A Medical Romance

Chapter Two

9th February 2005
11:00 am
She does not notice his stares, nor does she recognize him. His face is covered with the attire of a doctor ready to operate. She asks somebody to scrub [this is process, basically covering up the body of the doctor with sheets, gloves and face masks] and the nurses in the room help her, meanwhile, she interrogates them…

“What is induced? What is the proportion of Propofol? What is the procedure you normally follow here?”

“Doc, doc…. [He is just lost] Excuse me, is he going to operate on this guy, you are sure?” The head nurse just gives a glance and turns to face Krish; she does not know what to say.

Krish comes back out of his revere and focuses on the task ahead. He gives the doc a nod, and they sedate the patient, substantially that he does not know what is to happen to him in the next few hours.

Krish slits open the wound on the guy’s leg, looks for the broken bones, fixes them up procedurally and he does it so efficiently that, Kavya does not stop to look back in admiration for his efficient hand stroke. Krish sews up the wound and the nurses and paramedics do the remaining job of bandaging the wound and setting it in a plaster.

Kavya has a little job here; she has to wear off the patient from sedation, and remove the mask, which supplied oxygen to him so far and set the patient for the post-operative ward.

He is brought to half-senses and transferred to a trolley. He is taken to post-operative ward where he will be kept under observation for a few days and then transfer him to a ward. The ward will be his home, surrounded by his close relatives and his mother, who will be by his bedside till he nurtures his leg strong and walks back home rather than the way he was brought in to the hospital two hours back.

Kavya shudders and rewinds the pair of eyes that stared at her, this doc must be something, they way he gapes at women. [Oops…she thinks aloud]

Doc, no Krish, is a very efficient person. He just solves his cases effectively. He is one of the leading surgeons we have onboard. You really need to know him to appreciate him; he is such an understanding and a charming guy.

Poor chap; he lost his dad 3 months ago and hasn’t recovered still. He seems lost in his world and you have to call his name thrice to make him respond, the nurse who overhears Kavya’s thought expresses her feeling for doctor Krish.

Kavya finds it disturbing. She feels sorry for the doc [what is his name…??!! Ah! Krish, - it does not ring bells in her mind]. She repents for what she thought in her mind. She decides to meet him and then leave.

She comes out of the dressing room and starts walking past the CT scan and X-ray rooms to the open corridors on the floor, the long corridors join the two blocks of the hospital without having to take the lift or the stairs to the other block.

She has no clue of the hospital and its ways, but she is struck by a bolt of conscious and walks past nurses, people, and ward boys walking up and down.

She is lost and wonders who to ask for help, finding a ward boy running across with frozen blood packets in hand, maybe for an open heart surgery or for a blood transfusion, anything happens in hospitals.

There are lots of people just lying in hope that their health recovers soon and they can be back with their family and friends, once again get back to work, enjoy life, play tennis, watch television and enjoy the fruits of life.

Hospital is the place where man understands the worth of life, till then he neglects it. Making life, work beyond boundaries, taking in lot of toxins, hurting it by having habits that are hazardous to life, giving up a lot of habits due to work, pressure, friends, culture and what not.

Man does not understand the adverse effects of his actions, till there is illness and that has a cause. Hmm… ways of life is strange and it has its own course even without you making any efforts to it.

She calls out to him asking for the doc, Krish’s cabin and he answers her back saying, it the last room in the corner, to take a right and then a left on the pharmacy counter, in the ground floor.

She is almost there, she takes the left and there is the pharmacy, the last room in that corridor. The huge walls around and the old building, its dampness causes a strange feeling in her, she walks through, with the tube light overhead hanging still creating a weird shadows.

She walks past several empty rooms, open doors and windows adorned with green curtains, trolleys and stretchers resting across the walls, the oxygen cylinders collected in the corner, the airflow from the empty rooms, and the swaying curtains. There is a little bit of fresh air here, the last room has swing doors, it is quite, hard to find out if someone’s inside or not.


Short Stories by Kavitha Kumaresan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License