Page 29 - Till the Last Breath . . .

Shhh. The librarian asked them to be silent.

‘Then what happened?’
‘I couldn’t write. My hand … I had no control over it,’ she said and
broke down in small sobs. Venugopal looked puzzled. He took her hand in

his palms and applied pressure at a few points. He asked her if she had any
sensation in her hand. Pihu could feel the warmth in Venugopal’s touch, but

she knew something was wrong. Why can’t I feel it!
‘Can you feel my touch?’ Venugopal asked.

‘I am scared,’ she said. She picked up a pencil from her neatly arranged
geometry box. She tried to write her name on the piece of paper in front of

her. She couldn’t control it. Venugopal watched in horror as she scribbled. It
wasn’t the usual curvy, artistic font she used to write in. It was hardly
legible. It looked like she was using the wrong hand. ‘I can’t control my

hand.’
‘Let’s see a doctor?’

‘I wanted to be a surgeon,’ she said and put her head down on the books.
She cried.

‘C’mon, Pihu. You don’t know what it is. It could be something as simple
as Vitamin C deficiency. There are cases reported where Vitamin C

deficiency causes paralysis. Even if it’s not that, there could be a million
other innocuous reasons! I think you’re overreacting,’ Venugopal assured
her.

‘What if it’s not an innocuous reason? What if it’s something more?’ she
asked, her voice breaking off in sobs.

She looked at her hand. Pale and useless. Stop being so negative! Maybe
it’s not that bad. This can’t happen to me. Maybe Venugopal is right. All the

possible causes for the symptom started to shadow her mind. She was
freaking out, her tears were uncontrollable. What was it? Stroke? Nerve

injury? Poliomyelitis? Botulism? Spina bifida? Multiple sclerosis?
Guillain–Barré syndrome? All of a sudden, it looked as if she could have
every disease she had read about till now. The deadlier the disease, the more

convinced she was about its possibility. Sleep evaded her that night as she
looked up every possible cause of her problem. By next morning, she had a