Make My Trip

The highway from Fatehpur to Jaipur stretched through the arid fields spotted with tiny villages in that dusty December fog. There were tractors coming opposite to us in that  one way lane with cows suddenly standing up in the median decorated with purple Bougainvillea flowers.

 When the car stopped at the toll booth, I looked outside at the giant yellow board. "The exemptions to paying tolls." The driver pulled out his mobile phone and changed the SIM cards.

“This one is for Jaipur,” he said chuckling. I picked up the fallen currency from the floor for him. “Thank you Sir…”  He then turned to his Hindi with my wife who thought she understood him. However the driver continued in both Hindi and English. Then his telephone started with ring tone of some old religious movie chanting.   I could not avoid listening to the conversation as this included “surgery” “blood transfusion” “6 pints” “ICU” etc. The driver then turned to me and enquired what kind of “Doctor” I was. He then went on to report that his uncle who was in good health was suddenly admitted with bleeding in the brain and is in ICU. He needed surgery and at least 6 pints of blood by the next day, otherwise he will not survive. He was planning to be at the hospital tonight after dropping us at our hotel.

He seemed to get telephone calls every fifteen minutes from that point.

My wife and me with our broken Hindi and the layman’s English tried to give him some prognosis on a patient we never knew, on a condition we only guessed based upon the understanding of the driver. He then requested me to see his uncle in the ICU once we reach there. I was then miles away from my work place, disconnected with the daily routines and here in this vast country my only interest was to explore the cultural treasures, the traditional folk art and the ancient palaces.

I was not sure whether I really wanted to visit a hospital.

I told him; “Once you visit your Uncle in the ICU and gather more information, call me.”

He nodded his head while over taking a truck filled with grain sacks.

“Here the Doctors will not give you information; you may be able to talk to them to get the REAL deal”

He looked at me with a manner of request.

After the sun set over the orange brown hills, we negotiated blaring horns, detours and eczematous roads into the walled city.

The driver made a pact to come back at 10 PM to get me to go to the SMS hospital.

My wife was uncomfortable, even though it was her idea to oblige the request of seeing his uncle in the ICU to give him some kind of reassurance. I some how knew that his hemorrhage was serious enough to affect most of his brain function, and he was not going to know that night what the prognosis would be for the old man.

I said bye to my family at the hotel and left with the driver in the foggy street. My wife closed the door, not able to do anything, but sat on the sofa, recalling all the horror stories of tourists got kidnapped for money and abandoned at roadside as unidentified corpses.
 I knew what she was thinking at that moment.

For me, that could be just my destiny.

May be, that would be the end of it; I would be a mutilated face among many my wife standing next to the policeman would identify in that smelly morgue among onlookers wading of the swarming flies.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sight of hospital name written in English and Hindi. Many years ago I had received an application form for admission to this college and never heard anything afterwards. Somehow I am here. SMS Hospital. Shops on both sides of the road in front of the hospital were just pharmacies. I could not count how many were there. When I came out of the car, there were agents calling out to invite me to the store employed by them and not to the next door. I did not understand why there should be a competition at all. Am I going to find a Sale?

The driver then took the car through an alley way and then decided to park in the underground parking lot. This was the most horrifying site to park. I had to walk upwards in the dark against the pillars and people coming towards me. There was no lighting. Finally I decided to stand at the gate. People, who waited there as their relatives got admitted to hospital, were already made their beds out of sheets on that courtyard. Every inch was being used. I was worried about the swarming mosquitoes than TB in that crowded waiting shed. 

I did not stay there for more than 10 minutes, but it appeared as long as 10 hours.

Then the driver appeared from the crowd with his older brother, who surprisingly spoke English as well.

He gave me his entry pass for the ICU.

We walked through the corridors, where I could remember the exact smell I used to know many years ago on my night shifts, as if I was here before. Then we reached Neuro ICU. This was closed with double doors. When I was changing my shoes to walk bare footed, the driver gave me a used head cover (?) his brother had given him. I went to the area where the doctors were sitting. The young physicians were really busy and the whole corridor was full of patients on the floor, a sight which was reminiscent of the days 30 years ago, nothing changed.

I took my business card from home and showed to one of the physicians and introduced. I enquired about the patient in the ICU named”…” No one seemed to know. Then one physician recalled. “Yes… That was the RTA with bleed. He is in bed 6.” "You can go and see him; the senior resident must be there.” He said politely.

The ICU was just a ward where surprisingly I noticed some ventilators and monitors. The old man had lot of bandages on his head with a wide bore nasogastric tube taped to his nose; his hands were restrained to the side rails with gauze. He was moving around, but I could see that his left side was paralyzed. I could not tell whether the man resembled our driver.

I asked the driver to call the patient and talk, so that I could see what response he had.

The driver bent his neck towards the old man and called,”Chacha… Chacha…”

The patient started saying something in Hindi.

I enquired, “What did he say?”

“I couldn’t make of anything he said”, said the driver. ”He is not having good mind”

He said with a sigh.

There were X-ray films kept at the bed side table. I lifted one of them. It was a CT scan. I could see that there was collection of blood inside the cranial cavity pushing the brain to one side.

Driver asked” how much blood we need?”

I replied, “I don’t know”

Driver looked at me as if it was a total waste of his effort dragging this guy there.

When we came out of the ICU, there was an old lady sitting at the floor next to the driver’s brother.

She stood up; her face was completely covered in her multicolored tie-and-die sari.

She kneeled in front of me, touched my feet with her fingers, there was just the clutter of her bangles in that darkened silence. I did not know what to say to those people.

The brother introduced me to the lady. “This is the big doctor from America came today with Ramu”

I smiled and made a greeting gesture with both hands. I said “Namaste Ji”

“Doctor, please tell me if there is a medicine we can buy from outside, like the ones you give in America… Money no problem… we will borrow”

My mind said, “The medicine is called Tincture of Time… which you can’t buy from the shops”