The promise of today

The promise of today

She woke up that morning knowing it was going to be a beautiful day; determined that her day would be beautiful. Today would reflect the image of the rising sun she saw.

No not today, not today for the endless dreary depression of the dead being tossed in a heap with other unidentified bodies. Not today for children dying without seeing the life they were promised, and most certainly not today to watch bloated bodies with organs ripped off by the sea float to the shore.

Dr. Nita Shankar was on holiday for a week. She may be alone but that didn’t change the fact that she was on a holiday to forget the harrowing days she lived through. Dealing with the victims of Tsunami was most certainly not on her list of things to do today, in fact, never again would it be on her itinerary of the day.

Today she would get a massage or, maybe, read the book that had been lying in her bag for months now; She could finally go on a much needed shopping spree and eat in the new restaurant, not so new anymore of course, but new to her. She could splurge today. You’re a rich woman when you have done nothing but tend to the dead or dying for 3 months on a regular income that you didn’t have the time or heart to spend. Who could eat a sizzler after holding a child’s intestine in her hands?

The dead or dying... When would Nina learn to switch her brain off and stop thinking! It was just a job wasn’t it? To hell with that stupid oath she took. It was meant to be just a job. Tending to the sick is just a job! So what if they were dying? So what if they struck by a tragedy of unimaginable proportion? It was high time to stop. People did not land up on hospital stretchers to die, Not in Kasturi Bhai Private Hospital anyway, she decided with a violent mental shake up.

After this holiday she would be paid lots and lots of money to tend to people who, she decided, would live long. There would be medicines for everybody. There would be no fight with politicians over where the funds are going. People would live. One in thousands would die every year instead of one in thousands surviving everyday. Oh no, not in those swanky, disinfected Kasturi Bhai Private Hospital beds with their clean white sheets that smell of the sun and Dettol.

It was a new beginning and oh yes, the sun had set on those dying people who would cry. Who were they to cry anyway? They only had to see one person die, see one house washed away, one child die slowly of starvation while watching helplessly. No it was she who deserved the right to cry! She saw the endless lives wasted away. She saw how only the drunks and no goods were safe from harm. She saw the endless bottomless sea spit out disfigured bodies. She saw money for antiseptic and glucose being spent on a flashy BMW for the mayor. What did everybody else have to cry about?

Of course, who cared about the silly graduate from some medical school who decided to spend half a year tending to the hopeless dying? What was the purpose of her job anyway? Make the dying see truth? Help their family (if they found any that is) deal with the grief?

To hell with all that! Not ever again!  It was high time all the melodrama ended. She was looking at a new life now- one of great riches. The dying poor could do just that-die! If it wasn’t the Tsunami it would be poverty or something else, entirely, that killed them. Why waste her life on them? Something had to kill them anyway right? All better now, praise the Lord for natural calamities, they proved to be the fastest way to get rid of the nation’s parasites didn’t they!

Oh she would never have to deal with that in Kasturi Bhai Private Hospital. No siree, she would see people pay happily in Rupees and Dollars and Pounds. She would watch as people got better every single day. She would help and be helped and she would never ever have to perform three surgeries at the same time ever again. It was time for change and it was going to come soon.

Oh but dear Dr. Nita Shankar. When world she grow up and take off her rose tinted glasses? She never asked, so the interviewers never told that if a patient who suffered an accident was wheeled in she couldn’t touch him with a barge pole till the police came in. So what if he died?

What the people at Kasturi Bhai Private Hospital didn’t tell the silly, idealistic Dr. Nita Shankar MBBS, was that even the poverty stricken landed up in Kasturi Bhai Private Hospital. She forgot to ask, so didn’t tell her that if a poor woman walked in with her child who could be rescued she couldn’t a thing till the deposit was paid for. Oh no, the thalli that the weeping mother would violently yank off her neck simply wouldn’t do. She must, yes she must, with a grim face, tell the woman, watching her child die, to pawn her oh so precious thalli for her little munchkin and come back with the money because till then, well until then, Kasturi Bhai Private Hospital would not recognize the child as its patient.

Foolish,foolish Nita Shankar. What could she possibly know of the business health care is? At 25 straight out of medical school and Tsunami relief work Nina Shankar didn’t realize that every rising sun was followed by a setting sun and that the dark doesn’t get any prettier with money.