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Atharv, in his scrubs, had thrown over a bulky jacket to meet Koyal for a quick few minutes.
Atharv was in the middle of a pioneering surgery on a ten-year-old boy, Mike, a desperate attempt to save the little life – if the procedure worked it could open doors to life for many others. He had finished the first stage of the surgery and now the plastic surgeons were at work.
It had been a stressful ten hours. The most stressful professionally for Atharv.
And things were not exactly looking good. They had almost lost the boy on the table twice.
‘Spend some time with Koyal,’ the senior surgeon had said to Atharv as he stepped out of the OT. Koyal was in the hospital, in his office, he knew, waiting for him. Just being there for him. He had been shocked when she’d said that she would stay in the hospital just so that she could be around him if he needed her. He had tried hard to persuade her not to do this, but she hadn’t budged. Now he was glad she had not.
‘Eh?’
‘A few minutes with a good friend,’ said the older man, taking off his gloves, ‘can be the most refreshing thing in the world.’
Atharv smiled a small smile.
The bench was huge but they sat close enough for their shoulders to touch.
His brain was going through everything he had done in the OT. Could something have been done differently? Should they change something in what was planned next?
She was looking at him, taking in every detail of the handsome surgeon who sat next to her.
The unshaven face.
The exhausted eyes.
The indescribable beauty of a man drained out after ten hours spent trying to save a child’s life.
‘Mike will be okay,’ she said softly. ‘I just know it.’
‘You have more faith in me than I have in myself,’ he said.
‘That is because I know you better than you know yourself,’ she replied, smiling at the memory from all those years back.
Atharv remembered it too, for he instantly turned around and stared at her. And then he extended his hand. Surprised, she slowly put her hand in his and he clasped his fingers tightly around hers. He went back to staring at the river, flowing noiselessly ahead of them.
‘What if,’ he said and Koyal leaned forward immediately to look at his face, ‘we can’t save Mike?’
Koyal stared at the river too now, thinking, her heart breaking for Mike and for Atharv. He had put his heart and soul into this, she could see.
‘You will,’ said Koyal slowly, her soft voice dancing through the silence of the night. ‘I know it because I know when we put our heart and soul into something that is honest and kind, it always works out.’
He looked at her now and smiled slowly.
‘You have become wise,’ he said.
She grinned, nodded and then stared at his fingers clasped around hers. His fingers, long and elegant. Doctor’s hands. The safest hands in the world holding hers.
He looked up now, his tired eyes finding hers.
‘Thank you, Koyal,’ he said softly, ‘for being there.’
Thank you for being there.
‘I am glad,’ she said, her voice breaking, ‘to finally be able to be there for you.’
They looked at each other, the poignancy of the words not lost on either of them.
‘It is better this way,’ she said, ‘isn’t it? When we are there for each other?’
