A Breath of Fresh Air

by Amulya Malladi

  He asked me the inevitable question: “Who are these people?”

  A boy’s life was at stake. I wasn’t going to hide behind lies. “My ex-wife and her son.”

  Colonel Puri didn’t ask any more questions, he just told me that he would send an army ambulance to pick up the boy from the government hospital. I would have to sign some papers and the boy’s parents would have to do the same.

  I went back to the government hospital. This time only Sandeep was sitting outside in the lobby. He rose as soon as he saw me.

  “They will move him to the military hospital today,” I told him without preamble. “And the doctor there will have a look at his medical files and see what can be done.”

  “Thank you very much,” he said sincerely, and I felt like the smallest man ever born. I had been feeling smug outside his house a few hours ago, thinking Anju had to work because her new husband couldn’t support his family on his own. Now, this man’s love for his child and his dignity humbled me.

  “How is he now?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  “And Anju?”

  “Anjali is better. I should go and tell her what you have done for us.”

  “I am not doing any favors,” I said sincerely. For the first time in my life I was hiding behind nothing. I was bare, naked, and vulnerable. I hadn’t known that truth could be this debilitating and this exhilarating.

  All my dealings with Anju had been less than honest, tainted with some selfish need. This time was no different. However, for the first time, I was able to acknowledge the truth. I knew that to be able to stand seeing myself shave in the mirror every morning I had to make amends, I had to help Anju’s son. It was a purely selfish act.

  “I am trying to relieve my guilt,” I confessed.

  Sandeep smiled and patted my shoulder. “So many others wouldn’t even have felt guilt.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  SANDEEP

  "Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face, Anjali,” I warned her. “Amar will be more comfortable and in a military hospital they will be able to give him better care.”

  “But I’ll owe him, Sandeep,” she said wretchedly.

  “So we’ll owe him,” I said. “Does it matter so much?”

  Amar was sedated, breathing through a tube. She looked at his lifeless form for several minutes.

  “No, it doesn’t matter at all,” she said, defeated.

  Then she clutched my shirt and wept soundlessly into my chest.

  Amar was moved to the military hospital that evening. The hospital even sent an ambulance, and when I asked them how I should pay them, they said it had been taken care of. I wanted to object. I didn’t want her ex-husband to take care of my son, but I didn’t say anything. I would settle the matter later with Prakash. Whatever the price, I was prepared to pay it.

  I had just told Anjali that pride didn’t matter, but I did feel pride. I felt the pinch of not being able to give my son the best medical care because I couldn’t afford it. But this was not the time for guilt and pride. Our son’s fragile life needed a miracle and I was happily prepared to subdue guilt and pride for it.

  Major Mukesh Mohan, the resident pulmonologist, went through Amar’s files carefully. He addressed Anjali as madam or Mrs. Sharma, and me as Sandeep. He seemed very proficient and sharp. I was relieved and prayed that he would be the miracle we were waiting for.

  He lit a cigarette as soon as we all settled down in his office. His overflowing ashtray indicated he was a chain smoker. He had probably heard all the jokes there were about the smoking lung doctor who didn’t take his own advice.

  Major Mohan’s office was not very large and the several file cabinets lining the walls made the office seem smaller than it was. The window shades were open and sunlight bloomed into the room exposing the untidy office.

  “I have had a few cases from the Bhopal gas tragedy, but they were relatively minor. This is very advanced,” he said. “Madam, I am very sorry that you got trapped there that night. I have heard some scary stories from colleagues who were posted in Bhopal then.”

  “I only got bronchial asthma, while Amar has . . . so many problems,” Anjali said, tears rolling down her cheeks. She’d been crying since Amar had been hospitalized. I wondered if she would ever stop.

  “Usually pulmonary fibrosis is seen in adults over the age of forty. In this case, because of the methyl isocyanate gas, his lungs have deteriorated. We still don’t know how damaging the gas really was. New lung diseases caused by the gas seem to keep cropping up, and your son also had a heart valve problem, right?” He flipped through Amar’s file.

  “He had a valve stenosis,” I said. “They operated and . . . it didn’t improve his condition.”

  Major Mohan nodded and looked up from the file. “It is too late to do a lung or heart transplant. The length of the disease has made him very weak. Chances are he won’t make it through surgery, so recovering from such complex surgery is out of the question.

  “I will do some tests, but I don’t think the diagnosis is going to be much different.”

  We both looked at him as if he were the supreme judge. We’d heard all of this before. From doctors in Hyderabad, doctors in Ooty, doctors in Bombay, and now we had hoped that this major would sing a different song.

  “Most of his lungs have been eaten away by scar tissue, and his lower respiratory tract, according to these reports, has lost many functional alveolar units. That is why he is having trouble breathing.” He looked up and sighed. “I am sorry, I should have explained. Alveolar units are—”

  “We know,” I interrupted him. “We did a lot of research when he was born and the doctors told us all about it. He couldn’t breathe properly when he was born.” I didn’t know how I was speaking so calmly because I was feeling like Anjali was looking like a mass of tears and broken dreams.

  “I can put him on a respirator for a while, but it is just a matter of time,” Major Mohan said, just as the doctor at the government hospital had told us earlier. “We will make him as comfortable as we can and we will make sure he is not in pain.”

  “You will drug him?” I asked.

  “Yes, probably morphine to ease the pain and we will make sure he breathes, but . . .”

  “You are making him ready . . . ready to die,” Anjali said, her lips folding as her eyes sparkled with a fresh batch of tears. “He was fine a week ago. He even walked a little.”

  “This has been going on since he was born. It is amazing he has lived for so long. He could walk a week ago because he had a good day, not because he was getting better,” the doctor said sympathetically. “We will make sure he has his own room. We will put an extra bed there, so that one of you can stay with him at all times. A nurse will be on call twenty-four hours a day. We will . . . help in every way possible.”

  “You will help him die,” Anjali said indignantly. “My son is going to die.”

  “I am so sorry, Mrs. Sharma. But he was born with—”

  “He left me at the station,” she said, slightly hysterical. “He said he forgot to pick me up. He left me there, while he slept.”

  I patted her hand and thanked the doctor.

  “Do you know how unlucky I was?” she asked the doctor, who had stuffed his hands in his pockets. His face was drawn as if he could feel our pain, and I thought he could. He had done this before. He had given the news of a patient’s impending death to hysterical and hopeful relatives.

  “The wind was blowing in the other direction, away from the EME Center. The Union Carbide plant was just four kilometers away from where he was sleeping,” she whimpered. “They were all saved, while I was left at the railway station.”

  She looked at me with sad eyes. Hope was dying. Our miracle was not here and she knew it, just as I did.

  “There was a taxi driver, a Sardarji. He tried to get us out. He died on the steering wheel. Why didn’t I die, too, Sandeep?”

  I hugged her. My eyes were hazy with unshed tears.

>   “If I had died none of this would have happened. We wouldn’t have to watch Amar die,” she said, sobbing uncontrollably.

  Major Mohan patted my shoulder. “You should get her to take some rest.”

  “I hate him, Sandeep,” Anjali whispered. “I hate Prakash so much, I could kill him.”

  “Don’t think about what happened, madam,” the doctor said patiently. “Think about spending time with your child and making him comfortable and happy. He is going to be sedated a lot, but you can read to him and talk to him. He needs you right now.”

  She collapsed against me once more and I, too, hated Prakash at that moment.

  My son was dying because of a simple accident. It could have happened to anyone and, to be perfectly fair, Prakash had not done it intentionally.

  But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that he had gotten Amar into a good hospital and it didn’t matter he was the reason Amar’s last days would be comfortable. I hated him with an irrational bitterness. My son was dying and I didn’t want to be fair or just anymore. Amar was twelve years old, he was my baby, my son. Where was the justice in his death?

  TWENTY-TWO

  PRAKASH

  I knocked on our bedroom door. According to the maid, Indu hadn’t left our bedroom all day.

  I had received a call from Major Mohan about Amar. My heart was heavy with guilt and grief and I needed Indu. She was my wife and even though we fought and were unhappy with each other about so many things, I needed her—after all, she was all I had.

  I tried the doorknob and it turned.

  She was sitting in an armchair staring out the window. She didn’t even turn to look at me.

  “Anju . . . Anjali has a twelve-year-old son,” I told her. My voice was shaking and a cold storm was raging inside me. “He has a lung disease. He got the lung disease because I didn’t pick her up that night at the railway station.”

  She turned to look at me without any emotions reflected in her voice or her face. “Is it your child?”

  “No,” I said, and kneeled down beside her. I took her hands in mine. “I left her at the station, the night of the Bhopal gas tragedy. I forgot to pick her up. I didn’t mean for it to happen.” I didn’t even know I was crying until I felt wet drops fall on our hands. “Now the boy has a lung problem because she spent the night in the city. Her son is going to die. Indu, I am a murderer.”

  I put my head down on her lap and cried like a child. I had never meant for any of it to happen—the marriage, her getting trapped in the railway station that night, or her son dying because of that night. It was a horrible mistake but I wasn’t paying for it, Anju was. She and her son and her husband were paying for my negligence. I had to live with this forever and I didn’t know how I could.

  I felt my heart break when Indu pulled her hands away from mine. I wouldn’t blame her if she wanted to leave me now. I would leave myself if I could.

  With a generosity I did not deserve, Indu rested her hands on my head and stroked my hair.

  “You didn’t know,” she said. “You didn’t mean for her to be caught in the city that night.”

  “But it happened, anyway,” I said, raising my eyes to see her.

  She smiled. Her face held the calmness I had seen on Sandeep’s face. “Life is like that, Prakash. You can’t plan it.”

  “He is going to die and . . . I moved him to the military hospital,” I told her. “That is the least I could do.”

  “That is all you can do,” she corrected me. “I love you, Prakash.”

  “And I love you, Indu,” I said, feeling a weight lift off my chest. “This will always be with us.”

  “You are not a murderer.”

  “She thinks I am.”

  “She is a mother,” she said softly.

  “I didn’t do this on purpose, Indu, none of it. You believe me, don’t you?”

  “I believe you.”

  I put my head in her lap again, drawing on her warmth, her comfort, and her scent.

  “I never cheated on you.” My voice was gruff with tears and muffled against the silk of her sari.

  “I know. I never cheated on you either.”

  “I never doubted you.”

  “We’ll take Mamta and Mohit to the hospital and meet her son. What’s his name?” she asked.

  “Amar.” A name given to someone who would live forever. Amar meant someone who could never die.

  Her stoic calm eroded. She burst into tears then and we mourned a child that was not ours, but who still was a part of us. For twelve years of his life, neither of us knew Amar existed. Now we did and we wept for his short life and we wept because I was to blame.

  TWENTY-THREE

  ANJALI

  When I found out I was pregnant, I was deliriously happy.

  I had missed a period and went to the doctor immediately, hoping, wishing, and praying. Sandeep had a class he couldn’t miss, so I went alone.

  It took a couple of hours for the blood test results to come back, but I waited, pacing the clinic floors, walking in the garden outside.

  I imagined how the doctor would tell me and then how I would tell Sandeep. I wanted a child so much. I wanted to be a mother. I wanted to give my child unconditional love. To give my child everything I didn’t have and more.

  I wanted to see Sandeep play with our baby, to hear him croon and talk baby talk. I wanted to see Sandeep carry our baby on his shoulder and teach him how to play cricket.

  When the test results came back, an amazing thing happened. I forgot about the past and embraced my future. For the first time since my divorce I could look forward, and look forward with no cynicism. A child was growing within me. It was a gift, the most beautiful gift I had ever been given, and I was so happy that I couldn’t feel bad about the past anymore. I couldn’t feel sorry for myself anymore for what I had gone through with Prakash. God had made up for it all by giving me this baby.

  Sandeep was still in class when I knocked on the door of his classroom and grinned from ear to ear.

  “Got to go,” Sandeep told his class. “My wife’s pregnant.” The class cheered and Sandeep looked like he had been offered a piece of heaven.

  We were still at the Hyderabad Central University then. I was teaching in the elementary school on campus and we had what one might call an idyllic life. We were happy and life was one big honeymoon, just like in the movies. And just like it often happens in the movies, the happiness was fleeting and the contentment ephemeral.

  Pregnancy was wonderful. I enjoyed the feeling of life inside me, and I loved feeling the baby kick as he grew. It was a magical experience, to carry a child, a child that had a little bit of me, a little bit of Sandeep, and a whole lot of himself. We had made a person, a whole person, all by ourselves and I was giddy with joy.

  Sarita had had her daughter a year ago and she was full of advice. Harjot came to stay with us the last fortnight of my pregnancy to help me through what was going to be, according to her, the most physically painful experience of my life. She was not a gynecologist so she couldn’t deliver my baby, but she was all set to do everything else.

  It was midnight when my labor began.

  I woke Sandeep up. “I feel funny.”

  “Funny, ha, ha, or funny, peculiar?” he asked groggily, half asleep.

  “Funny? I am going to have a baby!” I squealed when a contraction gripped me and he woke up.

  Harjot, Gopi, and Sarita waited in the hospital lounge, while Sandeep fought with the entire nursing staff to get into the delivery room. Those days they didn’t allow fathers in. The father waited outside with a box of sweets and distributed them as soon as a nurse walked out and told him that the mess was cleaned up and that the baby was a boy or a girl.

  Sandeep wouldn’t be deterred. “That is my child,” he explained to the nursing staff in a calm voice. “I am going to be there.” After that no one could budge him, and I don’t think the nurses really wanted to invite security to remove him from his wife’s bedside.<
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  Sandeep had bruises on his hand when it was all over. Small scrapes, scratches, marks from my fingers were evidence of my labor. But he didn’t notice them and I soon forgot all about my tedious fifteen-hour labor. We were worried about our baby because they had rushed Amar away even before I could see him.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked Sandeep, because Harjot had told me that they would lay my baby on my stomach and let him breastfeed immediately.

  “He was not getting enough oxygen,” the doctor told us when he came back to our hospital room. “We have put him in an incubator. Maybe there is a problem with his lungs.”

  Thus began a nightmare that never really ended. We went from specialist to specialist and were finally told that Amar’s breathing problems were related to the methyl isocyanate gas I had inhaled in the Bhopal Railway Station.

  But that was years ago and I couldn’t understand how something that happened so long ago could affect my baby. Then I found out more about the deadly gas and how I shouldn’t have more children, that any child we had would probably have the same set of problems. Some of the specialists said that they were surprised that I had even gotten pregnant. One of the symptoms of inhaling methyl isocyanate gas was infertility.

  And just like that, my past took over my future.

  “Mummy?” Amar stirred.

  “I am here.”

  He opened his eyes and looked around. The room was unfamiliar. He didn’t know he had been moved to the military hospital.

  “We moved you to a better hospital,” Sandeep said. He was standing on the other side of the bed.

  Amar assessed his condition by looking at the tubes that were inserted in him, one inside his nose and one IV tube coming out of his hand.

  I bit back the tears. “Just to help you breathe,” I explained.

  He took a deep breath and then frowned through the tubes. “I can’t breathe on my own?”

  “Just for a little while,” Sandeep said.