Chapter 06

Back in the room, I was too dazed to react to Sunil’s wisecrack about my getting holed up

in the shit-pot immediately after the dinner or something. I pretended to be lost in my

book, when in reality I was too numb to read a line. Kedar had asked for at least ten

ampoules of the injection by Tuesday evening. He had not gotten into the gory details of

the possible consequences in the event of my failure to comply. Not that I wanted to

know. He even took credit for excusing me from doing the ‘job’ on Monday because of

my viva, by saying that he was not a senseless guy. He wasn’t. He was a filthy bastard. I

mean, it was sad that Rambo had cancer but why make me steal injections? There was no

way I could talk to my roomies about this, or, for that matter, anyone. Kedar’s clear threat

in this regard still rang in my ears.

It was around midnight when Achal shook me awake and asked me to sleep on the bed. I

had slouched on the chair with my head on the table. My entire left arm had gone numb

because of the awkward posture. Ganong’s pages were wet from my saliva that had

trickled while I slept on it. I shifted to the bed groggily worrying about two things: one, the

viva, for which now I had only Sunday to prepare, and second, the injection ampoules. It took

me a while to fall asleep again and when I did, my sleep was marred by several bizarre dreams through the night.

Sunday morning lacked its usual laziness, which was replaced by quick visit to the loo

and a hurried breakfast at the roadside larri, consisting of tea and biscuits. By eight, all

three of us were deeply engrossed in our books and my thoughts kept shuttling between

the viva and Kedar. It was only by late afternoon that I decided that Ganong needed to be

substituted with the less obnoxious Chatterjee’s Physiology. I don’t know if the change

of the textbook helped me or not, but by dinner-time I felt fairly confident of faring well

in the viva. A late night revision-cum-discussion with Sunil and Achal reinforced my

belief in my preparations for the test. I slept peacefully that night.

The worst part of Monday was that the lectures for the day were to precede the

viva, which was scheduled for two in the afternoon. With thoughts of the viva looming in

our minds, the lectures seemed irrelevant. I might as well had sat in the library and

prepared myself even better. Anyway, I felt confident enough.

By 1.35 pm, our batch stood in full attendance outside Beena Mehta’s office.

Most of the students had their heads buried in open books walking directionless across

the lobby, often bumping into each other. By 2 pm, the books were back into the bags as

we all waited impatiently for the inevitable to happen.

Soon, a peon appeared from nowhere and asked five of us to go in according to

our roll numbers.

Five?! She’ll be grilling five of us together? I mean, not knowing answers is one thing

and not knowing them in front of Priya is quite another.

Then I recalled that I’d prepared well enough and who knows, this might turn out to be an

opportunity to impress her. Who knows?

Apart from Priya and myself, Sunil, Achal and Kavita sat on chairs that were neatly

arranged to face Dr. Mehta. She started with some small talk to relieve us of our anxiety.

“This is your first viva, I believe,” she said with a smile, “don’t worry, this won’t be very

difficult and I believe you all are well-prepared.”

Did we appear nervous? At least I was.

She then shot out a few questions at Sunil and Priya who managed to answer them with a

few stammers here and there.

Hey these questions are no big deal, I thought and smiled within.

She then turned to face me. I don’t know why, but the blood drained off my face.

“Ajay Kumar. Right?” she said with a smile. I nodded and tried to smile back.

“Well, Ajay, Define Polycythemia Vera for us?”

Define what?

She waited for me to answer and I contorted my face as if thinking hard. Then I feebly

glanced at others. They were all staring at the floor.

“Do you know the answer?” she was getting impatient.

I picked up some courage and asked, “Is it about blood physiology, ma’am?”

Heads turned and jaws dropped in shock.

“No, it’s about rocket science.” She replied with a square face.

“I.... I don’t know the answer, ma’am.” I managed to blurt out.

I saw Sunil suppress a smile. Insect. I hope Beena ma’am puts to him the toughest questions

ever.

Dr. Mehta was not over with me yet.

“What is the normal range of hemoglobin levels in human blood?” she asked me with

raised eyebrows.

I beamed and the color returned to my face. The answer is simple.

“It is 12 to 16 in males and 11 to 15 in females.” I said proudly.

“12 to 16 of what? Horsepower??” asked Dr. Mehta angrily. “Give us some units,

doctor.” The taunt was obvious and everyone laughed.

Was it gm/lt or mg/lt or gm/ml?

“Its grams per milliliter, ma’am.” I said with fake confidence.

“You mean to say there is 12 to 16 grams of hemoglobin in every milliliter of our blood?

Snorted Mehta. “We’re talking of humans here, Ajay, not some bungling King Kong!”

There was muffled laughter that was promptly silenced by Mehta with a stern “Shut up!”

I went red in the face. I do not remember what happened in the rest of the viva but I came

back to the hostel without much ado.                                                                                                

“What happened to you, Ajay, you had prepared so well?” said Achal as soon as we

were back in the hostel room. He did not even try to hide the vile in his voice.

“I had,” I said, after a pause and without looking him, “but I fail to understand from

where she picked out this polycithe vara.., or whatever it is.”

“Polycythemia vera.” Achal corrected me, “it’s in Guyton, but you, for some reason

preferred …err.. Ganong?”

Without saying a word I started collecting my physiology textbooks and notes that I had

left scattered on the bed in the morning, and shoved them back into the cupboard- for a

week, at least. Sunil quietly listened to our conversation. There was no need for him to

speak. His friend was carrying out the task appropriately well.

I had no appetite but I still stuffed in some food at dinner. The mess menu was

unremarkable with potato-gourd curry and dry potato sabzi. It is said that by the time one

graduated from the MSU campus, at least a truckload of potatoes traversed through one’s

digestive tract. The loss of appetite was not solely because of my abysmal performance at

the viva. I was hounded by Kedar’s demand. I suddenly longed to turn into a

superman and hold Kedar by his hair and say, ‘Go to hell, you skunk!’ I wondered if they

had a gym somewhere in the campus. I’d find out.

The Sir Sayaji General Hospital or SSG hospital in short, was not just one

building. It functioned from several buildings that lay scattered across a huge campus of

about five acres. The buildings were of different shapes, sizes and, indeed of different

ages. Differently aged buildings were a result of newer building cropping up time and

again to cope up with the all-round growth of the hospital, both in terms of patient inflow

and in advent of technologically advanced equipment that needed more and more space.

The newer buildings, however, were poorly planned and some of them were grotesquely

out of place and even a hindrance to some other facilities. Some in-patient wards, like the

medical wards and the gynecology wards, were housed in ancient buildings that were

constructed decades ago, probably by the Maharaja of the erstwhile state of Baroda

himself. Though most parts of these wards were dilapidated, and in a state of disrepair,

they gave a royal feeling with wide, endless corridors, huge arches and oversized doors

and windows that were painted and repainted in white oil over the years. The doors to the

doctors’ rooms were split in the middle with old-fashioned door-closers that still worked,

though with loud squeaks. The outpatient department, the surgical wards and operation

theatres, the radiology department and the casualty were located in the newer buildings.

The campus had asphalt roads with frequent curves and turns, and quaint little gardens

popped up at unexpected places that pleasantly surprised passers-by. The hospital

superintendent, Dr. Saxena, was known to love nature.

I asked the way to the medical wards and then proceeded in the direction that was pointed

out to me by a student who, unlike me, carried a stethoscope and an examining hammer

in his lab-coat pocket. I don’t know if it was by intent, or by chance, but the wards in this

part of the hospital were housed in several different edifices; each one of them standing

haphazardly in the area. Although separate tarmac roads were constructed on the frontal

areas of these wards for the ambulances, gurneys etc, the backyards of these wards were

connected by three-foot passages that ran through small, picturesque gardens. The

hospital staff, the ambulant in-patients and their kin frequently used the backdoors for

commuting, as the main entrances were unofficially reserved for transporting patients on

gurneys, receiving food trolleys from the kitchen and sterilized instrumentation from the

central sterilization department. Wooden benches were thoughtfully placed on the

periphery of the curtilage for the ambulant indoor patients to sit and relax in the evenings.

Only the presence of these artfully designed flowerbeds could put some weight on the

argument that the wards had been, indeed, planned and built that way. Fragrance from

the blossomed flowers helped, to some extent, in covering up the combined repulsive

smell of denatured spirit, tincture Iodine, and other similar hideous liquids found in

abundance in all hospital wards.

I entered the backdoor of the ward. As I approached the

nursing station located in the outer area, I felt my pulse racing. I had donned my lab-coat

to indicate to inquisitive eyes, if any, my status of a medical student. I had been,

nonetheless, careful enough to stick a white sticking plaster on my name that was

embroidered on its upper left pocket. I did not own a stethoscope as yet but it would have

been impressive on such a mission.

A nursing college, affiliated to the hospital, provided the much needed manpower,

in form of nursing students to the hospital’s nursing department that was, at

times, woefully short of workforce. I found a lone student nurse at the nursing station,

who looked charming in her white skirt-top uniform and a starched nurse’s hood of the

same color. A pair of long stockings covered her shapely legs. She sat on a chair, reading

a vernacular newspaper when I approached her.

“Yes?” she looked enquiringly at me.

“Err…Sister” I began, finding it difficult to address a pretty girl as ‘sister’, “I am looking

for a patient named Ramlal, he’s suffering from, er, tuberculosis.” I was trying very hard

not to reveal my nervousness even as my eyes kept darting around the station to locate

the drugs cabinet. I found one in the corner of the room and thankfully, it was not locked

at the moment. Its door had glass panes in its entire length and I could see plastic jars in

the top shelf. The middle and the lower shelves contained syringes, needles, catheters,

several tube-like things and dressing material.

“Ramlal?” she frowned as if trying to recollect, “I don’t remember anyone named Ramlal

in this ward. What’s the full name of the patient?”

I scratched my head to show that I was trying to recollect the name, when, in fact, I was

trying to fabricate one.

“I think its Ramlal Puranmal Kayasth.” I was surprised at my own spontaneity. It is said

that adversity brings out the best in people.

“I am sure there’s no one by this name in this ward but I’ll still look up.” She said and

rose. I expected her to disappear somewhere inside the ward but she pulled out a sheet of

paper from the drawer and scanned it in a jiffy before declaring, “There’s no one by this

name here. You sure he’s in medical ward ‘A’?”

Ward ‘A’? Were there other medical wards? Of course, how stupid of me. How could a

huge medicine department have just one ward of thirty beds? There has to be several

such wards.

“Yes, I am sure, sister, its ward ‘A’.” I said, “Could you please look around the ward and

check?”

She looked offended. “I have a complete list of patients here, bed-wise. There is no scope

for a mistake.”

I started to think hard of ways to dislodge this stupid female from the scene when a thin,

aging woman arrived at the nursing station. She wore a white saree that had a two-inch

blue border. She held a large broom in one hand and a dustbin in the other. The ayah, I

thought.

“Matron madam has arrived for the rounds.” She announced to the nurse who ignored me

immediately, collected her pen, a clipboard and several sheets of paper before darting out

to join her boss at the rounds.

The Ayah eyed me suspiciously for a while before shrugging and shuffling off, mumbling

incoherently to herself.

As soon as she was out of sight, I made doubly sure no one else was in the vicinity before

moving swiftly to the medicine cabinet. I immediately started exploring its top shelf. The

wide-mouthed plastic jars were manually labeled using sticking plaster as labels. I started

my frantic search for one labeled ‘FORTWIN’. I kept turning my head to keep an eye on

the door. Beads of perspiration appeared on my forehead and I could feel my pulse

pounding on my temples. At that moment I heard someone behind me. I quickly turned to

notice a frail looking man wearing a vest and a lungi. He carried a urine bag in his left

hand, a transparent tube from which disappeared beneath his lungi. His right wrist had an

IV catheter attached to it. A patient, I thought. He looked around the room with searching

eyes before asking me, “Where’s the nurse?” Before I could reply, he asked again, with a

shade of doubt, “Are you a doctor?”

I told him in as authoritative tone as I could manage that I was a medical student and the

nurse would soon be back and that he must go back to his bed.

He looked at me with sorry eyes and said, “My urine catheter has got blocked again,

doctor, and now my bladder is bursting, can you please get it cleaned up?”

Not wanting this conversation to carry on forever, I told him that I’d do the needful as

soon as possible and could he now please go to his bed. He gave me a ‘come soon’ look

before slowly walking back towards the ward. I got back to my work and soon I located a

brown jar that was neatly labeled ‘INJ. FORTWIN.’ I heaved a sigh of relief and quickly

unscrewed the lid. I peeked inside and it was full of ampoules. I picked out one, and its

label appeared similar to one that Rambo had shown to me. I had no time to count the

ampoules and just picked a handful of them and replaced the lid clumsily on the jar.

While closing the door of the cabinet I noticed that I had badly scattered the hitherto

neatly arranged jars, but who cares. I stuffed the ampoules in an envelope that I had

carried with me in my lab-coat pocket and turned to head straight for the door. I had

almost started to run by the time I reached the door when the student nurse suddenly

appeared from nowhere and banged into me. Being much smaller than me in built; she

couldn’t take my momentum and fell flat on her hips with her papers flying all around.

“Ouch!” she cried out, wincing in pain.

Terrified, I cursed myself and reached out to help the girl back to her feet. She took my

hand and stood up slowly with her face still distorted from pain.

“I’m sorry,” I managed to say in a genuinely sorry voice, “I hope you’re not hurt badly.”

Hearing her bawl, some patients and their relatives came out of the ward and gathered

around us. Some of them collected the scattered sheets of papers and the clipboard and

placed them on the table in the room.

She looked at me with an expression that was a mixture of surprise, anger and pain.

“What’s the rush, doc?” At that moment she seemed to recall my presence earlier in the

room.

“You’re still here?” she said with a frown, “I told you your patient is not in this ward.”

“Yes, of course, you told me that.” I flashed a false smile. “But I was just making sure

myself. Please don’t mind, but I just went through the list of patients here,” I said

pointing to the sheet of paper she’d left on the table.

She appeared unhappy but didn’t say anything and got back to her newspaper.

I thanked her before leaving. This time I walked cautiously to the bicycle stand and then

rushed to the hostel, paddling frantically.