Page 17 - Till the Last Breath . . .

pay the bills.’

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘How long will it take?’
‘If you don’t die, you should be okay in three weeks,’ he said. ‘But if you
go back and try to drown yourself in alcohol again, you might not get out of

here alive. I have some other patients to look into, who are not killing
themselves. I will check on you later today.’

‘Will it hurt?’
‘Did it hurt when you stuck needles inside yourself, Dushyant?’ he asked.

‘But don’t worry, the best part of your disease is that just in case you die,
you will die sleeping. Hepatic encephalopathy is a very lazy disease—

somnolence and acting stupid being the main symptoms. You have already
done with being stupid, so I guess there is just one left. Go, sleep.’
Before Dushyant could say anything to that, the doctor hung his chart on

the bed and left the room. Frantically, Dushyant called his friend to confirm
if what the doctor had said was true. It was. This is seriously fucked up, he

thought.
He punched the words ‘hepatic encephalopathy’ into his cell phone’s

Google browser and it took him a few times to get the spelling right. A few
search results popped up and he read through them hurriedly. Combing

through the labyrinth of medical words and terminologies, he knew where
his problem came from—his excessive drinking. I don’t even drink a lot! He
was right, but he was into all kinds of stuff and the more he read up on the

disease the more he realized that he was at fault. A few sentences stood out
and he lay there breathing heavily and cursing everything that he had

ingested in the last five years, but still wanting some more of it at that
moment. Ideally, he would have loved a couple of large shots of vodka

mixed with a few shots, big shots, of tequila. If worst came to worst, a
cigarette. Dushyant had never been an addict, and unlike addicts who

thought they could kick the habit any time, he could actually do so. Or so he
thought.
Soon, sleep took over and he closed his eyes, wondering if he would

wake up again. What he had read circled his head for the entire time that he
slept.