasn’t getting any better. The thin thread of hope he was hanging on to was burning up fast.

  ‘And you like your doctor?’ Kajal asked.

  Pihu’s mom turned restlessly on the couch and they realized they were talking a little too loudly. Pihu asked her if she could come and sit closer. Kajal nodded and sat on the other side of the bed, and took Dushyant’s hand in hers again. He is in no pain, she thought to herself.

  ‘We just kissed yesterday!’ she exclaimed. ‘He got really scared of losing me and kissed me. I think it was out of pity, though. He didn’t want to let me die un-kissed. Have you ever been kissed?’

  Kajal chuckled as she heard Pihu blabber enthusiastically like a child. Have you kissed someone? Who talks like that?

  ‘Yes, Pihu, right?’ she asked and Pihu nodded. ‘I have kissed a few guys.’ She still couldn’t suppress her smile.

  ‘Oh. A few? What’s that like? I mean, how many? Is there a difference?’ she asked fervently. ‘Am I asking too much? Actually it was my first kiss and I don’t know if I was any good and I don’t know whether it will happen again.’

  ‘Of course it will happen again,’ Kajal assured her.

  ‘I hope so,’ she purred. ‘So, have you kissed Dushyant?’

  ‘Obviously, I have,’ she replied and added, ‘And he was a good kisser as far as I remember.’

  ‘As far as you remember? I will never forget my kiss! Although I don’t have much time to live, but still.’

  ‘Will you stop saying that?’ Kajal begged. The constant allusion to her dying made her think about Dushyant’s fatal condition and it wasn’t pleasant.

  ‘I am sorry, it’s just that the more I say it, the more acceptable it becomes for me.’

  ‘I am sorry. I have no idea what you’re going through. The very thought of death and dying makes me uneasy. Only a few days back he was healthy and everything and now he is like this. It’s ridiculous,’ she said and choked on her words. ‘And you’re dying? Who would believe that?’

  Pihu didn’t say anything. Kajal’s eyes welled up and she didn’t know how to react. It was as if the time after Dushyant and she had parted ways didn’t exist.

  ‘Tell me about him?’ Pihu asked as she rested her chin on her knuckles and bent forward.

  ‘Umm … I am not sure.’

  ‘Oh, c’mon. He is not waking up until morning and you have plenty of time,’ she implored. More like begged.

  ‘Fine,’ she said and continued, ‘It wasn’t a perfect relationship. Nothing about it was how they describe it in the books or the movies. He wasn’t my knight in shining armour but he was all I needed. He never said the right things, he never regaled me with gifts and such, but he was always there for me when I needed him the most. We fulfilled the darkest desires and the silliest pleas of each other.

  ‘Every time he looked at me, it was as if he was looking at me for the first time. The adoration in his eyes and the tenderness of his touch made me feel like I had never felt before. There were problems, but love is like that. You fall and break and then you get up again and life goes on. I had heard about perfect relationships and mine was nothing like that. It was better. We owned each other and we loved each other and we hated each other. We reserved every pure emotion for each other.

  ‘I don’t know where life will take me and what kind of person I will be, but I know I am a better person because of him.’

  A solitary tear escaped her eyes, streaked down her cheek and wet the hospital bedsheet. She had lied; she still loved Dushyant. As she closed her eyes, she felt Dushyant’s hand tenderly move and grip her hand. She looked at his face and he was still sleeping peacefully.

  21

  Dushyant Roy

  Dushyant had not woken up for more than a few hours every day ever since he bled out in Zarah’s car. He had been under constant observation and his condition was deteriorating rapidly. His liver and kidneys were totally shot and he was under a multitude of different medications. His days had reduced to just lying in bed and writhing in pain. Even though he felt a lot better today, he woke up with an intense pain in his abdomen. He tried to call someone to give him something to get rid of the pain, but nothing more than a little yelp escaped his lips.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Pihu asked and looked up from the book she was reading.

  She waited for him to say something; instead, his face contorted in pain and he held his stomach and rolled over.

  ‘Fine, I will call someone,’ she said and shouted for help.

  Minutes later, a nurse came rushing in and checked Dushyant’s drip. She asked a few questions, which Dushyant answered in inaudible mumbles. She pushed an injection into his drip and assured him that it would take away his pain. The nurse walked away from him even as he cringed and clutched the bedsheet, as the pain reached his chest. It felt as if his insides were exploding and turning into mush. He wondered if these were his last moments. It certainly felt like it. His thoughts took him to the morgue where they would cut him open and find nothing but a tangled mesh of human intestines ravaged with tumours and other afflictions. He imagined the morticians judging him even after death. Frankly, it made him a little uncomfortable to imagine someone probing inside his naked body. The pain was gone. And he was awake.

  He looked around and was equally disgusted as he had been on the first day when he found himself confined to a bed that a thousand others had used before him. On his left, Pihu was staring at him and like always, she was ready to spring into a conversation that would drive him to kill himself. But he didn’t really mind that day. He owed his life to her, or whatever was left of it.

  ‘Hi,’ he mumbled.

  Pihu looked at him and showed no signs of anger or irritation, despite all that he had done to her. ‘Hi!’ she answered excitedly as if she had been waiting for him to take the initiative. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘The best in quite a few days, I think. I am not being torn apart and I am awake, so that’s good I guess,’ he said.

  ‘Good for you!’ she shrieked and flashed a thumbs-up sign.

  ‘Why are you always so happy?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s not to be happy about?’ she responded.

  ‘The fact that I am dying? The fact that every time I try to get up, it feels like I’m going to pass out because of the pain. The fact that it feels like someone has reached down my guts and pulled out everything?’

  ‘At least you’re living,’ she reasoned.

  ‘Is this what you call living?’

  ‘I would happily switch places with you,’ she answered.

  ‘That’s because you’re crazy,’ he said and was perplexed. Why would a girl who looks healthy and gets fancy tests done on herself all day long switch lives with me? She never seemed in any pain nor did she ever bleed herself to death or get herself strapped to a bed for days on end. Confused and curious, he asked, ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  The girl paused for a bit and then said, ‘Nothing serious, I am just losin
g a little sensation in my limbs.’

  For the first time, her voice quavered and she didn’t look into his eyes with her own big, doe-like eyes brimming to the edge with hope and happiness. He felt a little strange but didn’t want to probe. The last thing he wanted was an annoying, crying girl on his shoulder. The next few words came with a great deal of difficulty to him, but he knew he had to say them.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘for saving me. Had it not been for you, I might have been dead.’

  ‘See! I told you, what’s not to be happy? And thank you. By the way, that’s what room-mates do! They have each other’s back!’ The excitement and the effervescence in her voice were back.

  ‘We aren’t room-mates. We are in a hospital ward. And no, we are not supposed to have each other’s backs. If the doctors were good enough here, which they are clearly not, we wouldn’t need each other. How could they not get it … And you did? That smart-ass Dr Arman—’

  ‘Hey!’ she interrupted. ‘Dare you say anything against Arman! He is a good doctor! And my diagnosis was just a guess. I was lucky.’

  ‘Why are you defending them? Had they been smart enough, they would have got it! And luck? How can you leave a patient’s life to luck? Isn’t that why they spend seven years in medical school? To not rely on luck and learn something?!’

  ‘Listen, you’re going too far,’ she said angrily. ‘I told you, it was hard to diagnose. It doesn’t come out in any test and it’s a one-in-a-million case! And with you, who has abused his body to the limit, it was even harder!’

  Her sudden change in voice almost caught him off guard but he was in no mood to relent.

  ‘Don’t put it on me now. Just because I have a body which is dying doesn’t mean the doctors will try and do everything else to kill me sooner!’

  ‘They were not trying to kill you!’ she argued.

  ‘All the evidence points to the contrary. I broke my arm, my kidneys are shot, and so is my liver. I bled out like I was pissing after getting drunk! I think they did everything possible to make sure I died,’ he said and he saw his words work their magic. She looked angrier; her hands had gripped the railing of the bed like she was trying to snap it into half. ‘Frankly, that Arman guy is just a rude bastard who doesn’t know the first thing about medicine!’

  ‘Fuck you!’ she shrieked. ‘He knows EVERYTHING! Maybe he was trying to kill you! He should have! You have no right to live. Anyway, he is a much better person than you are. At least he knows how to treat girls and not hit his own girlfriend after getting drunk!’

  She looked away from him and picked up a book. He saw her chest rising and falling rapidly with every breath. For a few seconds, he couldn’t absorb fully what she had just said. It didn’t take him long to realize what she was talking about, but he was infinitely shocked. How could she know? He was embarrassed, intrigued and angry—all at the same time! His heart shrank to the size of a raisin as he thought about what he had done. Slowly, as his own breathing stabilized, he wondered if Kajal had been visiting Pihu to ask her about him. He smiled beneath his furrowed eyebrows—his face fuming.

  ‘How do you know?’ he grumbled. Pihu didn’t budge and pretended to read. ‘I asked you something—how do you know?!’

  ‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ she replied and pulled the curtain between them.

  He pulled the curtain back to its original position. ‘Can you tell me? Please?’ he begged, half-heartedly.

  ‘I need to go to the washroom,’ she said and grabbed at her crutches. Awkwardly, she pushed her lifeless legs to the edge of the bed and let them hang from it. The crutches were a little out of reach for her outstretched hands. ‘Do you mind?’ she looked at Dushyant and pointed in the direction of the crutches.

  Dushyant nodded and stepped out of his bed. He dragged the hanger with the drips along with him, moved to her side and handed over the crutches to her. Pihu walked gawkily to the washroom, falling over twice, only to be helped up by Dushyant, who walked right beside her.

  ‘See, I told you we would have each other’s backs,’ Pihu said. ‘Now we are even. We are 1–1!’ She closed the door and Dushyant waited for her to finish inside.

  ‘I’m done,’ she said as she opened the door. Dushyant helped her walk back to her bed and climb up. Then he returned to his. She opened her book and started to read.

  ‘You can read later. Can you please tell me how you know about me?’

  ‘I know you helped me and everything right now, but I think you need to apologize before I tell you anything.’

  ‘Okay. Fine. I am sorry. I will not be rude to you.’

  ‘And Dr Arman?’

  ‘Arman, what the—’

  ‘Just do it!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Fine. Dr Arman is a great doctor. The best. He knows everything!’

  ‘You were sarcastic, but I accept it,’ she said.

  ‘Now, tell me? How did you know? Does she come here? To ask about me?’ he asked impatiently. Even though the very mention of Kajal evoked anger and disappointment, he wanted her to say yes to every question he had just posed.

  ‘She was here yesterday. You were sleeping and she told me about the two of you. She waited for you to wake up but you didn’t,’ she said. ‘We talked for a few hours and …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I think she still has feelings for you. She never let go of your hand last night. When I asked, she said she was just worried about you because you always seemed in a mad rush to destroy yourself,’ she said.

  ‘I am sure she doesn’t have any feelings for me. She has a boyfriend and they have been going steady for quite some time now,’ he said, his head hung low and his voice dry.

  ‘She broke up with him. She told me she is going to London in a few days for a course in liberal arts. Literature or journalism … something of that sort.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You don’t know? I thought you did,’ she said. ‘Oh yes, she told me you guys haven’t talked for the last couple of years. I wonder why you didn’t pursue her. She is certainly a keeper. Tall, beautiful and very nice—you guys would look so cute together.’

  ‘I tried …’ he said and his voice trailed off. He didn’t know what else to say and Pihu didn’t think she should say anything. She got back to her book.

  ‘I think I need to sleep for a bit now. Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘My pleasure,’ she said and smiled.

  She held my hand? He rubbed his hands together and looked at them and even smelled them to find traces of her. Dushyant rolled over to the other side and imagined what last night would have felt like had he been awake and not been an asshole like the last time. He would have got to hold her … maybe she would have cried, maybe not … Maybe she would have told him she loved him, maybe not … Maybe she would have told him that everything would be all right, maybe not. He scolded himself for thinking the way he was. The only reason she had come back was because he was dying. If not, then what had changed after two years of ignoring him and acting like he didn’t exist? Two years of treating him like an outsider? Maybe he deserved it, he thought.

  He was absorbed in the concocted scenarios where the two of them would be together, when the door was pushed ajar and three ward boys walked in. He thought they were coming for him but they walked to the other side and swiftly wheeled Pihu away. The knitted brows of the ward boys and the stiff face of Arman who stood at the door made him anxious. He wanted to say something, a part of him almost reached out to stop the ward boys from taking her away but he couldn’t move. A terrifying feeling gripped him; it felt as if he would never see her again. Pihu had just smiled as they took her away. Restless, he looked around and fidgeted with the tubes and the drips. Were they discharging her?

  He tried to sleep to dull the pain in his body but it wouldn’t come to him. The tense, edgy faces he had seen were still fresh in his head. He rolled restlessly on his bed from side to side. He got up and, leaning against her bed, started to sift through the books t
hat Pihu had been reading. They were stacked neatly on all the tables the small ward had to offer. Most of them were as thick as his wrist and repulsed him. In the corner he saw a book, a rather thin one, named Tuesdays with Morrie. With nothing else to do, he picked it up and got back into his own bed. He was feeling better that day. He could move around without passing out from the pain. The book was hardly 190 pages and he knew it wouldn’t take him more than an hour to read it cover to cover. Always a quick reader, he had an advantage in all the examinations he took for hopeful CAT aspirants. Questions on long essays were his strength.

  He started reading the book. Just after the first few pages, he saw the book was heavily underlined, sometimes with more than a single fluorescent stroke. It was a book written by a seventy-year-old man’s student who was seeing his teacher slowly dying of ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, on how he coped with the affliction as slowly, every bit of his body became paralysed, shrivelled and useless. ALS stands for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, but she had cut those words out and replaced them with her own version—Always Live Strong, followed by a smiley. With the flip of every page, he got more anxious and started to put the pieces in place. Pihu had told him she was losing sensation and that it was nothing serious. She was lying! Instead, she was dying. He wiped the beads of sweat from his brow as the old man in the book got weaker, now not even able to eat on his own. He had a pipe inserted into his abdomen and his legs had shrunk to the size of a kid’s. The last days of the old man were painful—his muscles were wasted, he had bedsores, he had pipes for food, for excreting and for breathing. One day, he slipped into a coma and two days later, he died. Dushyant’s heart sank. His eyes glazed over and the guilt of being rude to a dying girl came crashing down on him.

  The book couldn’t have been a coincidence! It was underlined and there were tiny coloured slips on pages where the disease of the old man had progressed. What did they take her away for? Maybe there was a treatment now. After all, the book was written years ago and a lot had changed since then. Surely, there was a cure now. Frantically, he seized his cell phone and searched for any information he could google about the disease. Blood was sapped out of his face as he read more about ALS and he was aghast at the unfairness of the whole deal. How could she die? She looked just fine. He forgot about his own pain and felt terrible for her.