Chapter Two
Days passed without her being aware of anything very much. They called her Rati; she supposed somebody must know her and had told them who she was. She had a hazy recollection of being transferred from one ward to another, and then of being moved from there to another hospital entirely but while she was in a sea of new faces and nurses she did not recognize the consultant and the other man were still constant visitors.
Then one day morning she awakened and for the first time did not so soon drift away again. This time she stayed awake. While she still had no memory, and her head still felt a little muzzy, she felt stronger and, with relief, as if she was ready to join the land of the living.
'Where am I?' she asked the pretty nurse who at the time came to check on her.
'Roselands, it's a private clinic in London. You were transferred here two days ago, a sure sign you're on the mend.'
'What happened to me? How..?' With her name she can say that she's an Indian but then when did she come to London? Was she born here or what…? But the nurse wouldn't know all these…
'You were in a road traffic accident. You're badly bruised and were in a coma for a short while, but you've come through and have nothing life-threatening wrong with you. You have some cuts and gazes which required stitches, some which didn't require and some muscle trauma, but otherwise no bones broken.' The nurse replied with a comforting smile.
'Is my head alright? I can't remember..' Rati asked panic rising inside her in a rocket speed.
'You're head is fine,' the nurse hurriedly assured her. 'And you have had all the testes we have known about, I can promise you, you've left with no permanent damage.
'But I can't remember who I am.' Panic clearly visible in her tone.
'Try to relax,' the nurse soothed. 'I'm Anna Charusheel, by the way. As I've mentioned, you were in a coma for a brief while, and your poor head has decided it wants rest, the more you'll relax the sooner you'll get your memory back.' How much more will she have to rest, she seemed to be have resting all along these days.
'Now, is there anything I can get for you?'
Rati looked around the room. 'I seem to have everything,' she wanted to ask more but there was no energy left in her, Anna Charusheel went away and Rati began to experience emotions of hysteria starting to rise everything was a blank, she pushed and pushed but there was nothing there.
'Rati,' she said out loud, fighting for calm, but the name sounded alien for her tongue.
Just when panic was on the rise again, however, the door opened and the consultant she seemed to know as Dr Sinha entered. 'How's the head?' He enquired, Coming to the bed and casting a professional eye over her.
'Everything is black. There's no light. Nothing there,'
'You need rest,' He said confidently.
'So Nurse Charusheel said,'
'Try your best not to worry,'
'How long will it take for my memory to come back?' Rati asked anxiously, and, more essentially, 'Will it come back?'
'If it is purely a case of knock on your head, your memory might come back within the next day or week or two. Just rest and….'
'If?' Rati questioned, 'Will there be any implication if it's more than a knock?'
He hesitated briefly but said 'Sometimes when a person has faced some kind of emotional stress, to an extent the person cannot take it anymore, the brain decides to shut everything for a while.'
'Do you think it might have happened to me?'
'It is possible for the two to come together but according to your case I think the culprit for now will be the accident.'
Rati accepted that, she had no choice. Mr.Sinha was a clever man, and she trusted him. 'My family?' she asked. 'They know I'm here?' He did not answer. 'I do have a family? Perhaps not or I don't have them here?'
'When I said you were to rest, I mean it.' He smiled. Let that poor brain take it easy for a while.'
She felt exhausted suddenly, as if any fight she had in her head had just been flattened. 'All right,' she agreed and closed her eyes.
She had no idea how long she slept, but awoke to find that she was alone. She was feeling anxious and disturbed again, and terribly lethargic too. She looked down at her fingers on top of the bed cover and noticed, quite incidentally, that while the fingers on that hand were slender, and actually quite narrow and dainty, her nails must have grown while she was in hospital they could definitely do with a trim.
Hope began to fill her that her memory might soon come back, because, somehow, she just knew that as a general rule she did not care for her nails to be overlong.
She took her left hand from beneath the covers to inspect the nails on that hand and went rocketing out from her feeling of lethargy when, with disbelieving amazement, she saw she was wearing the most beautiful diamond solitaire on her engagement finger. She was engaged! Engaged to be married!
Anupamaa
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