Recently I was struck with typhoid (probably due to my weak immune system). Though the doctor said that my blood didn't show any traces of typhoid, treatment for the same was replicated on me. It's the worst part when doctors can't figure out how the pain has emerged and they begin to consider the one on the bed as rats on whom they can hit and trial.
'Kaisa hai Raja?' - said my mother waving a hand on my forehead, trying to caress me.
I slowly opened my eyes to see a cassette air conditioner above my head. How am I here, I asked myself. Yesterday night I was on my bed and my father must have picked me up, pushed me into the car and brought me here, I suspected. But I couldn't recall any instance of my condition getting worse by the second that I had to lie down on the hospital bed. Considering the serenity in the general ward, it seemed like three in the morning. I felt that I was fit and fine to go home and that I'd get a leave as soon as my files were prepared.
'I'm fine,' I said with a long smile.
Just then I saw my father emerging from in between my feet which were nicely covered with a white bed sheet. He too asked how was I. I affirmed that I was fine. Before I could ask how he'd manage to get me here without myself waking up even once, I saw my cousin dashing through her way just to ask how was I. Her pleasant talks about my trip to Ujjain made me feel bloody.
My mother had left to let my sister inside the ward and before leaving she had said that she was waiting outside. The area had around ten to fifteen patients — some would go home with me and some would be admitted if their condition got worse, I thought.
'If they tell you to sleep, then just sleep, we are waiting outside.' said my father.
But, why should I sleep when I'm going home, I mouthed. My father and my cousin disappeared to let the last candidate inside: Pankaj, a brassy character of our extended family who is my another cousin.
'So how are you feeling in the .IC.U buddy?' - he questioned with a smile on his face as if he were greeting me for my wedding.
Clearing the throat, i said 'It's a general ward.'
He sneered and left.
Just as he left, I called the nurse.
'Can you please do my tests wt the earliest, my parents are waiting outside for quite some time.' — I asked.
'We'll do them, you can rest.' — she retorted.
Half an hour passed in restlessness. My nervousness began to escalate. I was sweating very hard. I called that nurse again and asked in a displeasing voice, 'Can you please let me know how much time is it going to take? My parents have been waiting for long.'
She took a deep breath. With arrogance in her mind, she spoke as if she were the politest person alive on earth — a quality that one needs to have to be a nurse.
'We have spoken to your parents. And, you'll have to stay this night. You can sleep now. We will do the tests tomorrow.'
'Why should I sleep? I'm all fine. Im ready to go home, isn't it?'
She turned away.
'hey, wait.' I said.
'Yes.'
'Don't I look you to be fine? I'm all fit to go home. Please let me go. My parents would be frustrated by now. Usually they aren't awake till so late.'
She smiled.
'What?'
'You can't even talk properly now, you are shivering and you're saying that you are all fine. We are here to care for you.'
'I'm not shivering. It's the plastic that's irritating me.' I wanted to tell her that I speak like that only and was about to get allergic to plastics, specifically.
Almost flummoxed by now, she walked away.
It took me thirty minutes to realize that there was no plastic sheet beneath me. My shivering had stopped and I could feel it in ignorance. Elated by now, I was ready to go. I held my bed sheet, only to get shocked to see that I was not wearing my pajama. And not too long to see a tube inside my underwear that reached my bladder for excretion. When did they do that? I thought. I looked for more surprises in my body. I checked my body from bottom to top. The bottom was already naked. I slipped my hand into my t-shirt. The stomach was clear. Well and good; but not for too long: chest was attached with three wires — red, blue and green. I was about to go mad. It shouldn't get any worse now. I took my hand out to reach the neck. Aghast! Another tube attached to the right side of my neck to a machine. They couldn't do it without me knowing it. How could they? And how did they?
Bloody miracle, I thought.
The next thought that struck my mind almost kept my nerves wrecking until I finally shouted to ask the nurse — IS THIS PLACE AN I.C.U.?
She replied in the affirmative that almost gave me an heart attack. That did gave me an answer to my question: why everyone was so worried and why everyone was there at this time of the night. Another question cropped up from the answer. I asked in a softer voice: what's the time?
'Nine-thirty,' she said.
I strained my brain to get an answer to my yet unanswered question that puzzled me: how was I there?
On the first day at the hospital, I was straightaway put under the aegis of "under training" nurses. I couldnt believe that a simple but terribly painful headache (though at the back of my mind I was feeling as if I'd got a serious internal brain injury that had no cure and that is why I was afraid of going to the hospital) and a usual fever that I was used to could land me up in a hospital room. Ever since i could realize my sense, I'd never got a chance of being admitted into a hospital. Still it wasn't anything to rejoice at that very moment besides the fact that an untrained nurse finally found a way to my nerve for the IV. My blood was getting glucose that it needed and I wasn't getting what I needed: spicy food. In addition to fever and headache what was most troubling was a bilious feel that resulted in loss of appetite.
Two hours into the day, at around 3 p.m., I went to the toilet to pee though I had not drink anything. Then I realized the role of glucose. I pushed the bell beside the bed to call the nurse who removed the tube to let me excrete. Leaving the toilet door ajar, with my hands into my deep pockets of my pajamas I retreated to the bed. I tried to catch my mother's eyes but they were struck on my hands — now shaking vigorously. She noticed that my hands were clammy and I was feeling intensively cold. Seeing me this way, she got extremely scared and called the nurse. The nurse replied that extreme shivering is a sign of high fever and that should not bother her so much, who by this time began sweating in a centrally air-conditioned room.
five blankets on my thickly covered body, but still I was shivering.Day in and day out. My body lay there in a complete vegetative state with few minutes of life when I got to see my parents' face twice in a day for five minutes each. On the third day I completely broke down. The strength in me was never there. I pleaded and cried like a helpless animal only to see my parents in the wee hours of morning. But for the hospital, their rules were more important than the life of their patients. I begged with folded hands for a call to my parents who were less than thirty meters away from me but to no avail. In those days I realized the worth of my parents in my life. The selflessness with which they cared about me. I realized that I was actually an ego-centric, not a rationalist adult. For me, I thought that the entire world would one day revolve around me. But for them, it was me who they were more concerned about. Lesson: life without parents is horrible for some but definitely non-existent for me — from now on.
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