Till the Last Breath . . . (21 page)

Kajal was still standing in the corner, watching in horror as the scene unfolded.

Finally, she stepped towards Zarah and asked, ‘Will he be okay?’

‘His liver just gave up. He needs a transplant,’ she said mindlessly. ‘But …’

‘But what? Are you looking for a donor? Can I donate? If that’s okay? I mean I am healthy and we even share the same blood group! What else do you need to match?’ Kajal panicked.

A fear-stricken Zarah looked at her in shock. Her feelings towards Dushyant, which she thought were genuine, were dwarfed in front of Kajal’s proposition.

‘I need to talk to my seniors,’ she said and got up.

‘Can I come?’ she asked impatiently.

‘No, I think you should be with Dushyant right now,’ she said and told her where they had taken him.

‘I don’t think I can watch him like this,’ she cried out and crumpled into a heap near the bedpost. Zarah, on noticing there was someone who was much more disturbed than she was, finally jolted herself back to her senses. She helped Kajal sit on the bed and reassured her that she would do anything and everything to get him a donor. Kajal, still weeping, whispered that she would be ready to donate if the need arose. Zarah knew finding a donor was tough, given the red tape, shortage of dead people with usable livers and the rising number of old alcoholics with plenty of money to spare. Transplanting livers from living patients was monstrously expensive and she wondered if Dushyant alone could afford it. It was a long, complicated surgery and usually cost more than 15 lakh rupees. As she sat there patting and consoling
Kajal, Pihu’s parents came rushing in, crying. They sat beside their daughter and kept asking her what had happened. Pihu had no answers for them—she just stared at them with a blank expression on her face.

‘You just stay here; I will be back in a bit and update you on how he is doing,’ she said and got up to leave the room and talk to Arman about it.

Just then, a voice called out her name: ‘Zarah?’

Zarah looked back to see Pihu call out her name. ‘Yes?’

‘What happened?’ Pihu asked. ‘And … And … I can’t move my hands.’

‘You were about to choke to death. I think your heart stopped too. The nurse just told me that Dushyant resuscitated you. He saved you,’ she said and left the room, as four pairs of stunned eyes followed her.

Arman paced about in his room, angry, frustrated and really scared. He waited for Zarah to come back to his office and tell him exactly what had happened. For the first time in many years, he felt like he would pass out from anxiety. It was his third cigarette and he was far from being calm. If the surgery failed, he would have to schedule another one and quick. Reversing the process was improbable and even more dangerous than just going ahead with the treatment and finishing it.

At a distance, he saw Zarah walk towards his office with slow, unsure steps. He held the door open for her and as soon as she got in, he said, ‘What happened?’ His hands were crossed firmly in front of his chest, bracing for impact.

‘Dushyant needs a liver transplant. He might not see another day. Pihu is dying. She can’t feel her hands any more and she nearly choked to death,’ she said and took a seat. ‘She needs to be put on constant breathing support if we don’t want it to happen again.’

Silence gripped the room as both the doctors faced the reality that stared them right in the face. Arman’s head was
a mashed pulp of angst and failure. Sitting on his seat with Pihu’s reports in front of him, his demeanour transformed from a headstrong, unemotional doctor’s to that of a parent who is about to lose his or her kid. As tears threatened to peek out from his eyes, he made a few calls for some tests to be run on Pihu. Next, he called his college buddy–surgeon to let him know that he would need his help again. As he looked around helplessly, often running his hands over his head, he noticed Zarah sobbing softly with her head buried in her palms.

‘I will see what has to be done. You should talk to his parents. They can be possible donors,’ he said, trying to regain some grip on the situation. His words had no effect on Zarah whose stifled sobs only got louder. ‘I will pay if money is a problem,’ he added as another assurance. But deep down, he knew all this wouldn’t matter. A liver transplant would make him live for another few days, maybe a month, but his kidneys were still shutting down. The survival chances of someone with donor kidneys and liver were slim, and that is
if
the patient got the organs in the first place.

‘I think I should talk to his parents,’ she said and left the room.

It was time for Arman to accept the truth, too. He had most likely failed. She might or might not survive the next surgery. From the cabinet he hardly ever opened, he took out a bottle of Scotch and poured himself a drink. The tan-coloured liquid slipped down his throat smoothly, burning it a little, soothing it a little. He picked up the phone and asked for Pihu’s parents to be sent to his office. As he waited for her parents, he downed two more drinks. The pain, the agony was still there. He saw the parents walking to his door, her father stoic, her mother hysterical.

‘What happened to her?’ her dad asked, his forehead riddled with criss-crossed lines.

‘I am afraid our treatment didn’t work,’ he said, trying to be as doctor-like and straight-faced as possible.

‘What do you mean?’ her mom said, looking at him with the veins in her eyes popping out.

‘We have to do another surgery and see if we can make her live a little longer,’ he said. ‘There are chances … but they are minimal. She might not have more than a few days.’

‘YOU KILLED HER!’ her mom shouted all of sudden and lunged at Arman, her hands flailing wildly at him as she tried to grab him. Her father tried his best to stop her. Arman just sat there waiting to get hit, thinking it was just. He felt responsible, and if in any way he could assuage the pain of her mother, he was up for it. Her mother kept shouting and repeating that her daughter would have been much better without him, even though her father knew she wouldn’t have. For five minutes, she kept trying to swing at Arman. She threw an odd stapler and the punching machine at him, both of which hit his head as Arman sat there unflinchingly. Finally, tired and wanting to spend time with her daughter, she left the room on the insistence of the father.

‘I am sorry,’ Arman said, shaking his head.

‘You did all you could do,’ the father responded. ‘Had it not been for you, we wouldn’t have seen her walk again. We would have lost her a long time ago. It’s all thanks to you. I am sorry for my wife. She knows it, too, but you know how it is. She is …’ His voice trailed away as he looked everywhere but at him. If he had worked hard at anything in his life, Arman knew it had been easier than not breaking down in front of Pihu’s dad. Gathering himself together, he patted the shoulder of the father whose eyes, too, had glazed over. And then Arman watched as Pihu’s father couldn’t keep the barrage of tears from streaming down his face. He had spent a year controlling himself, trying to be strong as people around him
showered them with sympathy, ignoring the crushing pain inside his chest as he saw his daughter become progressively sicker. Arman looked at him and his own pain seemed like a needle prick.
The loss of an only child is the worst pain any one can endure. After all, what do our parents live for? With the best years of their youth gone by, they don’t have any yearnings for comfort or money or fame; all they want is to see us grow up as happy, healthy human beings with all the luxuries that they couldn’t afford. To see years of love, care and upbringing reduce to dust, burnt and buried, takes away everything from a parent.
Slowly, the sobs became softer, the shoulder shrugs became more periodic and her father wiped his face with his handkerchief a few times before he thanked Arman.

‘Can you tell her? I think she is happy when she is around you,’ he requested, turned and left the room to join his wife.

The stress ball in Arman’s hand was crushed to the maximum. Darkness enveloped him as he tried to imagine what it would be like to tell her that she might not have long to live. He had practised the speech many times in his head before and it never became easier. He thought he would wait for the test results to come through. Maybe, he had just panicked. It was just one seizure, one blockage, after all. For the next hour, he paced restlessly around the room. After the first few calls, the test lab assistants asked him to wait in the stern voice usually reserved for junior doctors. Finally, the results arrived. He mailed them to his doctor friend immediately. The results were unambiguous and clear. She was dying, and she was dying fast. The next surgery had to be performed as quickly as possible. He braced himself and left for room no. 509.

He entered the room and found the bed next to Pihu empty. He remembered Zarah’s words:
he needs a transplant
. Almost to
distract himself, he tried to think about how at least Dushyant could be saved. A few more steps and he looked straight at Pihu. She met his eyes and smiled. He knew that she knew, so he decided he wouldn’t beat around the bush. It was as difficult for him as it was for her, he thought.

‘Your test results are back,’ he said, his face glum and devoid of happiness. ‘We have to schedule you in for another surgery.’

‘I know. What are my chances?’ she said in a very throaty voice. It wasn’t easy for her to talk any more. Her breathing was laboured and she looked drained and tired.

‘I don’t know, I can’t say. Your immune system is a little weak for the procedure, but there is no way out,’ he clarified.

Her eyes glazed over as she looked at the ceiling. ‘I will die,’ she whispered and tears flowed. Arman felt like cutting out his heart and giving it to the little girl whose spirit to live was undefeatable. There she was, confined to the bed, most of her limbs useless, and she still wanted to live.

‘Don’t say that,’ he said and put his hand on her cheek.

‘I am not afraid of dying,’ she said. ‘I have seen that happening to me before. I am ready for that. I am afraid of being forgotten. I am scared of where I will go after this is over. I am afraid of what will happen to my parents. All these months, I have stayed up nights, crying, thinking of how my dad will react when I am gone. I know he doesn’t show much, but I know, inside, he is a broken man. My mother, who brought me up, whose only dream was to see me as a beautiful bride with many kids, what will happen to her? All they lived for was me. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be, is it? Why do
they
have to suffer? Haven’t
I
suffered enough? What had I done wrong? I had always been a good girl. Why me? Why my family? Why should I die? Why can’t I get married? Spend another night with you? I … am just going to die? Not be here any more?’

And then, she broke down into sobs; her tears rolled down and wet her pillow. Arman bent over and kissed her forehead.

‘Everything will be okay,’ he said, knowing that his promise was empty. He choked on his words.

‘It will not be,’ she said from behind the stifled sobs.

‘I have something for you,’ he said and reached into his pocket.

For a moment, Pihu stopped crying and looked straight at him. Had she been able to get up and hug him, she would have. She would have hugged her mom, her dad. She was leaving them behind and going to a world unknown. And though she didn’t know what would happen to her after the last shred of breath would leave her, wherever she would go, she would miss them.

Arman took out what he had been carrying with him for weeks now. He dangled it in front of her. It was a gold chain. The yellowness of the gold had somewhat waned away, and hanging beneath it was a small diamond of 3 carats, and it was beyond beautiful.

‘This is for you,’ he said and gingerly took Pihu’s hand into his and wrapped it thrice around her limp, senseless wrist. Pihu’s eyes sparkled as she gazed at her newly acquired possession.

‘That is beautiful.’

‘It pales in comparison to you. You’re the most beautiful thing I have ever considered my own. Before you came along, I was a loner, someone who didn’t care about anything but himself, his work, his obsession. But one fine day, you walked into my life, with the help of crutches, no less, and turned it upside down. For the first time, I loved someone more than I have loved myself,’ he said.

‘You make even dying beautiful,’ she purred. Her eyes roved around the room and she saw her parents walk inside. Arman noticed their presence, too, and it was his cue to leave.

‘I will see you in a bit,’ he said and turned.

‘Arman?’ she called out. ‘To whom did this belong?’ She pointed to the chain and the pendant.

‘It was my great-grandmother’s. She wanted my beautiful wife to have it,’ he said and left the room with tears in his eyes. Pihu looked at her wrist and the words rung in her head,
a beautiful wife
. Her life had suddenly changed into an old, predictable movie from the ’90s.

Kajal sat in the passenger seat, rubbing her hands together, disappointed. It turned out her blood group wasn’t the same as Dushyant’s. Zarah had reasoned that guys in love often lie about having the same blood groups to make it sound like they are meant to be. Zarah drove on, without saying much. Kajal could sense that she was disturbed.

‘Have you ever talked to his parents, Zarah?’ Kajal said trying to break the uneasy silence, though even she was nervous. If Dushyant was ever intimidated by someone, it was his parents, and everyone knew Dushyant wasn’t an easy person to intimidate.

‘No, I haven’t. He doesn’t like them. I figured it would be better not to talk to them. I wouldn’t have if we had found a match amongst ourselves,’ Zarah said, her eyes still stuck firmly on the road.

‘
Ourselves?
’ Kajal looked at her in shock. Zarah was caught off guard for a minute—her left hand fumbled with the gear and her eyes roved around nervously.

‘I thought I would help out,’ she finally said.

Kajal didn’t say anything. Slumped back into her car
seat, Kajal looked at Zarah’s face. It was apparent that she was no longer just Dushyant’s doctor, she was much more. That night, when Pihu had narrated every detail of every day since Dushyant was first admitted, Kajal had conveniently ignored the parts where she had described a nameless, faceless doctor who never left Dushyant’s bedside. As she saw Zarah’s contorted face, the protruding vein on her forehead, the tense hand that clutched the steering wheel tightly, she knew the faceless doctor was her. And she knew Zarah was not next to Dushyant because her responsibilities as a doctor demanded her to be.

‘After the transplant … do you think he will live?’ Kajal asked Zarah, who was lost in her own train of thought.

After a long pause, Zarah said, ‘Only a slight chance.’

‘You didn’t test your compatibility as a donor because you wanted to help out … It was much more, wasn’t it?’ she asked.

‘I don’t want to talk about it. Anyway, the two of you seem to be happy around each other. I have seen the look on his face when he talks about you. So this conversation means nothing,’ Zarah said.

‘We have a history. I was his only friend,’ she responded.

‘Good for you,’ Zarah snapped.

Kajal was taken aback at Zarah’s curt, almost rude, reply. At a sudden loss for words, she looked away from her and outside the window. It went without saying that in the two years that had passed by, Kajal had missed Dushyant. Even when in Varun’s arms, she used to close her eyes and think about Dushyant and how he was doing. Occasionally, she would get snippets of the fights Dushyant used to get into, the drunken brawls, the skirmishes with hostel guards and the like. Incidents like these had been on the rise after their break-up. Kajal could think of just two reasons for it. Either Dushyant was destroying himself or he was trying to catch
her attention, after she had snapped all ties with him. Or both. After a while, he’d stopped. The breaking of college furniture and water coolers, the burning of staff offices, all of this stopped. Or so she thought.

The gossip died. The bad-boy legend of the college retreated to his room to die a quiet death. There were younger, meaner students baring their teeth in college. Dushyant was no longer trying to catch her attention; he had just spiralled down deeper into his addictions. Alcohol, weed, marijuana, ice, heroin … master of all drugs, jack of none.

Sometimes, they did cross paths on the streets of the college—Dushyant, often with a cigarette in his hands, Kajal with her eyes dug into her toes. They never talked, avoiding each other in the hallways and the corridors and the labs, if and when there was any crossing of paths. For all she knew, the break-up was a lot harder on Dushyant than it was on her. After all, months after, she was dating Varun with all her heart. Dushyant was the one who moped, cried, drank, destroyed himself further after the break-up, not her.

The car reached the address. They were modest apartments where people live on for generations, adding a room or two against the government regulations. Zarah double-checked the gate number before she rang the bell. The Diwali lights from last October still hung on the door. There was no conversation between Zarah and Kajal.

A middle-aged woman opened the gate and asked who they were.

‘I am Dr Zarah Mirza, GKL Hospital.’

‘What do you want?’ the woman asked.

‘We have been treating your son, Dushyant Roy, for the last few weeks. I am afraid his chances are slim and he needs a liver transplant. If things get worse, he might need a kidney
transplant too,’ Zarah laid out the facts threadbare, her tone stern. No false assurances.

The mother looked at her in disbelief and then the truth sank and her knees buckled and her eyes rolled up and she fainted. Both of them reached out to her and prevented her from falling head first on to the concrete floor. They carried her to the sofa inside the house, which was even more modest (or poor looking) than the apartment buildings from outside. A ragged sofa, an old box-type television, a chunky desktop on a table, a rusty single-door fridge and a landline on the small side table. The rest of the evening was easier. Dushyant’s dad appeared, duly shocked to see two girls and his half-conscious wife. Zarah explained the same to him and his eyes had more annoyance and fury than sympathy. He asked for more details and as Zarah told them, the mother kept tugging at the father’s sleeve to take her to the hospital.

Fifteen minutes later, the parents were following the red Santro to the hospital. The mother had packed lunch for her son who was far from consciousness. During the whole ordeal, Kajal had stood there motionless and not a word had escaped her mouth. Zarah, on the other hand, had been brave and stoic and had managed the father’s anger and the mother’s impatience. Kajal felt insignificant. Guilty. A liability.

As they reached the hospital, Zarah asked them to wait in Arman’s office and told Kajal to find her own way around. Still taken aback with how Zarah was behaving with her, she felt lost. Or perhaps she had always been lost … ever since that day when she had decided she wouldn’t be with him any more.

Maybe it was for the best.