Page 7 of No Other Love

I remembered her bright smile and then the confused line that started appearing whenever I interrupted her study time in the on-call room.

I also remembered my own hopelessness at forgetting the basic facts I needed to remember for the MD exam. Maybe my heart was not in it, had never been in it, but I needed that degree to justify the years of sacrifice my Aai-Baba had made for me, their golden son. Their good boy.

Their Viku.

Guilt was my constant companion when I was studying for the exam. Because I was affected by the simple hope in my mother’s voice every time we chatted, and she asked me how I was doing. Or the gruff happiness in my father’s tone when he asked me if I needed more money.

I had no enthusiasm for the next step of my specialization, and I should have. Like Anika did, with her single-minded focus and determination. She had parental pressure too, and issues with them. But she didn’t let them impact her.

She just let them define her.

I was impacted by everything happening in my life. The realization that I was suffocating at a job that brought me little joy. The horror of understanding how modern medicine really worked. The hopelessness of seeing the person I loved the most relish the challenges I could not even bear.

Yes, I needed that degree to prove to everyone I was a good doctor. That I was a doctor at all.

Except, it didn’t matter in the end.

I failed the MD exam. Anika passed with flying colors. And everything went to ash between us.

That was part of the reason I hadn’t picked up the phone and called Anika to tell her I was coming. I just had too much to say, even more to feel and not enough air to breathe. It was a dick move.

I made it anyway.

***

Shaking off my melancholic memories I waved at Dr. Tiwari, the Head of Internal Medicine. He was coming out of a consult with a, no-doubt, VIP patient. Department heads don’t do the rounds for ordinary patients.

‘Dr. Pandit, what asurpriseji.’Dr. Tiwari enthusiastically pumped my hand and pulled me in for a bro-hug. I held on keeping the wince inside at his pounding of my back. ‘We did not expect to see you again in these corridors.’

Neither did I.

And it’s true, the last time I was down here, I felt defeated. Destroyed. The only sure thing I knew was the idea I did not belong here. It was such a sad ending to a promising career; I spent months mourning it. The idea of Hotshot Dr. Pandit, saving lives in the city of dreams that never sleeps.

Inever slept and thecitycrushed all my dreams.

‘Never say never, sir.’ I stepped back from the man’s embrace, smelling of tobacco and cigarette smoke and Banarsi paan (desi betel leaf with sugar, spices and nuts). I didn’t mean it, but it was a polite thing to say.

‘So, how is the local hospital treating you? Do you like being your own boss?’ The man walked with me to my destination. The NICU floor. I was taking the stairs instead of the elevator, prolonging my moment of reckoning. And longing.

‘It’s a lot of work, sir. I don’t have a moment to myself. Constantly on-call.’

‘And no pay either, right?’ The doctor guffawed and stuffed his stethoscope in his lab coat. No one carried the scope anymore unless they needed to check for sounds, but some of the old-timers who’d grown up in the time of nineties TV.

‘It’s the same story everywhere,’ I agreed.

And it was true, to an extent. I did not have enough funds to run the hospital and pay myself the salary I should be paying. I spent it on my staff and upgrading the facilities so I could treat more patients.

But there were so many upsides that money could not buy, so I did not mind. Besides, home was a lot cheaper than Mumbai. A cup of cutting chai cost like fifty rupees back home. It cost about seven times more here in the city.

‘Well, you are an excellent diagnostician, Vikrant.’ The doctor squeezed my shoulder. It was a sincere compliment, to my surprise. ‘You called that appendectomy heart attack on my operating table. I will never forget it.’

I remembered the case. Patient name: Jai Shah. Twenty-three years old. No prior history of heart problems. Brought in for an emergency appendectomy. Suddenly suffered jumps in his systolic and his vitals went haywire. Everyone was trying to figure out what went wrong, but I knew it was his heart. I watched the ECG jump almost out of the page erratically.

It was an easy call to make because I knew where to look.

I gave him a modest shrug. ‘Thank you, sir. That’s very kind of you to remember.’

‘I’m just saying…’ Dr. Tiwari stopped me at the stairs entrance. ‘If you want to come back, I could make it work for you. I need someone like you on my team, anyway.’