“How are you feeling Mr. Kumar?”

“I am feeling like killing you,” he wanted to say, but the white flexible pipes stuffed into his mouth pumping air into his lungs would not let him say that. Nor could he execute his desire with both his hands tied to the bed posts.

“Why don’t you get these goddamn pipes off my mouth, or just untie my hands so that I can do it,” he wanted to shout at the nurse. He tried to push the ventilator pipes out with his tongue without success.

Intravenous fluids dripped from the many bottles hung above the bed. One for increasing his blood pressure, one to prevent infection, another to keep his muscles relaxed. One bottle injected blood into his veins.

“I would be taking a bone marrow sample. There would be a small prick, but not very painful,” said the nurse.

“What could be more painful than all these needles and tubes all over my body?” Kumar’s eyes seemed to say.

He wished they could just make him speak for a minute or two.

He had given up hope a week ago. He knew for certain that his time had come. But these guys had put him on a bed with all kind of paraphernalia in the Intensive Care Unit. It was five days now that he lay flat on his back unable to move or talk.
It was two months ago that he had been to the doctor to get the blood pressure checked. He had high Blood Pressure for the past ten years. The doctor had referred him to a cardiac surgeon who in turn had suggested an angiogram and further by-pass surgery.

The trouble was that the angiogram could not be done when they found high creatinine level in his blood. It indicated kidney failure.

Kumar’s world seemed to close around him when the doctor told him that he may have to undergo dialysis.

With the meager pension doled out to him by the government he just managed to pay his telephone and electricity bills and daily expenses.

Dialysis at least twice a week meant around Rs. 20,000 a month. That was well beyond his reach. His kids told him not to worry. They will definitely take care of all expenses. But he had never troubled his kids anytime in his life. He wouldn’t do it now.

The intermittent beep of the dialyzer was getting on his nerve. Every now and then the nurse came to check if all was fine.

A young man was near the bedside of the patient next to him. He was holding a laptop in his one hand and explaining something to the patient on the bed. The old man on the bed was attentively listening as he stared at the screen of the portable computer. He nodded and the young man handed a pen over to the old man. With some difficulty the old man scrawled on a sheet of paper that the young man, probably his son, held on a clip board.

“Why doesn’t this old guy give up?” thought Kumar. “Was he going to take anything with him on his way up? No one seems to realize that we never bring anything nor take anything with us.”

The young man folded up his laptop and was off on his way, probably to sign another million rupee contract.

On the bed opposite to his was a young man in his thirties. A young lady, who looked like his wife, was near him, her eyes swollen from incessant crying. She had been doing that every time she came into the ICU ward for the past few days that Kumar was there. There were tubes running out of the patients arms into a dialyzer. Another case of kidney failure.
All the medicines going into his body made him drowsy and Kumar slowly went to sleep.

It was night when Kumar woke to a commotion.

There was a small crowd around the young patient on the opposite bed. The tubes had been withdrawn and the patient lay lifeless flat on his back, arms spread out. There were wailing sound from outside the ward. Nurses were running around with clothes and papers.

Two ward attendants came and slowly wheeled out the cot and the crowd followed.

Another soul departed.

What Kumar had learnt about ICUs seemed to be true. Not many went out of the ICU alive. Of course only the very critical cases were referred to this place. And it was the secret rule of hospitals to keep ICU beds always occupied. The charges were almost five to six times the cost of an ordinary bed.

(To Continue)