YOU'RE STILL THE ONE
Part 6
Instead of going home, Nikki decided to go and meet senior oncologist who was Ayesha's physician. She had been worried about Ayesha's fever and other test results. She had a nagging feeling that there was some bad news in store for her. But she had to go and get done with it.
She knocked on the door and asked with a smile on the face "Dr. Mathur, can I come in?' as she walked in.
'Hello, Dr. Nikita. How are you? Please tell me, what can I do for you?' the senior doctor asked her fondly, indicating her to take a seat. He had come to know Dr. Nikita pretty well since he had taken up Ayesha's case, which was close to one year now. Dr. Nikita had been keenly following her progress and taken a lot of interest in Ayesha's treatment. And today also he knew why she was here. As soon as any of Ayesha's tests showed anything slightly disturbing, Dr. Nikita would come knocking to his door. He knew that it was not that she had any doubts on his capabilities, it was just that she was too concerned for the little girl.
'Ayesha .... doctor, I am sure u saw her test results yesterday. And she has had fever today and her haemoglobin has dropped too. I was worried .... I was on night duty yesterday and she was very fretful the whole night, and just wouldn't let me go. I am not sure what has triggered all this. She just had the blood transfusion. It is too soon ....' her voice trailed off.
Dr. Mathur walked around the table and came close to where she was sitting, leaned on the table and said softly,
"Doctor, you know very well what all this means, don't you? We have been working on this case for nearly a year. She has shown very little recovery, but had been maintaining a status quo. But this time things have worsened and she is not responding well to the chemotherapy also. You are a doctor, and you know how fast cancer spreads in younger children. When she came to us, she was already at stage 3 of leukaemia. We have been trying our best to arrest it so that it does not go to stage 4. But I am sorry to say this, looks like we have not been very successful.'
This is exactly what Nikki had feared. Her eyes were full of tears. She knew that there were chances of this happening but she was not prepared for it at all. She had been avoiding to face this situation, to face that they would loose Ayesha so soon ....
'Now .... now what are we going to do?', she asked with a weak voice.
'Dr. Nikita ... first thing a doctor has to learn .... is we never give up hope. We keep on trying ... till a person is alive there is hope to save him ... so be strong ... keep a stable mind ... and keep treating your patient to the best of your ability, do you understand?' Dr. Mathur looked at her sternly and told her in a firm voice.
'We have started her on a stronger dose of chemo, thats why she was feeling quezy in the morning. But she told me how you had fed her breakfast. That was really nice of you. She needs all the energy she can get naturally thru her intake to fight all this. You will see her improve in a few days. We will see from there how to take it, okay?' he said now, in a softer tone once again. He understood how close the two of them were.
Nikki nodded her head and wiped her tears. She suddenly remembered she wanted to ask Dr. Mathur something else too,
'Doctor, is it okay to have a small party for Ayesha on Friday. It is her b'day and we all thought we will give her a surprise party'.
'Well, Dr. Nikita, that is 3 days away from today. I think she will be much better by then and also would be feeling much stronger, so I guess no harm in her celebrating her b'day. But please make sure that you do not exhaust her. That might not be too good for her as her immunity levels would fall. We do not want to deal with anymore complications than what we already have at hand, ok? Anything more?'
'Yes, Doctor..... one more thing ... how much more time do we have?' Nikki asked with her huge eyes full of sadness.
'Dr. Nikita .... as I already told u ... let us not loose hope ... I am talking to some of my colleagues across the world ... there are discoveries happening everyday in our field ... we might be able to do something for Ayesha soon. If there is anything that we can do, we will do it, so do not worry .... and do not give up hope.'
Nikki nodded and walked out of his cabin in deep thoughts.
Today had been the worst day of her life. First, the fight with Abhi, and now, this news about Ayesha. Things could not get any worse than this. She was at a breaking point. Did not know how she will continue without 2 most important people in her lives, Abhi and Ayesha. But she knew, she had to find the strength somewhere, somewhere from within. The most important thing she had heard today was 'Do Not Give Up Hope'. First, Riddhzi had pointed out that to her and now Dr. Mathur. If you have hope, you have chances of winning, but if you give up, you have nothing...... with this in her mind she walked toward the cafeteria ... to meet her friends and tell them about her plans for the party....
At the lunch table, she reminded Atul about Ayesha's b'day party and how they had planned to give her a surprise. All of them exclaimed, how great an idea it was. They were all excited to help out. So she started to plan. Atul said he will take Ayesha out for an hour in the afternoon to the library and keep her occupied telling her stories while all of them decorated the Ward. Muski was going to bake the cake, Anji would get the snacks and Armaan and Riddhzi said they will arrange for the games and entertainment. Just as they were winding up, Sid walked up with an angry face.
All of them were surprised, but Nikki was worried. She knew something had certainly gone wrong between him and Abhi, so worriedly she asked him,
"How did your first meeting with the board members go, Sid? I am sure you impressed them!"
Sid frowned and giving her a stare said, 'Nikki, I can handle board members. They are not a problem at all. I have grow up handling my dad. If I can handle him, I can handle anyone .... well almost anyone', he added as an after thought.
'Kyun Sid, kya hua?' Armaan asked.
'Mat pucho, yaar! I do not understand this Dr. Modi. One minute he is very professional, nice, approachable, ready to help me, and the next moment he is the most unreasonable guy I have ever met', Sid says irritatedly.
This got everyone interested. Hearing Dr. Modi's name they were curious. But Nikki was shit scared. Things could not get any worse ......
'Arre today, morning Nikki told me that she was no longer in the New Sanjeevani project,' he started ......
'Nikki ...... what? You never told us about this' all of them jumped on Nikki, looking at her accusingly.
'Guys .... no big deal .... I was going to tell you, but was busy planning for Ayesha's b'day party, so forgot', she tried to cover up, looking at Riddhzi for help.
'Hain Sid ... phir kya hua?' Riddhzi prompted Sid, so that their attention was diverted from Nikki to Sid.
'I asked Dr. Modi, why there was a change. And he simply replied saying, there were too many senior doctors on leave or out on a conference and they were short staffed so they wanted all the interns helping with the patients. So he had to move out Nikki from the project. When I asked him for how long ... he said it would be indefinitely ... he did not know when things would change. I requested him to find another solution to his problem about understaffing, since we needed Nikki's help on this project. But he just refused to listen to me and refused to budge saying that the decision was taken and he cannot change it now. This got me so angry ... he was not ready to listen to any reason. I wanted to explain to him that Nikki and I both had established good repo and were getting work done pretty fast. And this way we could get the report my dad wanted out fast. Making financing faster ... but he just would not listen. He was being so unreasonable! This got me so wild ! I told him in that case he will have to wait for the report that I needed to send out for him to get the financing, for the rest of his life and simply walked away from him', Sid exclaimed with disgust.
All the interns looked at him with their eyes and mouth open wide, in awe. They could not believe that anyone could say this to Dr. Modi and walk away alive. Armaan was the first one to recover, and walking upto Sid said,
'Hey dude! You were awesome!! Where are your feet?'
'Why? Here they are?' Sid said lifting one of them up.
'Arre mujhe tere paun chune hai! Tum dhanya ho! What we all could not do for last one year, you did it in 3 days! Tusi great ho, Mr. Sid!' he laughed and thumped Sid on his back.
Sid gave a blank look at Armaan, not understanding what he was saying. But did not care much. He was looking at Nikki. Trying to see how she was. She was so upset in the morning when he had left for the meeting. Even now her eyes were sad, but held an expression of disbelief. She could not believe what both, Abhi or Sid had done. They both were acting so unprofessional and immature.
'Sid, u shouldn't have done that! That was very unprofessional!' she scolded him.
'Nikki, what he did, removing you just like that from the project, was that professional? I was trying to explain to him how important you are to this project, which he very well knows, he was not even ready to listen. Well, now he very well be ready for not getting his project financed', Sid replied sarcastically.
Nikki was shocked. She cannot ever let that happen. She knew how important this project was for Abhi. She also knew how many merits this project had and how many people were going to be benefitted from it. They were not going to loose the financing of this project because of Abhi's stupid stubbornness and his mission to hurt her. She will have to talk to him she thought. Even though that was the last thing she wanted to do, she will have to knock some sense into him. She had no energy to face him today, maybe she will meet up with him tomorrow and try to make him see some sense.
Once again Riddhzi came to her rescue. She reminded the others that it was time for them to report back to their duties. So the gang got up chatting away, making fun of Dr. Modi and walked out of the cafeteria, leaving Nikki and Sid alone.
Nikki trying to divert Sid's anger asked him if he had eaten. Sid said no, so she asked if she can get him something to eat. As they both proceeded to the counter to get a sandwich for him and cup of coffee for Nikki, she said,
'Chalo, chodo, don't get angry, everything will be fine. We will work out something. I am there to help you out, u already know that. This whole week, I have my days free and will help you with the project, since I am on night duty for the whole of the week. So don't worry, we will be able to send out the first part of the report to your dad this weekend.'
'Nikki, that is not the point. It is not that I cannot do it without u. It is about working on this together. You both have been a team on this. And when I joined, it made 3 of us together. Now suddenly he cannot just throw you out. Bringing another person in at this late a stage is not going to help, because that person will not know anything about the project and we both will struggle on it together. Something is telling me that he is not taking this call professionally, it is something personal. Because he is an intelligent man and can see very clearly what I am trying to tell him. So do u want to tell me what is going on here, Nikki?' Sid deduced very intelligently.
And Nikki knew that she cannot deny the truth to him. 'Sid, you are right. It is something personal. I did something to make him very angry. But I don't want to discuss it. So please let it be. I will try to talk to Dr. Modi, apologize to him and see if we can work this out.' She said sadly. Sid was heartened by the hurt look in her eyes and agreed to back off.
'Ok, if you say so! I will not get into it any more, as long as you can convince him to let you be back on the project.'
'Thek hai, I have to leave now. I need to take some rest before coming back tonite. I will catch up with you tomorrow morning after my duty. And will talk to Dr. Modi also, tomorrow. Bye and catch you later, ok?' Nikki left a little relieved since Sid agreed to her plan. She will have to think about how to approach Abhi tomorrow, for now she had no energy to think about it !!!
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Part 7 updated -
Edited by ANfan_1810 - 15 years ago
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