Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Two

KIRAN

When she landed in Delhi, it was as though the ten years of living abroad had never happened. She threw elbows like she was a WWE wrestler in line at a temple with thousands shoving for a pilgrimage and made it to the front of the plane with her handbag on her shoulder before most of the other coach passengers.

The doors opened to the jet bridge, and a wall of smells hit her. Kiran compared the scent to a combination of weed, dust, and incense, a comparison that Nash had laughed at but that Kiran still found to be true. It was home.

She moved through the Delhi airport, renovated since the last time she’d come back to India with marble floors and a more sophisticated touch than the developing country the news depicted India as. She knew to queue up quickly for customs so she could beat the rush, and she was successful in reaching a counter.

My father had a heart attack. The words got stuck in her throat. “Family emergency,” she croaked out.

She texted the CMC to let them know she’d landed and would call them when she found out the full story. Once she was through the doors, she scanned the crowd gathered at the metal barriers outside. Her mama, Ma’s younger brother, waited in a simple white kurta and jeans. Kiran waved and walked toward him with bated breath.

White was the color of mourning.

It was also the color Rakesh Mama wore all the time.

Kiran breathed a relieved sigh, and her head dropped.

Rakesh Mama pulled her in for a hug and kissed her forehead. “Let’s go. We have a little drive. Is this all you packed?”

It took them an hour and a half to drive from the airport to the hospital, during which time Kiran tried to describe New York City, her friends, and her work to Rakesh Mama, who was a farmer. He’d only come to Delhi when he heard about Baba. He asked questions about the efficiency of machines he wanted to buy, how to improve upon the old rusted tractor he piloted around his fields back in Ramnagar, and whether there was a way to economically change their irrigation system—questions that Kiran suspected he knew the answers to, but as her uncle, he wanted to distract her from the heavy atmosphere that would otherwise occupy the seats of the old Maruti 500 he drove.

Kiran wondered if Rakesh Mama knew all that had transpired between her and her parents before this visit. She wished she could ask about whether the extended family knew about the turmoil with Kirti before Ma and Baba had agreed to her wedding or whether it was a surprise to her uncles, aunts, and cousins that Kirti was suddenly getting married. Rumors always spread between families as easily as they did through the community—but Ma and Baba could be tight-lipped when they wanted to be. After all, it was not like Kiran knew the specific details about the events leading up to Kirti’s wedding even now, and they were sisters.

While the answer was sweet and thoughtful, it wasn’t indicative of the environment she would be walking into…but Kiran didn’t want to focus on Nash at a time like this either. Baba’s health was priority. Reuniting her family was of utmost importance. Ma’s well-being was critical. Nothing else mattered.

Kiran had visited hospitals in the United States before. She’d gone for routine blood tests and spent a night next to Payal during their junior year when she drank too much on her twenty-first birthday. She’d cared for Akash when his appendix ruptured during their first year in New York City.

But nothing ever compared to a hospital where your parent was a patient.

When Akash’s appendix had ruptured, Kiran had wholly trusted the doctors and nurses who wandered in at all hours to draw his blood, ask how he was doing, and check on his incision. She believed in his ability to get better because he ran every day, this was the first time he’d had a health issue in all the time she’d known him, and he was at one of the best hospitals in the city. She watched in admiration as nurses washed their hands before they touched him and doctors took copious notes as they spoke to him, putting everything he said on the record and writing their thoughts there too.

But hospitals in India were another world entirely. Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital was filled with those seeking care. The disparity between the poor and those who could afford surgeries, X-rays, and blood tests was a stark reminder of why Kiran had paid for her parents to move to Delhi from Ramnagar. While the wealthy had rooms with beds that were, at minimum, taken care of, many of the walk-ins were literally off the street. They waited to be seen, with dirty cloths covering their cough-filled mouths and an unwashed stench filling the halls. Kiran discreetly tried to cover her face to protect herself from the sick smell but selfishly to shield herself from whatever diseases were being carried. Her heart broke at the lives she knew some of these human beings lived in huts and sewage-filled slums, but even in the hour or two she’d been back in the motherland, she felt her “survival of the fittest” mentality rolling back.

All she wanted to do was see Baba and make sure he had a good bed and quality care. After all, what was the point if she was unable to provide for them after being apart? Unlike Akash, Baba wasn’t young and vital anymore. He didn’t take care of his health with as many yearly checkups, and he didn’t get bloodwork often enough. He wouldn’t know if his heart had a block from a stress test. Instead, his version of feeling well entailed remaining somewhat active, giving up eating his daily paan because Ma hated the way the betel nuts stained the sidewalk outside their home when he spit them out, and not smoking.

Rakesh Mama led Kiran down a hallway with cement floors. Yellow plaster decked the walls. Nurses walked by in white dresses with white hats, reminding Kiran of movies like Pearl Harbor. He guided her to a room with seven beds, all split with enough space between them to accommodate the many family members accompanying each patient, but a crowded room on a busy day nonetheless. Kiran’s eyes frantically jumped from bed to bed for Baba’s face, but they passed through the room and down another hallway.

A set of doors opened to the ICU, where each patient shared a room with just one another person—not a huge change from the life she’d grown accustomed to in the West.

She froze at the doorway as Rakesh Mama stepped into the room, bracing herself.

Baba was on the bed on the opposing side of the room, judging by where Rakesh Mama went, curtains drawn around both beds. She smelled iodine, bleach, the salty tang of blood, and sourness. Steeling her will and cementing her insides so they wouldn’t react with fear, she followed.

Ma was sitting in vigil next to Baba, her hand on his.

Kiran barely recognized Baba. The man who had tossed her into the air as a child and caught her with glee and only bought the freshest of flowers for the mandir was lying prone on his back, his eyes closed. He was weaker than she remembered as more skin hung off his forearms and his face cast a sallow tinge. His head leaned back against a pillow, wires ran to numerous monitors, and tubes pumped God knew what into his body.

Ma wiped a tear on her pallu and rose stiffly. She hunched a little bit when she walked now, Kiran noted. She tried to smile at the unfortunate circumstances they were meeting under, trying not to wonder why it took her so long to visit again.

Kiran pulled her mom into a hug. She couldn’t believe as Ma came close that she had betrayed their relationship with Nash—these were her parents.

Ma pulled away, more suddenly than Kiran hoped she would, and cleared her throat. “The doctors say he needs a procedure, but they wanted to wait. I don’t know why. Something about seeing where he is in twenty-four hours from the heart attack. They put in some…lines… I don’t know.”

The English to Hindi hadn’t translated. Even the Hindi hadn’t properly conveyed what was needed for Baba’s life. Ma had no idea what was going on, whether her husband would make it or not, because she couldn’t even understand the doctors who attempted to explain all of it. The lack of understanding unleashed both fury and heartbreak in Kiran’s heart.

She stepped outside the room, keen to find a hospital worker to ream out.

The logic behind the personnel’s decision to keep Baba in a room with other patients blew her mind.

Kiran glanced at the figure—far beyond what Baba made but within reason for her to cover.

The worker looked as though he would pee himself. “Yes, ma’am.”

An hour later, Baba, with all of his tubes and monitors, was set up in a single room. He woke up once, briefly, and he didn’t appear to be there at all. His gaze traveled around the room, barely resting on Ma or Kiran, before he closed his eyes again and slept.

Ma didn’t move from the chair next to him. In silence, she and Kiran sat on either side of his bed. Occasionally, Kiran could feel Ma’s eyes on her, but for the most part, they were silent. The lack of catching up amplified the beeps on Baba’s machines and the sound of his breathing. Kiran began counting his breaths to occupy her time.

Two hundred breaths later, she was beginning to believe her father was channeling Darth Vader.

Rakesh Mama finally acquiesced, giving Kiran a kiss on the forehead before heading out.

It took over three hours before a doctor finally appeared to discuss Baba’s case. Those hours were filled with silence and glares between Kiran and Ma.

Death.

Kiran nodded. In a daze, she signed the papers required to allow Baba to have the surgery he needed.

Now she had to tell Ma.

Kiran tried to explain what was about to happen. The concept of cutting into someone, exposing their heart, stopping it, and starting it wasn’t easy to comprehend in English, let alone another language.

But Ma only had one question.

Kiran was at a loss for words. She couldn’t possibly tell her mother that the bypass was invasive and dangerous. The concept of stopping a heart and restarting it hours later was daunting even for an educated mind grappling with the patient being her father. For Ma, it would be impossible to handle.

She had also lied enough to her parents in the last months, and one more lie in a crisis of this magnitude could finally prompt destiny to push them all over the edge. That was the last thing Kiran wanted.

Ma’s eyes widened, then filled with tears. Her shoulders hunched, and she sat back, her face in her hands. She shook a little as she wrestled with the implications of what Kiran had just said. While Kiran may have spoken of Baba’s best chance, Ma, as his wife, could only hear the loss, and Kiran couldn’t blame her mother one bit for that.

Ma’s reddened eyes glared at Kiran as she lifted her head. Her voice was shaky. She was maddened with grief and heartbreak, but when she spoke, there was undeniable conviction in her voice.

Kiran was gut punched, and her lungs hurt. It took every ounce of strength in her legs to hold herself up against the door and keep from crumbling in half.

In a daze, she collected her bag and suitcase, blindly dragging it behind her as she headed toward the exit. There, she hailed an auto rickshaw. The driver subtly nodded when Kiran directed him and didn’t speak again as he drove her from the hospital to the apartment she had rented for her parents in Lajpat Nagar. She suspected he had heard a touch of American accent in her voice and seemed determined to take her through a scenic route to their apartment in Lajpat Nagar. They passed the president of India’s home, Rashtrapati Bhavan, and the Nehru Planetarium on their route. Embassies lined the street, waving their flags in patriotic pride. India Gate, a giant arch memorializing the forgotten colonized soldiers from 1914–1921, rose into the sky on Kiran’s right as they rounded a giant hexagon. Even the high court was visible.

Each landmark was a jab at her.

Look at where you’re from.

You live in America, but you are not American.

Act like an Indian. This is your heritage.

As they pulled into the block where houses packed next to one another with hardly enough space to roam in between, Kiran shoved a handful of rupee notes into the driver’s hand.

Kiran blankly gave him another hundred rupees, careless about whether she was being ripped off or not. She glanced upward at the cement building in front of her. Six stories with faded and peeling yellow stucco decorating the front, the apartment building was foreign compared to the home Kiran had grown up in Ramnagar. She had recruited Rakesh Mama to find this place within her budget for Ma and Baba to move into.

She found the thick ring with the giant skeleton key hanging from it, which Rakesh Mama had left in her bag. She unlatched the room.

The first smell that hit her was of incense—the same incense Baba always lit when she was growing up.

As she closed the door behind her, she sank to the floor against it and finally cried.

She didn’t know how long she spent on the floor, sobbing until her eyes were red, raw, and burning. Her nose stung, and her head hurt, a combination of exhaustion and aches from the labor of traveling across the world.

She’d always thought of India as home, but now she wondered how home could feel so empty when her heart was thousands of miles away.

Nash didn’t know.

Her dad was in the hospital, her family was fractured, and all she wanted was comfort from Nash, who had no idea she was struggling and had no idea how sorry she was.

Whether he wanted to talk to her, whether he would, whether there was any hope at all, she didn’t care. Without thinking, she fished for her phone in the bag she’d dropped on the floor next to her. Sniffling, she dialed, fighting back another wave of tears.

Or maybe that was what she hoped, that he’d forget her idiocy.

Kiran could hear Nash breathing in and out slowly on the other end of the line, and his quiet presence calmed her.

Silence.

Kiran pulled the phone away, frowning at the screen to see if the call had cut, before she heard Nash clearing his throat on the other end. She slammed it back to her ear.

Relief coursed through her. She wasn’t the only miserable one. He missed her too.

Exhaustion hit her in waves.

But he was right.

Kiran wasn’t sure if the click she heard was from him hanging up or if it was her heart cracking in half as she started to cry in earnest all over again.