Desperate Moments
It was the late January’s late morning… comfortably cold but not quite chilly. Nitin & I were headed for our appointment with the gynaec for my pre-natal routine check-ups.
Our drive in his metallic light green Chevrolet Spark started the usual way. Soft rock music on the car stereo and the silence between us. After precise 2 mins of music Nitin fumbled and shuffled with the songs. This has been his habit and I had not quite understood why he did it. But I had seen him doing this since we met for the first time.
I was lost in Adele’s ‘Someone like you..’ and didn’t quite realize that we had reached the Dange Chowk, almost halfway. A soft warm touch on my hand drew me back to present from my reverie…I looked at the person beside me. Those clear, curious eyes…the soft, mysterious smile… One look at him was enough for me to fall for him, fall in love with him all over again.
‘How are you feeling now?’, he enquired softly, caringly. I was totally lost in his beauty that I forgot how I had been feeling. I kept on gazing at him as if trying to comprehend his question..
He brought his hand on mine..gently squeezed my palm reassuringly and softly caressed my abdomen which would be womb, now visibly enlarged with our love.
I shied & recoiled on my seat…he drew back..focusing on road. ‘You don’t like my touching you…’, he remarked softly.
‘No…it’s not like that..’, my voice trailed off pleading..
‘Then why did you move away?’
‘I felt shy… how do I explain you..’, I trailed off shying away staring hard at my hands and rings.
‘Ok’, he said, ‘you haven’t answered my question yet.’
I looked up at him confused, as to what answer was he expecting, I just replied him why I recoiled.
As if he read my mind, he said ‘I had asked how are you feeling?’.
This brought me back from my second reverie…’Oh! Yes..still the same…morning sickness.’
I was in my 5th month of pregnancy and had started off with morning sickness, bulimia and what not.
To make my situation worse I had turned anemic.
And to top things up, I refused to take the medications for morning sickness, because I was stubborn and adamant that I did not want to pop chemicals and pills into me.
This had led to disagreements between Nitin and me a couple of times. He believed in popping medicines for every lame reason, while I preferred taking a pill only in dire situations.
But my condition had been deteriorating, although my womb and ‘our baby’ was doing well.
We were taking a turn and I realized that we are just 500 meters away from Aditya Birla Memorial Hospital, where I was scheduled for appointment with my doctor.
Suddenly someone on a bike made a sharp cut in order to overtake us…and Nitin slammed car breaks hard.
I was almost unseated from seat, thanks to the seat belt & Nitin’s insistence before starting the vehicle to ‘strap yourself’. Honestly, had it not been for his strict rule, I would have been out of the windscreen.
‘I am so sorry. Really, very sorry.’, he apologized politely.
He was holding steering wheel too hard, so hard that the blood had drained out from his wrists and his knuckles had turned bone white.
I too was terrified but this near brush with the accident but not as petrified as him.
I realized my hands were holding my womb…a mother’s protective instincts.. I suppose..
I reached out, touched his left hand, drew his hand into my hand, clenched it into a fist, squeezing softly, warmly. He held my fist tightly, pulled my hand to his check, touched it… a touch of wet trickle made me realized of the tear drop in his eyes. A tear drop that might have silently rolled down, but could not escape my touch or my understanding.
He drew my hand closer to his lips & kissed it…closely, pressing his lips tightly. Mumbled something like ‘soyee, so soyee’
I did not need to ask him what he meant…as I could feel his heartbeat, every beat pleading ‘sorry’.
I looked at him, smiled & said, ‘it’s all right. Let go of it. It was not your fault. I know it could have been worse. But I am right here. Let’s thank our good lucks and move. Please don’t feel bad for what happened.’
Having said this, he took charge of his emotional self, letting his superior rational self take charge of himself.
We started off again. I commented, ‘that guy sure seemed to be desperate to reach someplace..’
As we drove ahead & neared the large compounds of hospital, we saw our over taker entering hurriedly in the hospital compound.
‘See..’, I said.
Suddenly, Nitin broke silence and said,’Talk about desperation..what would anyone know of it. I have had my own desperate moments. When I had almost lost someone.’
‘Really?’, I enquired, enticing him to carry on.
‘Yes, I had a friend who came by to visit me & fell sick. She was rushed to hospital with severe colic in her left abdomen. She was hospitalized for almost a week. Doctors ran all the tests but could not quite understand what was troubling her. Yet she was in terrible pain. It was a horrific sight to see her wither with pain on bed. I used to stay with her in the hospital at night. She had gone weaker but the pain never subsided. One night she had her bouts of terrible pain, she was administered her regular medications. Yet she was again withering with pain… so the doctors in-charge gave her Dynapar. We waited for the IV to react. But to our bewilderment she was still wildly uncontrollable with pain and was crying like a baby. It was hard to hold her, we actually had to strap her to the bed, lest she’d fall off..as she had already pulled off the IVs by mistake. I called in the emergency again and they came in and gave her a 3rd shot of some morphine based painkiller. After the shot she was asked to lie down quietly and the nurses put off the light so that she could catch some sleep.
‘I lay there in the couch beside her, looking after, waiting for another cry from her. But she had calmed down. I thought maybe the medicines are reacting & she has fallen asleep. I lied down on my couch to catch up some sleep, thinking her pain had alleviated.
‘I called her out, just to wish her good night & enquire if she were fine and if she needed anything...she did not respond. I called her name again.. but no response… I jumped out of the couch switched the lights on and moved to her.
‘I tried waking her, I touched her, shook her, I called her name, but no response.
‘She had gone cold, as a stone.
‘I checked her breathe…too shallow…perhaps no breathe at all.
‘I checked her pulse, but all blank.
‘As an alarm, I instinctively pressed emergency, and tried to revive her back.
‘The nursing staff came and I told them that she is not responding..
‘Nursing staff tried waking her, but no response…a nurse tried pinching her as hard as she could…a doctor asked me to slap her and get her back to sense…I slapped her…I kept hitting her…once I hit so hard that her cheek turned red, yet no response…she seemed as good as dead…
‘It was my desperate moment. I kept hitting her hard on her cheeks, pleading & desperately crying, you are not passing out on me, am not letting this happen to you, you are not passing out on me. But she kept on taking my beatings without any response. Then the senior doctor in charge rushed in with a team of staff & life support system.
‘They asked me to move out, and drew the curtains & I guess they were about to give her some electric shocks on her heart to resuscitate her back.’
He went quiet.
I was so lost in his memoirs that I forgot we had reached the hospital & were looking for a parking.
I kept quiet for a while so as to let him park the car.
Once we had parked the car & had killed the engine, I enquired curiously,
‘So…, did she make it ?’
Nitin unstrapped himself from the seat belt, looked at me deeply & thoughtfully, and asked
’You don’t remember being slapped hard all over your cheek, do you?’ and he got out of the car.
I sat there strapped to my seat, shell-shocked, until he came over to my side and opened the door, reminding me for my appointment with the doctor.
N’s!
Monday, February 20, 2012,1:20:35 PM
