‘It’s going to be fine, Daksh,’ she says. ‘We are going to befine.’
While she’s being taken away, I finish the drudgery of filling up the forms.
I am seventeen again. I’m in a hospital, a different one. My mother is to be taken in for surgery, my father’s losing his mind with nervousness. I have my father’s credit card and I am ordering a lot of things from the coffee shop because I want to punish my parents for having a kid so late. I am hating both Mumma and Baba for all the attention that is being lavished on the baby that has not even come yet. I have decided to hate the kid. I want the kid to be dead.
Now, it seems so stupid. What would I not give for my child to live? Anything, anything at all. I would die a thousand deaths every moment.
I write down the details, make the payment. I cut deals with God. I would give up everything in the world to have a little part of Aanchal and me exist. I remind God that I have been an okay person, that I deserve it. I deserve it more than anyone else. We deserve it.
When I get back, she’s in the area cordoned off for patients due for surgery. She’s in the hospital gown and a doctor’s takingher medical history. The panic’s gone from her face, replaced by a deep calm.
‘You look like a doctor,’ she says when she spots me in scrubs.
I hold her hand. ‘I wish I were a doctor, and this was in my hands.’
‘You wouldn’t have been able to run a knife on me.’
‘That’s true.’
‘We didn’t get to do a pregnancy photoshoot,’ she sighs.
‘Are we listing down the positives of this situation?’
‘Get me pads, a change—’
‘Baba’s getting them,’ I tell her. ‘Maa is taking the next flight. She will be here in a few hours.’
She exhales and closes her eyes as if bracing for what’s going to come. I kiss her hand.
‘It’s going to be the three of us now,’ she mumbles.
‘Unless you want to make them four eventually.’
‘Says the guy whose wife is delivering a month early,’ she says sadly.
‘Don’t blame yourself.’
‘I blame you. You loved the baby too much. It just wanted to come out and see who its Baba is,’ she says.
Over the course of the past eight months, Aanchal frequently complained about my affection towards our unborn child. The baby will become your top priority, I will be a distant second, she used to say. She kept telling me she would be jealous if I ended up doing that. You’re mine first, she would keep repeating. I would keep telling her that no one could even come close to the love I felt for her.
‘Weird to think of myself as Baba.’
‘You know what you can teach the baby?’ she asks. ‘Baba is the best, Baba is amazing!’
‘I like the sound of that.’
The nurse walks in and clears her throat. ‘Are you sure you want to be in the OT? Need your consent for the document.’
‘... wouldn’t miss it for the world.’
‘There will be blood,’ the nurse warns me.
‘I need to keep an eye on you guys, don’t I?’ I say to her.
The thought of Aanchal going through pain feels like someone’s twisting a knife into me.
The nurse turns to Aanchal. ‘Five minutes and we will take you in.’ She looks at me. ‘You wait here. We will call you when it’s okay for you to enter.’
