Page 126 - Till the Last Breath . . .

minute of extra suffering for the patient on the other bed. Not that he ever

cared for patients like Dushyant who had a death wish. From steroids to
drugs to other banned narcotics, his body was a noxious cocktail of toxic
chemical compounds. Arman left the room to talk to Dushyant and check if

he had missed something in the preliminary tests. He walked the empty
hallways of the hospital alone. It was three in the night and he could hear

the incessant snoring in the hallways, the creepy crickety sounds of the
crickets and despite these noises, the deathly silence of the hospital. A

handful of people still hung around. The night-duty ward boys, some odd
doctors going through the motions like zombies, the nurses, and a few

grieving relatives sprawled on the benches.
In the past month, he had been to his house just thrice, and that, too,
when he’d run out of his white shirts. He had now resorted to ordering his

shirts online from an e-retailer—White Shirt, Large, Quantity: 5, Cash on
Delivery. It was convenient. Not having to choose what to wear meant a few

hundred hours more to live. What would Dushyant and Pihu not give to
have those extra few hours?

‘Still here?’ a voice said from behind. It was the Head of Department,
Oncology.

‘Had something to do,’ Arman answered.
‘You always have something to do,’ the man said and walked off,
smiling. He would probably go home, gorge on home-cooked rice and dal,

and curl up with his wife and sleep. For Arman though, it was a constant
state of insomnia. His body had adapted to endure long hours without

complaint. A few hours a day of sleep on his couch sufficed. Of late, his
mom had started flooding his inbox with the CVs and pictures of Slim,

Convent-educated, MBA/Engineer/Doctor girls from Good Family
Backgrounds whom he could get married to, but he never opened any. His

family thought pinning him down in wedlock was the only way to slow him
down.
He pushed open the door to the ward. The lights were switched off and

he slowly adjusted himself to the ambient light of the room. He checked the
numbers and the crooked lines on the small monitors. Dushyant was lying