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Part 4
Carrying numerous heavy, hard-cover medical journals, Abhi tried to navigate through the bustling halls of the hospital without either dropping them all or tripping himself. After a few hours of sifting through the library, he had narrowed them down to these...many. Which were actually only remotely related to what he had been looking for. Shaking his head, he looked down for a split second only to grip them a little more firmly and suddenly staggered back hard. Oh, option three, someone had decided to crash into both him and the journals. Great.
Muttering, he regained his balance and looked around for the offender (or victim, whichever way you looked at it) and saw Nikki's head thrust up at him reproachfully. Seeing that he was clearly the offender in her eyes at the moment, he decided to play it safe.
"Nikki, if you want to bump into me, do it when my arms aren't full so I can actually catch you, okay?"
She rolled her eyes, "How chivalrously apologetic of you."
"Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today," he replied sweetly.
She looked at him absent-mindedly and only fidgeted with the stethoscope around her neck.
"Hey, by the way, I'm going to be late today," he motioned towards the journals full in his hand.
"Oh – "
"Dr. Nikita, someone's calling for you at the reception," a nurse came dashing through the hallway and Nikki's head jerked up, the now familiar feeling of her heart sinking suddenly rising in her chest. "It's urgent."
"Tell them I'm not available." Swiftly, she turned back to Abhi.
"But Doctor, it sounds very urgent."
Nikki ignored the nurse, and addressed Abhi as if there had been no interruption. "Ok, I won't wait up then."
Abhi nodded, and looked at the nurse still hovering behind her. "Nikki, your phone call..." he reminded her, confused.
She gave him a tight smile. "It's not important. I'll see you later."
Rigidly, she walked away without looking back, hoping that the consternation of her mind didn't show on her face.
* * *
Nikki walked into her patient's room and suddenly stopped in her tracks, faced by someone she hadn't expected.
"Rahul?" Startled, she looked around. "Am I in Orthopaedics – "
He seemed amused. "Hi, Nikki. No, you're in the right place. We got a note this morning to have a look at Mr Singhania."
"I'm sitting right here," the middle aged man propped up in bed shook out his newspaper irritably and promptly went back to ignoring them.
As she went to take the records from him, Rahul muttered, "That's the most acknowledgement from this man I've had all day, despite my efforts. How do you put up with him?"
"Ignoring him?" she suggested dully, and met Rahul's smiling eyes with blank ones of her own. Puzzled, he began to say something, but she turned away and walked to Mr Singhania's side, gently diverting the man's attention from his newspaper and beginning his daily check-up.
For a few minutes there was silence, as Nikki checked the patient's vitals and completed his progress reports, and Rahul helped fill the preparatory forms for surgery, glancing at her every now and then, while Mr Singhania looked utterly bored. In a strange way, Nikki was glad that Rahul was there – his presence was simple and reassuring and she desperately clung to that feeling, glad he wasn't the kind of person who would be inquisitive, who would demand answers for small anomalies in behaviour.
As she concluded the checkup, Mr Singhania reached for his phone with an impatient grunt, and she heard Rahul's sharp intake of breath behind her.
"Nikki, what's that?" He came around to her side of the bed and took the patient's arm, turning it over – "Just a moment please, Sir," – and looked at her in surprise.
"You didn't see this?" And then to Mr Singhania, who was already punching numbers into the phone, "How long has your arm been like this? Does it hurt?"
Nikki felt a jolt pass through her as she saw the red, swollen skin blistered around the IV line that led into the vein in the patient's arm and administered his drug.
Mr Singhania looked away from his phone for a moment. "I don't know, and no – Rita, I'm telling you, doctors these days are nothing more than kids – aaah!" Rahul had carefully pressed his thumb over the healthy skin around the injury, which Nikki knew would be sensitive. "Are you crazy? Are you doctors or carpenters? I want my lawyer. I want my lawyer – no, Rita, shut up, I don't pay for a private ward just to – "
Nikki looked back at Rahul in shock. How could she have overlooked this? As she glanced at the arm, she could see the darkened outline of the vein as it wove its way up his arm, discoloured and purple instead of the natural, greenish-blue tinge, and it made her feel nauseous, a nausea that had nothing to do with the sight of the injury.
"Rahul, I – " she whispered
I what? What explanation did she have? She had just finished this man's check-up, yet this development had somehow slipped right past her.
" – Extravasation injury," Rahul was saying to Mr Singhania, who was staring at Rahul wide eyed, phone finally turned off. "It commonly happens during intravenous administration, since some of the drug leaks from the vein into the surrounding tissue. A simple injection of hyaluronidase will spread the drug, stop it from accumulating like this and causing damage. Your arm will be fine."
Nikki raised her eyes to Rahul's impassive face, because she knew that it wasn't that simple, and so did he. Admittedly Mr Singhania was lucky as this looked like an early, less aggressive injury, but if left unnoticed, if she had just let this go – then the injury could spread to joints, even nerves, sometimes culminating in a need for surgery and – she shuddered, closing her eyes, to think of anything like that happening due to an accident – amputation.
Mr Singhania's eyes were still fixed on Rahul, mouth open in a perfect oval, and his gaze darted to Nikki.
"This – she didn't notice this?"
No, I didn't, she thought. It's all my fault. Rahul was already trying to smooth it over to Mr Singhania, but she herself quickly turned and left the room, feeling as if she needed to be able to breathe.
The air outside was a little warmer, lacking the air conditioning of the ward, but she leaned against the wall and took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. A simple mistake, the kind which would land her interns in serious trouble, and she had made it. And it was hardly an hour after her father's call. Because it was him, of course, who had called and asked for her. She put a hand to her head, wishing she could just rid herself of the last few days, banish the weight of the past which was dragging her down with it. Because, worst of all, it was compromising her work…insecurity and apprehension, now creeping like threatening shadows into the one area of her life she had always had the most control over.
"Nikki," Rahul was beside her. "No harm done."
"Really?" She turned to face him, a little bit of the fight back in her, perhaps anger at herself manifesting itself into indignation, indignation that he was being a good friend and trying to diminish the mistake she had made. "You're really going to pretend that didn't happen? That I didn't mess up in there? Rahul, I've seen you when you get angry, and this isn't it."
"Nikki, mistakes happen. There was no drug misadventure, the patient wasn't hurt – "
"But he could have been!" she burst out. "And you know that, Rahul, don't pretend you don't."
"I'm not pretending. Look, Nikki, you didn't notice it, but I did, and that's what matters." She began to walk away in frustration, but he continued, "As long as it's just a mistake."
Hearing his words, she stopped dead and turned around to face him. Am I so transparent? "What do you mean?"
"Look, I'm just saying," he looked awkward. "Is there something on your mind, perhaps something wrong that you need to talk ab – "
"There's nothing to talk about, Rahul," she said, in as firm a voice as she could muster, before walking away. The simple, reassuring feeling of being left alone that his presence had provided only a few minutes ago had somehow flitted away from her clutches, only to be replaced by the ugliness which came with everything that her past made its existence known in.
In those few moments of solitude outside though, she had realized what she needed to do, what she had to do. Because it was the only possible thing she could do. The only thing she had always known to do.
* * *
The first time she had ever heard their voices raised at each other. A smaller version of herself paused by the loosely shut door, wondering if she was in trouble she didn't know about. And then realizing that this was a matter beyond her.
Dad was shouting. And she was confused, because he hardly ever raised his voice, especially not at Mamma.
" – you can't go on like this – "
"Are you telling me what I can and can't do?"
Mamma's voice was hysterical, control lost in such a way that Nikki couldn't believe it was Mamma speaking, except that it was Mamma's voice.
"You don't feel the slightest shame that you're losing out on her life? That she has to count herself lucky if she gets to see you before she goes to bed?"
"So that's it? You have a problem with the way I work? You of all people, Nikhil?"
Nikki cringed. Mamma's voice was sharp, dangerous. Dad, say something nice, she thought anxiously. Make Mamma smile somehow. Dad's furious reply began just as he caught himself, and continued in a much lower tone, and she anxiously pushed at the door a little, hoping to be reassured. Whatever they were saying, they continued in the same low voices, until they began to interrupt each other, the exchange becoming more urgent, and Dad erupted again, making her jump.
"I don't give a damn as to what you do there, but if you can't remember that you have a child at home who needs her mother – "
"Her mother?"
Nikki couldn't tell whether it was a question, or whether Mamma was about to laugh or cry.
"Nikhil, I never wanted…what do you expect from me?"
There was a long silence, and Nikki, now sitting on her knees on the cold floor, strained to hear if she had missed something.
"I want you not to regret it."
Regret what, she wondered. When Mamma replied again, her voice was normal, and Nikki breathed a careful sigh of relief. It was over.
"It was a mistake, Nikhil. Perhaps you'll never be able to accept that. But you'll always know who I blame for it."
In an instinctive moment of anticipation, Nikki scrambled to her feet, backing away down the corridor and ducking into an empty room as her mother swept out.
Voices swooping down with darkness, invaded even her unconsciousness mind, piercing through. Nikita…it's me…The one from the phone, incessantly sounding all around her, now joined by a chorus of other, familiar voices. She tried to pry them apart, because she needed to know what they were saying…All your fault…A female voice, low and tensed...it was an ensnarement and she was inescapably trapped. Again and again.
It's me. All your fault. It's me. All your fault. It's me. All your fault.
The roaring in her ears accelerated, as if she was being whisked through a tunnel, and her eyes jerked open suddenly, darkness and silence pressing in on all sides. She sat up frantically, quickly, and next to her Abhi shifted in his sleep. When had he arrived? He had forgotten to leave a light on for her. She caught sight of his laptop, not too far away on a table, a faint glow emanating from it as it ran on standby. A kind of desperate relief washing through her, she focused on the feeble light, trying to calm herself. She only remembered lying in bed, trying to come to terms with her decision, and somewhere, between those tortured thoughts, sleep had insinuated itself into the fissures of her mind, offering not relief, but this.
At the time, her child's mind had tucked away the conversation into a corner as she had to start worrying about bigger problems – because it hadn't just ended there, behind closed doors. In the face of her parents' accelerating discord, the unfathomable exchange was quickly buried, a mere sheet below the stacks of painful memories that began to pile above them.
But she came back to it as the years went by, this time with guilt and shame, as the truth slowly embedded itself in her. After they left her, with every night she had cried herself to sleep, with every moment she missed them, the memory was always there. Reminding her that they were better off – no, happier – without her. Because she was a mistake. That fact was incandescent, blazing and clear against the grayed memories.
Nikki raised her head, and stared into the darkness in front of her, the all too familiar conversation replaying in her aching head. It had hardened her, knowing that she was unwanted. Rather than being oblivious, she was glad she had made sense of this, because it helped her cope. The determination that they weren't worth it, that nobody was worth it, had helped her build up her heart again.
They had cast her from their lives, and yet now, had brought back with them all the turbulence of the past as her father made his mark in her present. He had no right to do such a thing…Nikki tried to make herself feel anger, to manage the pain that had never healed but it was to no avail. All that persisted was the same numbness, the same helpless emptiness that had followed her home with her father's voice…the voice that wouldn't stop plaguing her, and now joined by another, unwelcome one – It was a mistake.
She looked down at Abhi by her side, sleeping peacefully. She wanted to roughly pull him awake, to make him see what was happening to her, to help her…but how would he help? How many times did Abhi have to fix her before she could stand on her feet without keeping a hand out to anchor him to her side? She looked down at his sleeping form miserably, tears now starting to sting at her eyes. Why did she have to lose Abhi? She knew the answer herself. Because this was reality – this feeling of being alone was the only harsh certainty she could depend on to be constant, not of being looked after, because the people she loved would always have to leave. They stayed only as long as their duty weighed down on them, and then they left.
And how long before Abhi, chained by her need, would do the same?
Arjun
14