A Suitable Boy(440)

‘I’m afraid so. Now as for medicine. Here are two sets of white tablets. You are to take these three times a day, and these once a day for the first week. Then I’ll probably cut down a bit on the digoxin, depending on your pulse rate. But you’ll keep on with the aminophylline for a few months. If necessary I might have to give you an injection of penicillin.’

‘You sound serious, doctor,’ said Pran, attempting to add a touch of lightness to the conversation. This Imtiaz was very different from the one who had helped duck Professor Mishra in the tub.

‘I am serious.’

‘But if this isn’t a heart attack, what danger am I in?’

‘If you have congestive heart failure, you will have all the effects of pent-up blood in your system. Your liver will become enlarged, so will your feet, your neck veins will become prominent, you will cough, and you will get very breathless, especially on walking or exertion. And it is possible that your brain might become confused as well. I don’t want to alarm you – this isn’t life-threatening –’

‘But you are alarming me,’ said Pran, looking at Imtiaz’s mole and finding it very irritating. ‘What else are you doing? I can’t take all this bed rest seriously. I know I’m all right. I’m a, well, I’m a young man. I feel fine. And it’s always been the case that when my breathing spasms pass off, I’m as well as ever – as healthy as anyone – every bit as fit. I play cricket. I enjoy trekking –’

‘I am afraid,’ said Imtiaz, ‘that the picture is different now. Formerly you were an asthmatic patient. Now, however, the main problem is with the right side of your heart. You will need rest. You would do well to take my advice seriously.’

Pran looked hurt at the formality with which his friend was addressing him, and did not protest any further. Imtiaz had said that the condition was not immediately life-threatening. Pran knew without asking – both from the seriousness of his friend’s demeanour and from his list of possible complications – that it was almost certainly life-shortening in the long run.

When Imtiaz left, Pran tried to face the new fact. But today seemed to be very much like yesterday, and the sudden intrusion of the fact was something that Pran almost felt he could shrug off – like an irrelevant memory or a bad dream. But he was depressed, and found it difficult to conceal this and behave normally with Lata or his mother-in-law or, most of all, with Savita.





13.2


THAT afternoon Pran was moved to the medical college hospital. Savita had insisted on being able to visit him, so he was given one of the few rooms on the ground floor. About half an hour after he came in, it began to rain heavily, and did not let up for a few hours. Pran found that the rain was the best thing for him in these circumstances. It took him out of himself in a way that even reading would not have been able to do. Besides, Imtiaz had told him that on the first day he should not read or exert himself in any other way at all.

The rain came down. It was a continuing event, and yet it was not stimulating: just the combination that Pran needed. In a short while he found himself dozing off.

He woke up to a mosquito bite on his hand.

It was almost seven o’clock, the end of the visiting hour. He noticed, as he opened his eyes and reached for the spectacles on the night-stand, that apart from Savita there was no one else in the room.

‘How are you feeling, darling?’ said Savita.

‘I’ve just been bitten by a mosquito,’ said Pran.

‘Poor darling. Bad mosquitoes.’

‘That’s the problem with a room on the ground floor.’

‘What is?’

‘The mosquitoes.’

‘We’ll close the windows.’

‘Too late, they’re already in.’

‘I’ll get them to spray the room with Flit.’

‘That spray will knock me out as well; I can’t leave the room while they’re doing it.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Savita, why don’t we ever quarrel?’

‘Don’t we?’

‘No, not really.’

‘Well, why should we?’ asked Savita.

‘I don’t know. I feel I’m missing out on something. Now look at Arun and Meenakshi. You tell me they’re always having tiffs. Young couples always have tiffs.’

‘Well, we can have tiffs about the baby’s education.’

‘That’s too long to wait.’

‘Well, about its feeding times. Do go back to sleep, Pran, you’re being very tiresome.’

‘Who’s that card from?’

‘Professor Mishra.’

Pran closed his eyes. ‘And those flowers?’