Page 86 - Till the Last Breath . . .

‘What you have done for me is more than enough, Doctor. In those days

when I was dying, I used to stay up all night thinking that I would choke
and I wouldn’t even be able to call for help. I was confined to a bed for
months. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t even do the smallest thing

without someone helping me … My body was dead. You gave me a few
extra days to live. I don’t think you will ever know what that meant for me.

I won’t ever be able to thank you enough for what you did for me. You had
no obligation to save me. In fact, you could have lost your licence if you

were caught. You still can get barred. I don’t think there is anything more
you could have done.’

‘It’s sweet of you to think like that,’ he said, barely recovering from what
he had just heard. Beneath the chirpy, smiling demeanour, there was a
grown-up girl, armed to fight the disease with all she had. All of a sudden,

he didn’t want to talk about her disease any more. He didn’t want to be
responsible for snuffing out the glimmer from her eyes. ‘So, how was your

college? Did you like being there? Why don’t you tell me about it?’
Her grin got wider. After that, she was unstoppable. She told him

everything there was to know about her fascination with medicine right
from the eighth grade when she first decided that she would become a

doctor. Arman heard her out patiently. Not much registered in his mind.
Lost in the narrator’s boisterous laughter and enthusiasm, he couldn’t keep
track of the conversation. Just to stamp his presence in the conversation, he

started to ask her a few trick questions about medicine. After she got twenty
of them right, she said irritably, ‘Everyone knows these!’

Even I didn’t know the answer to a few of them, Arman thought and
looked at her in awe. She was brilliant. She reminded him of a young him,

who was hated because he was annoyingly brilliant.
‘How was yours?’ she asked.

‘Huh?’
‘Your college? You went to AIIMS, right? I’ve read all about you,’ she
said.

‘Yes. And then I went to a medical school in New York. I worked there
for a few years and then came back.’