It had started with fatigue, a few months after he had quit smoking. He was feeling very tired. It was attributed to his hectic work schedule. He had been working non-stop for the past couple of months - night-outs, weekends in office. A pressing deadline! He was finding it difficult to do routine things like climbing the stairs to just his second floor cubicle. His agility had gone. He felt tired always. She chided him for being so lazy and for growing old ‘so soon’. She advised a couple of days’ rest and a break. She also took off from her school and stayed at home with him. After a lot of cajoling on her part to take a break and a promise to the manager that next week he would compensate for this week’s absence, he decided to stay at home. But then he lost his appetite too. He did not like to eat at all. The exercise to rejuvenate him seemed to be failing. His fatigue and work were taking their toll on his health. His eating habits changed. He lost weight. Everything was so gradual and slow that she failed to notice the symptoms. It was only when he got ‘throat infection’ after a fortnight of his ‘break’ that alarm bells rang in her mind. She decided it was time for him to take up a medical check up. She had been too careless with his health for the past few weeks.
She was able to see him everywhere in their room. He was there searching for his favourite checked shirt in the cupboard and calling out to her unable to find it. He was there in front of the mirror trying to comb his hair, which always had an unruly strand sticking out. He was there sitting on the bed with his laptop doing his office work oblivious to her rambling about keeping office work out of 'her' home. She got up from her chair and went to the cupboard. She had lost count of time. Her sister had taken the kids to the apartment play park. Her mom was in the kitchen preparing the evening snacks and her father had gone out for a walk. It was surprising how everyone had left her alone to her memories! No one wanted to disturb her. Perhaps they understood what she wanted. As she opened the cupboard and saw his crumpled t-shirt lying carelessly above the other neatly stacked dresses, she thought she could still smell his scent in it. This was the same t-shirt he had worn on the last day before rushing to the hospital when he had complained of breathlessness. She slowly took it in her hands, and felt the smoothness of the cotton on her cheeks. She was just beginning to cry; just beginning to breakdown, small drops of tears were forming in her eyes and her heart was beginning to feel heavy. She still held the t-shirt in her hands as she moved out of the bedroom into the balcony overlooking the apartment play park. She saw her children playing with the other kids in the apartment. Her children had forgotten what had befallen them quite easily. She felt it was better to be a kid. But hadn't he always said that about her? He had always thought that she was his first child! And then she saw him too.
They had gone to their family doctor and the doctor had prescribed the usual antibiotics, vitamin tablets, iron tonic, etc for a few days. It was 3 days since he had started taking the medicines and still there was no improvement in his appetite or agility. It was the 4th day morning, when he was brushing his teeth, that he noticed that he had spit blood. He was alarmed himself. He had never given a second thought to his exhaustion and now suddenly he was horrified. After finishing off the morning chores, sending the kids off to school, a light breakfast of juice and corn flakes, both of them had gone to the doctor. The doctor seemed a little worried on knowing about the blood in the sputum and prescribed a biopsy, X-ray and CT scan with the reassurance to them that there was nothing to worry and these were just routine tests. They went to get the reports the next day and later, for consultation with the doctor. As they both sat in that hospital, in front of the doctor, something was nudging her. She did not feel good about it at all. One could call it a woman's instinct.
She saw him a couple of hundred metres away from the play park, in the ground - his hangout with other fathers and youngsters of the apartment. He was playing cricket. He had just bowled an over and the batsman had gone for a big one off the last ball; bad timing and the ball had landed on the window pane, a few feet below the balcony from where she was seeing him. He was just a little irritated that the batsman had swung the bat in his over and ball had landed in an inaccessible area. She saw the ball lying there, amidst the leaves, a small rusted tin, an old broken bat, a rag and other trifles that had accumulated on the pane over the period of years. She smiled and waved back to him that she would retrieve the ball from there and throw it back to him. That was not so difficult!
It was a multi-specialty hospital, one of the popular corporate hospitals in the city. Everything about it was rich, from the reception, lobby, the patient rooms to the lifts, the stair ways, pharmacy - everything. Even the people who had come there seemed wealthy spending all the well-earned money on the ill-deserved illness!! 'Were there really so many people sick in the world?’ she thought. Some extremely worried faces and some very relaxed in fact smiling ones. However the most painful ones to look at were the ones with the resigned expressions, going about the hospital corridors with medicines or money receipts in hands but despair in their eyes! It was an expression of silent acceptance of what was to befall them. They knew what was to come, but they were helpless in avoiding it. All that they could do was awaiting it! She did not know the cause of their concern, but something about these expressions had troubled her as she had entered the doctor's room with her husband and the reports.
She bent down the window pane right below her balcony, but her hands would not reach the ball. She could either try pushing the ball down to him with some long stick or she could put a stool in the balcony itself, stand over it and bend down to retrieve the ball. She looked around in their room and her gaze fell on the tiny chair - her younger one's long forgotten rocking chair which no longer rocked because it was broken near its legs. She thought, 'This must be ideal for me. After all I am going to just step on the chair for a few seconds, stoop down and pick up the ball. Not much of an effort.' She put his shirt down on the bed nearby and picked up the broken chair and positioned it in the place right above the window pane where she found the ball. She gingerly stepped on the chair and stretched her arms towards the ball.
The X-Ray showed her husband's lungs in various angles- left lung, right lung, the dorsal view, ventral view and many other angles. She was worried if something was wrong with the lungs, was she imagining things or did the lungs really look 'eroded'? The X-Ray, CT scan, biopsy reports, total of about 10-15 pages; a couple of them in pink colour and a few in white. At the end of the pink report she found the words 'Result: Bronchogenic carcinoma'. Another page of the report and another 'Result: Small Cell Carcinoma'. She was able to catch words 'metastasis', 'oncogens percentage', 'small cell carcinoma'. They made no sense to her. She knew that those words were significant but what it meant when translated to 'English', she did not know. The doctor looking at the reports in front of her would know. The doctor always reminded her of the typical fatherly figure, a man of sixty, short, a little stout, balding head with a few strands of white hair slowing finding their way among the thinning hairline. As he sat there looking at the report, his already creased forehead seemed unable to hold the new set of wrinkles that were appearing. It was full five minutes before the doctor started speaking to her, 'Oh! It's nothing to worry. We could admit him in our hospital itself for a few days and start the treatment. Don't worry, my child! He will be alright. Let us first put him into a comfortable bed and then we would talk in leisure'. This was all wrong, she thought. She was on the verge of panic 'But doctor, what is it? What are you going to treat him for?’ she almost pleaded. The doctor was his usual self, calm and composed, 'As I said nothing to worry, dear! The reports seem to denote mild tuberculosis. If he undergoes treatment, he should be fine. We'll first put him at ease and then I will talk to you, is that fine?’ He had said that with a cool composure but with finality in his voice that she did not press further. She was in a trance till the admission formalities had been completed and she found herself once again in front of the doctor’s desk. But this time, he did not have to look in to the report now. He was waiting for her with ’bad’ news. She was able to sense it. The doctor looked straight at her and started, 'I hate to tell this to you. But I have to. I have always told him to stop smoking and I know that you also have struggled to make him stop this habit. Now, I know that he has stopped. But.... ', the doctor looked down as if he could not longer look at her tear stained eyes and then looked up at her once again with a look trying to calm her, '... but now it's too late.... you must have seen the report... He... he has got lung cancer.' When the doctor stopped there, it seemed as if her world had also stopped.
...to be continued
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