Labyrinth

“Don’t you, white coats have any moiety of compassion left; or is it that your moss-grown heart has been robbed out of it completely? Is it so that the Hippocratic oath has been simply reduced to hypocritic way of life now? Unfazed, unopposed superlative being of self. The false verbatim of care and concern while the truth is you all are vultures, scavengers. Commercially driven and emotionally inert. The imputations are serious over here….. so, I ask again....at…what ….time… you saw….the patient?”

Like the wind whirls the dust around, the questions reverberated and then the tornado was struck. The centripetal swirls and the centrifugal whirls were incapacitating Mr. Jackal; an eponym he had earned over the years of shrewd law practice. His surroundings were spinning around as a whirlpool and within he gyrated like the spokes of potter’s wheel. His brain rattled inside the skull and the fugitive eyeballs wandered from one corner of the eye socket to another. He groaned but it was too feeble for his attendant to hear who was sitting affront a television two rooms apart. For many moments he suffered silently; but nonetheless those seemed like eternity for him. Now gradually he gathered his senses, it was a dream after all, which he relived many times since it had occurred in reality a long time ago. Now, however his reality was bed bound due to severe vertigo.

It is said that a lot can be told about the man from the color of the walls of his room. The walls were olive green and the curtains were maroon red. The windows were shut tight that not even a sun ray could barge in. The gloom suggested that many secrets lay within. There on the bed laid a gnarled, grey silhouette which once had a dynamic and intimidating personality. His face was ashen and furrowed. Each crevice had a story of cunning legal victory. His ears were saggy and almost deaf. Holding his head with both the hands he slowly sat up. He fished his phone from the side drawer and scrolled down for a number. The screen light flashed on his cataractous eyes; a number was dialed.

“Hello..Dr. Ray….?...The wooziness is back.”

“OK I will drop by” answered the doctor.

The care- taker’s bottoms were still glued in front of the idiot box, engrossed in the antics of curvaceous vamps of daily soap operas. The shouts of peril were obviously unheard. Mr. Jackal again slipped in his blanket. The fastest of the three hands of the clock moved swiftly in circles yet the time was unmoved. It was still some time for supper. Mr. Jackal closed his eyes and thought of that day.

“At what time you saw the patient?”

“At 11 pm.” Answered the perplexed doctor, already belittled by the humongous office of Mr. Jackal.

Sun beams fell on Mr. Jackal’s face through the tinted glass of his office. The tinted glass only decreased the intensity of rays from hot to lukewarm but it made Mr. Jackal’s eyes to shine. His face glowed with confidence as he was as a matter of fact at that time he was a young and escalating solicitor. Seated on the leather boss chair behind the lavish mahogany table he took a deep puff from his slender cigar and said.

“So, if at all you had seen the patient earlier, you would have put him on ventilator earlier and may be just may be would have saved his life?” followed a hard, intangible look.

“The patient was seen as soon as the patient was shifted to ICU.” Protested the doctor.

“But the patient was put on ventilator at 2:20 am, about three and half hours later.” came the rebuttal.

“That’s because the patient deteriorated at that time.” Answered the doctor.

“But your hospital’s primary evaluation said that the patient was hypoxic as in the oxygen requirement was very high and the patient was evidently in respiratory distress as he was using all the neck, chest and abdominal muscles….. His air hunger was starved, isn’t it true doctor?” said Mr Jackal patting the butt of the cigar into the ashtray.

Snapping his fingers enjoying his pincer grasp on the doctor he continued “How many patients were there that day?”

“You really expect me to remember that?” argued the doctor.

“Oh…! Sarcasm….! I wish you remembered doctor; for your own good. There were five other patients you saw that day and the interesting part is you saw all of them at 11 pm.” A sheaf of documents was thrown on the table as a sumptuous evidence.

The doctor’s temples became moist. He had never thought that his habit of blanketing the timing of his rounds could come back and bite him like this.

“All the other patients were eventually wheeled out of the ICU except for that young boy suffering from swine flu. None can be omnipresent doctor; it means that the boy was suffocated almost up till the point of no return. Spit it out doctor or else I can shove my fingers in your throat and make you puke the truth. Wasn’t there a delay in attending that patient?” Asked the lawyer.

“No…No!” shouted a tremulous voice. “It is not true. The patient was treated by faith for so many days prior; its only when the things got bad, he was brought to the hospital. There was further delay as the relatives never gave the consents on time. Don’t make a scapegoat out of me. I beg. Whatever had to be done was done meticulously as per the protocols.” Pleaded the tearful healer.

“I know that. I trust you doctor but your documentation says otherwise. The spoken words and the unseen acts get absorbed in the thin air. The ink on the paper stays and stands shoulder to shoulder so that your reputation is not smudged.” Said the jackal straightening the crease of his sleeves.

“But we did everything possible. You can ask the relatives how much we tried.”

“You think if the relatives were convinced you would be sitting here?” said the lawyer cuttingly.

“When I am confined to my space, I am still calm but in the humid, dusty court rooms I am vicious. I can rip apart you and your reputation. You will have to look for an alternative career if that happens……..unless…?” Mr Jackal left the question hanging.

“Unless …. What?” Inquired the doctor.

“Unless 30 lakhs in cash.” Was the reply.

The sound of the leaking tap echoed from the bathroom. Mr. Jackal so much wanted to get up and fix it but he was scared that even a minute movement could bring back the wooziness. He wondered how the time had withered his macho ism. How in yesteryears he had overpowered many by his wit and eloquence. How he had chewed that doctor’s bones and milked him dry.  Mr. Jackal knew that the justice was not done that day but then the law was abided; after all justice is an abstract, he thought.

The attendant came with the colorless, odorless and tasteless thick tepid water called soup. It was supper time. Mr. Jackal grimaced at the site of it. The attendant helped him sit and started feeding him in haste. He didn’t bother to wait even when Mr. Jackal was coughing and aspirating. The attorney’s gut churned and he was nauseated and uneasy. He was sick and tired of an imbecile company but then that’s what the lawyer was left with; his family had long abandoned the selfish man.

A soothing voice called from across the main door. “Open up. Its me…Dr. Ray.”

The attendant opened the door and got conjoint with the television.

Dr. Roy entered the ill lit room and with a warm smile asked “How are you sir?”

“Some days are good; some days are bad. At times I am able to go up till the veranda without any swing and at times I have to pee in the plastic pot. Today is that day.” Mr Jackal answered with a sigh.

  

“I will fix it, don’t worry.” Said the caring eyes.

A tourniquet was tied on his right arm. He was asked to open and close his fist several times. The spirit drenched cotton was rubbed hard at the elbow pit. The bluish veins showed themselves. Bevelled syringe pierced the shiny, skinny skin like the hot knife cuts through the slab of butter. Couple of transparent vials were injected. The nausea, and the dizziness now settled. The old man felt much better. The doctor was paid with his due share. Mr. Jackal wanted the doctor to stay a bit longer. He wanted to share the story but then there were other patients waiting. The doctor left. Over the years the cunning jackal had been reduced to be a docile, dependent sheep. He grieved over his blind greed of the past but it was only too late.

Dr. Roy braked his car at the junction. The signal was glittering red and it was supposed to glow red for eighty-seven more seconds. He had a smile of content and pleasure on his face….a sadistic pleasure. He remembered how Mr. Jackal had walked in his OPD with a simple earache about a year ago. It was a simple ear wax which he had treated but with ear toxic and auditory fatal injections. He could envision the ear- drum seen through his otoscope. He clearly remembered how his tremulous hands injected the toxicant though the ear membrane for the first time; gradually misbalancing Mr. Jackal’s gait. How in latter days it became a trained con. His fine set of ears were damaged gradually. The signal was blinking fifty-four and counting down.

He remembered his father’s words of caution.

“The spoken words and the unseen acts of kindness get absorbed in the thin air. The ink on the paper stays and stands shoulder to shoulder so that your reputation is not smudged.”

He had kept his documentation clean. He knew that he the justice was not done neither on that day nor today but then the law was abided; after all justice was just an abstract, he thought. 

The old man continued to suffer with vertigo, tinnitus. Mr. Jackal was any which ways hard of understanding the emotions; now he was hard of hearing too. The red count down was up to last four now. He turned on the engine and drove off at the sight of green.