“Try to sleep now. You will feel better in the morning. We have given you a good anti-depressant tablet also.”
“How can I sleep?” I replied. “I have nothing to do. You did not
allow my laptop in the ICU and my cellphone is also confiscated and kept in the
locker. How can I even try to go to sleep? I can only sit on my cot in my
semi-cabin and keep watching the other patients in the ICU. I cannot get sleep
in any case. Remember? My problem is because of my insomnia. I cannot sleep
until 3 am or thereabouts. That is the reason why my problems have become
bigger.”
The male matron smiled and laughed a bit. I had not seen him smile
in all my two hours at the ICU when I had been a rushed-in admission after a
spike in my blood pressure. He had been standing alongside the cardiologist and
the night-hour on-duty doctor while my case was being discussed. I had seen him
reading through my file and repeatedly lifting his head to look at me as if he
did not believe my case. I knew that he was very sceptical and we had to talk.
This was the first time that I had seen a male matron moving about
in an ICU, very confident and knowledgeable and in control of his team. I
looked around my section of the ICU. We were in an internal sub-section of the
very large ICU area. At this time, well past midnight, there were four female
and eight male nurses moving about, silently, intent on their tasks, checking
their wards, unsmiling, looking at the patient files, examining their catheters
and drips.
They were in the new uniforms, both male and female, except that the
women wore pink colored shirts and trousers while the men were in Prussian blue.
They did not look like the nurses of earlier years, dressed in white, without
their narrow-waisted gowns and smart perky caps. The younger male nurses were
rushing through, not reading the patient files in detail and were simply
whisking off the catheter to hastily replace with new ones.
“What does my file say about my blood pressure reading?” I asked the
young male nurse as he picked up my patient file. “Is it ok? Do they write
about my ECG and blood pressure? Is there any written report that I can read?”
“I do not know,” he replied. “I do not read any of that stuff on
these green pages. You have to ask Nagare Sir.”
“Who is Mr. Nagare Sir? Your ICU matron? He may not allow me to read
my file. Why don’t you read them?”
He did not reply. He had glanced back hastily and had seen the
matron watching the both of us chatting at this later than late midnight hour.
ICU patients were supposed to be asleep and a chatting nurse was very suspicious.
I smiled at the matron and as I thought, he did not smile back. Boy, was he
strict or what? But he had not seemed so. I watched him chat with the lady
patient from Bed No. 32 who was walking around. She must have been in her late
eighties, I guessed. She was walking from her bed section to the Matron’s
counter and making a circuit of the medicine carts and the on-duty doctors. She
did not talk to anyone but just ambled along, slowly. My guess was that she was
chanting, most possibly. She was worried about something but did not want to
allow her fear to overpower her. She had been chanting like this, all her adult
life, and it gave her courage and strength. She was here, wasn’t she, in the
ICU, walking about peacefully, smiling, not worried about the ceiling a/c units
and not avoiding the cold draft.
“She has a surgery tomorrow morning, early tomorrow morning. She may
survive and she may not. She knows.”
Startled at the very deliberately enunciated low voice very close to
me, I turned around hastily. It was Mr. Nagare. He had come up silently and had
been standing alongside, watching the lady patient from Bed No. 32 as I had
done.
“She seems very courageous,” I said. “Do you know if she is chanting
something? She does not sleep easily?”
“Would you? Would you sleep as easily if you know that you had a
surgery tomorrow morning and you are all alone here in the ICU and your family
does not bother if you not return from the hospital at all? Not concerned at
all.”
I looked at the lady, concerned and worried about her now. I watched
her smile at the doctor-on-duty and pat him on his shoulder and comfort him
about something. A lady nurse came up to her to ask her to return to the bed
and she pointed at Mr. Nagare, the matron, standing next to me. So he had
permitted her to walk around in the ICU.
“Nagare Saheb, that is not fair,” I said. “You do not allow me to
move around and do not allow me my laptop and cellphone and you allow her to
walk about. Is it ok if I can talk with her? I can give her company until dawn
if you think that is ok. I am a compulsive insomniac and try as much as you
can, I am not going to get knocked off to sleep. If she is ok with my company,
I can sit with her here, in my section and chat. We will not disturb the other
patients.”
Without any reply, he went up to the lady and placed a hand on her
elbow and brought her to my cot. I brought my palms together and greeted her.
She willingly sat on one corner of the bed and looked at me, silent, without
judging me. I could sense it. She had no opinion. She was just there, accepting
of anything that would happen to her.
“Mataji, I am here for blood pressure and insomnia and panic
attacks. All my problems are of a fast moving world and addiction to
multi-tasking and the internet and working on computers all the time. This
visit will probably slow me down when I return and after two to three months, I
may get back to the same intensity and take more chances.”
She smiled. She knew that I was trying to make small talk. She pulled
out her chanting beads and gestured.
“I just do jaap. I recite his nama,
incessantly, without any stop. It must be the same. I also love my god in the
same way that you love your work. We are the same. If we do not do what we do
now, we will do something else and will once again be drowned in the same rush.
Our matron Sir must have told you that I am having a surgery tomorrow and he
must have told you that I may survive or may not. Do not worry about me. My
family has given up on me. But my god has not. I know it. If he calls me to
him, tomorrow, I win. If he does not call me to him, I win. It is the same.”
Mr. Nagare laughed. I smiled. It was very difficult not to be
emotional and not to be able to show it visibly.
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