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‘It’s what, Mum?’ I said, getting more restless by the minute.
‘It’s his brain … there … there has been some bleeding… ’
I was stunned into silence.
‘Don’t worry, it’s not something major … umm…’ struggled Mum, ‘… umm … can you come?’
I had already careened my car around and, pausing only briefly to check if my credit cards were with me, I sped towards the airport, brushing away anxious tears that were already clouding my vision.
‘I am on my way, Mum.’
‘Central Hospital, ask for the Neurosurgery ICU.’
22
Indira Gandhi Airport, 9.00 p.m.
‘Ma’am, I can give you a choice,’ said the lady in the business suit, in a very important and heavily-accented voice.
Shut up.
‘You could … let me see … either take the last flight out; I have an economy ticket available for seven thousand rupees or…’
Shut up.
‘…I could give you the next flight out, but we only have a business class ticket available…’
‘How much?’ I asked listlessly, the decision already made.
‘Twenty-three thousand rupees.’
‘I want it,’ I said, pretty much a second before she had finished speaking.
9.20 p.m.
I have called Mum so many times that she has actually threatened to not answer any of my calls. Even in this situation, she is terrorizing me!
As we speak, Dad is in the OT getting prepped for the surgery. Since Dad had been having headaches which would not go, they had gone for a quick MRI scan today without, of course, telling me. They were expecting the scan to be clean; give Dad a few multi-vitamins and pack him off for the day.
When I had called Mum, they were actually in the diagnostic centre. The scan was disastrous and showed the brain shrivelled and pushed to one corner with the rest of the sac filled with blood from an injury. Mum now recalled Dad hitting his head a few weeks ago and blacking out. Being a doctor, he had simply ignored the whole episode, until, of course, now.
The operation, Mum insists, is very simple, but it’s my father whose brain the doctors are fiddling with and it is not cool.
So not cool.
9.22 p.m.
‘Mummy,’ lisped the little boy tugging at his mother’s kurta and pointing at me, ‘is this didi mad?’
I glared at the little boy who hid behind his decidedly embarrassed-looking mother. I realized that it was probably not the boy’s fault. I had been, for the last ten minutes, pacing the airport lounge, wringing my hands and muttering, ‘My dad is going through brain surgery,’ repeatedly to myself.
I hastily scraped my loose, and by now wild, hair into a ponytail and sat down on my hands, in a desperate attempt to look less mad.
10.00 p.m.
Dad’s operation has begun. I
am about to board the plane. Mum is waiting outside the OT.
