A Medical Romance

Chapter Four

6th May 1991
6:00 am
Ma, it is going to rain hard, look, somebody has got up early. How come, brother you so early, Huh, going college, I guess…Well, we shall see how far this goes. Ma, don’t blame me for the changes that happen…

Krish, gives one tight look at her sister and starts to chase her as she runs away from his clutches as he tries to shackle her for whatever she blabbered now.

Both, mom and dad are watching this from their respective places with a smile on to their lips.

Rangarajan, a business man, is a contended man, with his wife Charulata and his two kids, a son and a daughter. The son is joining the medical college and the girl who is a darling of all three is in pre-degree.

Both the kids has been given all they have asked for and the things that they could vouch for. The family has been a fun-loving one and bonded together.

Rangarajan and Charulata have been married for almost 27 years now and they are happy with themselves. Ranga [will call him so], has seen a lot of ups and downs in his life and at all that times, Lata [will call her so] has been a pillar of support, running the family and educating the children.

Theirs had been a formal arranged marriage, bridal seeing, within next few days of marriage and a new life begins. Nothing was in their hands; they had everything detailed out by their parents and just followed suit. The led a happy and contended life from the time of nuptial bond and kept things to themselves in suffering and enjoyment.

His children were born, he did not know their burden, his home was suffering, he did not know the burden, his son grew up, he did not know the burden, his daughter grew up he did not know the burden. He made money and worried about his business and built an empire, now, he relaxes and enjoys the pleasures of life. He knew he missed his son and daughters growing up years. He compensates for that now, with spending as much time as he can.

Krish has a best friend in his dad and his mother is like a sister, guide and philosopher to him telling him and correcting him whenever he made mistakes. His mother’s strict and regular watch over him enables him to grow into a responsible child and make up a goal of his own. His realization, his dream, to be a human doctor, is to come true. His stepping into the life is all set to begin.

Krish is so fond of his little sister, Neha. If she wants his life he would give it to her. He cannot see anything troubling her and always guarded her like a hawk that hovers over its prey. He buys her gifts and entertains her once a week taking her to all the places she wants to go, he takes her to the movies she wants to see, he brings her the books she wants to read, he gets her the things that she wishes for and treats her life a princess and always ready for her to peck and pinch him.

This family is nice family that is closely knit and lives in harmony within and with the relations outside.

It is a great pleasure to see the brother and sister fight with each other and run around the house. The house is a beautiful little villa that is spread on an area of 4800 square feet, with ample space between and around the house, with a beautifully drawn lawns and garden that is so spectacular watch.

It has a huge gate with a big compound wall, with electrified wires. The gate opens to a pathway, both the sides of the pathway has nice different colored flowers adorning the way. The pathway leads to a plush French Connection doorway, which opens to the wide visiting hall-cum-living room, adequately decorated with ample lighting and sofas and tea tables.

The right side of the living room leads to the kitchen in one corner and the back yard on the other corner. The bedrooms, the guest room, and a balcony open on the first floor and the stairway beautifully verges into two approaches from the center of the dinning space.

Both the kid’s room is painted in the same crimson color and the master bedroom has the light cream colored walls, the guest room is painted in beige. Everything in that house had an aesthetic sense to it adding beauty to the people living in it.

This grown up lad, Krish hasn’t got up early to his school and every morning his mother has to cajole him out of bed to get him ready for his business and leave home. But, today seems a different day, not only has he got up early.

He starts his bike and goes zoom on it to college, in the French colonization city, Pondicherry. He is enrolled into JIPMER Medical College. He passes through several streets, buses, cars, lorries and reaches his destination. The entrance of the college welcomes him with flowers of different color fallen from the trees spread across the pathway.


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

A Medical Romance

Chapter Three

9th February 2005
1:00 pm
Reaching, the cabin of doc Krish, she is wondering whether to enter or return without making an effort.

She looks back and finds the floor empty, devoid of any human presence, her mind orders her, Now….

She wonders what she is going to talk to him. She does not know him? Oh! Kavya, how bore, please leave, before you bring more humiliation to yourself.

You were irritated about his cold stares and now, you are trying to knock at his cabin door and say what?!! “Hi, this is Kavya, whom you have been staring at in the operation room, Huh! Very funny, leave stat.

She hears a voice from inside, “Anybody, there, please do come in.”

From outside, she really wants to flee, but her polite manners ask her to stop and she gently knocks on the swing doors.

Knock…Knock… [Politely, she knocks the door, the sound hardly audible to her own ears]

“Yeah, come in.”

She pushes open the door enough for her to pass through. She has a slender body that is efficiently maintained by the frequent runs to the hospitals at inappropriate time. Her face is a chiseled artistic venture with the vital organs at their places. Her eyes are the best feature of her face; they are huge and extra brown in color. Her long braid sways to her steps.

She too had some strong grazes with her eyes, during her college days. Till some years she used to wear any normal dress for her daily office but since a year she has restrained herself from draping with saris and there is so much of beauty along with intelligence, when you look at her.

She is an efficient anesthetic and has a reputation for it some years now. She was working in the other part of the country and has recently joined Glen Hospitals, in Bengaluru city.

She walks in, finds an elaborate room with lots of book shelves filled with all possible books on surgery, medicine, diseases, their cures and symptoms. The floor is white tiled, with huge windows on the either side of the wall, filling the room with adequate flow of fresh air.

The windows open into the other sides of the block, along with a panoramic view of the garden that is sparing the vacant spaces of the hospital. There is a table with a few books, a bottle of water, a lunch box, a chair in between the shelves, like a hid out for a fiesta.

The walls are painted with the same green and white combinations, the green occupying the first half of the wall from the ground. The ceiling is white, with a good old ceiling fan with a creaking noise and a huge tube light hanging above the head, the two best inseparable companions of the ceiling.

There is a huge table at the centre of the room, with a table cloth spread on it neatly. The name plate reads, “Dr. Krishnan Rangarajan”. There are two trays on the table, one has the amenities required for a doctor and the other has some papers and files of information about patients. There is a writing pad clipped with papers, a pen on it, a folded stethoscope lying beside, a half-read book on bone surgery, and a recent best seller that is folded and placed, with a bookmark.

The table is complemented with a chair, and the chair is occupied by Dr. Krishnan Rangarajan, a man of dedication and affection in an uncommon mix.

He has compassion for his patients and sees that they are taken care well. He relates with the pain his patients suffer and tries to bring them to a comfort level and also with the relatives who stand and wait for the doctor’s verdict on whatever the state of the patient is.

His face is marked by the signs of worry and his sharp eyes that could pass through a thin sheet of ice are cloudy and they are filled with water. He face shows the growth of two day old beard and his unkempt hair, tells us his negligence about himself. He is wearing a cream colored tees and a blue jean. His posture is deep-set on the chair and he is certainly in no mood for a conversation.

He wishes that whoever was at the door should leave within few minutes of conversation. His right arm is rested on the temple of his head and the left is rested on the arm of the chair.

She enters, he sees a crimson colored sari in midst of the white coat, a slender female. He recollects seeing this color somewhere and he looks up, behold, here is Kavya the lady of his dreams, the lady who set fire in him 10 years ago. She has come back again into his life, she was lost and there was no idea where she was all these days.

That was a little promise that was made on that very day. They would not be tracing each other for any details and let the fate decide what was good for them. Here, she is did fate bring them together as she said and left him standing on a cold morning. She is back, oh god, thank you. Oh, how I missed her.


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

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

A Medical Romance

Chapter One

9th February 2005
10:30 am
“Doc Krish; please come to the ER, stat [this word ‘stat’ means immediately in medical parlance].” – The public addressing system, was paging for Krish. It was an emergency, a hit and run case.

The leading surgeon of the city, Dr. Krishnan Rangarajan, was being called as he was on duty for the day at the St. Estella Hospital. He was doing his routine check-up of patients at the ground floor, when he heard his name on the PA.

He wondered what happened and in his mind started debating at the inefficiency of the staff and started coursing towards the stairs to head to ER on the 2nd floor, ‘A’ block.

His strides were somewhere between a wide step and a half run. He passes through the hallway of white walls, painted green till the middle of the wall from the ground, long drab corridors, with patients waiting for doctors, the relatives in an animated conversation, the nurses brightly walking across, the ward boys trolling or carrying someone across for the CT scan or MRI or just an X-ray.

The air is filled with the humid smell of sulphur, cleaning acids, medicine, tincture, and dry blood. It is little too much for a person who enters for a first time, but for people like Krish this is just another regular day and there is no botheration for all these frivolous things.

He feels his act of saving a life is like playing the role of god, in every way. It brings him immense pleasure in playing the part and that keeps him coming to work everyday, day after day.

He is climbing two steps at a time, gasping for breadth as it had been sometime now, with this kind of exertion. It has been ages, he had settled to his evenly paced walk and has almost become synonymous with it now, among his colleagues.

The door of the ER was ajar and he pushes the door to get in, he does it in a hastily. A guy of twenty years of age struggling for breath with a falling pulse rate, his head, knees, and his arms, has brushes all over, but his right leg has broken and blood is oozing out from the wound. A nurse was nursing his wound on the right leg, he is semi-conscious and moaning in pain, and a surgery is required to get him back on his legs.

Krish gives a close look at the state of the guy and quickly sets to work on his patient. This boy would have perhaps been playing football at the street corner, but now bed ridden at least for the coming months. He has been badly hit by a truck and is now grasping for breadth struggling between life and death.

Death, it has its own ways and fancies. My dad, would have been fine today, if I had saved him? Why did I not save him, what happened? What went wrong?

He looks around at the nurse, who has expertise of more than a decade, is fighting to clam the guy on the table, he looks at and asks, her, “What went wrong? What did you give him? Get the atheistic, stat?

“Doc, the anesthetic, is not in today. He had called in the morning to cancel him appointment on personal grounds.”

Giving the nurse a stern look, he yells at her, “Do you know the situation, god damn, give him a call and ask him here. Why is that you people need to be told what to do? I did not expect this from you, with your experience.

Did you call for another anesthetic or should I have to do that?”

“Yes, doctor. We have sent word for the anesthetic of the Glen Hospital. Doctor Kavya Subramanian is on the way.”

“Whoever, page her again and ask her to buck up.”

Checking the pulse of the patient, he injects a liquid into the IV of the patient and tries to check the pulse and looks at the irregular beating of the heart through the monitor and gives a nod for the surgery of the right leg.

A hushed voice over the phone, “Doctor, are you on the way? The patient’s condition is a little critical.”

“Yeah, I am almost there, which floor is it?”

“It is on the 2nd floor, ‘A’ block, opposite to the car park.”

“Ok, thank you. I will be there.”

Pushing the doors of the ER, she walks in. He turns to see who is it? He is dumb struck; he stands there gapping at her. His mind is winding back in time, memories come flushing, he is collecting his thoughts and his mind is speaking in volumes.


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