5

People say hospitals smell of chemicals. If that was true, then it was only partly so. Eram knew exactly what hospitals smelled of because he hung out in them a lot. Hospitals reeked of boredom. Bodies packed wholesale into wards and outpatient departments. In the ER, the OT and the ICU. The pharmacy and the accounts section. The cold, cold morgue. Bodies just waiting for something to happen. Patients waited on doctors, doctors for lab reports, the lab techs waited on their machines, and everybody waited for insurance.

The waiting rooms, Jesus Christ. Every hour in these things is like, five—no, ten—in real life. As slow as watching paint dry, and about as much fun.

Eram didn’t usually have to spend a night at the hospital. About once a month he’d bring his dad in kicking and screaming for an appointment with the neurologist. Dr Pahwa would look at Faizl’s blood work, test his reflexes, maybe jiggle the prescribed drugs around a bit and they’d be out of there in a couple of hours. Faizl would complain the whole time about what a colossal waste of a morning it all was.

But today had been different. Today Faizl had told the doctor in an offhand manner that he’d been feeling dizzy of late. Dr Pahwa, who was by now as familiar with Faizl’s quirks as Eram, knew that for his patient to have mentioned it at all the dizziness had to be severe enough to bring down a bull.

‘Parkinson’s does affect blood pressure, but I’d like to keep you here under observation for twenty-four hours, just in case it’s something else,’ he had said. He had ordered an MRI of Faizl’s brain and, as predictably as night must follow day, Faizl’s kvetching began all over again.

‘More useless tests,’ he had grumbled at Eram as he changed into rose-pink pyjamas under the eye of a formidable nurse. ‘You don’t understand the economics of the healthcare system like I do. Doctors have to meet quotas fixed by the hospital administration or they don’t get paid their fat bonuses. So many patients admitted per month, so many tests prescribed, et cetera. An MRI machine sets a hospital back by almost two crore. How do you think they recover that cost?’ He had tossed his chin at the nurse. ‘Ask Nurse Ratched here. She knows.’

‘It sucks,’ agreed Eram. ‘But, on the bright side, hospital pink is totally your colour.’

Trying to keep Faizl in good cheer was heavy work. He complained constantly about the expense, the beds, the food, the germs and the staff.

Throughout the day, Eram had the weirdest sense that this was a movie. Or several movies rolled into one. It happened to him sometimes at pivotal, highly dramatic moments. There was the real-world Eram, inhabiting his own skin, thrust into a situation and behaving as he naturally would; and there was also a movie-world Eram, complete with stock phrases, who had watched this scene play out on screen way too often. At the point of collision, when the real Eram became aware of movie-Eram, he couldn’t tell if his feelings were genuine or only what he thought he was supposed to be feeling. It was mind-bending. Like staring at the luggage carousel at an airport for so long that you started to go around instead of the belt.