As of writing this today, it is a week since Mr. X was admitted in our ward for the treatment of a head injury. Our emergency day falls on every Thursday and he came to us or rather was brought to us by his family members. Apparently he had slipped while coming down the stairs or in the bathroom and hit his head on his way down and the impact rendered him unconscious. He gained consciousness later on but was left agitated and confused.

The injury is what we call a subdural haemorrhage, or SDH: a collection of blood around the brain that often leaves patients disoriented. Mostly managed with medication but sometimes it may require surgery. Our gentleman here, though, was lucky enough to escape the scalpel but the road to recovery for him isn’t an easy one either.

He is 65 years old or maybe more than that. Old age tends to slow down the repair of injuries and add to that his agitation and confusion. So much so that we had to bind his hands so that he wouldn’t accidentally pull out the cannulas and catheters from his body in a fit of agitation. But that is not why I said that it won’t be easy.

The day following an emergency duty is the most hectic day of the week. Patients are shifted to the wards, families gather around beds, and exhausted first-year residents spend as much time managing attendants as they do patients. Mr. X was no different; his bed too was surrounded by his attendants but the air around them was different. Usually you expect the attendants to feel sorry or at least empathetic towards the patient. Some of them are hyper concerned as well and would go to any lengths so that “their patient gets the best treatment”. But those were not the intentions of these attendants. They just stood there with their arms crossed. Not so much as a glance of pity was thrown towards Mr. X while he lay there half naked, hands bound and speaking in words and sentences that made sense only in his own head.

“Badi aag this isme”(He had a lot of fire in him), one of the attendants said.
“Theek hua jo bhi hua iske saath. Apna kiya hi bhugat raha hai yeh…Jab mai tenth class me tha toh ghar se bahar kar dia tha isne mujhe. Ab fal mil raha hai ise” (It is alright what has happened. He’s getting what he deserved…when I was in tenth standard, he ousted me from the house. It is the fruit of his actions that he’s getting).

This was his son; his position in the hierarchy is unknown to me. There were other men there as well but he was the one “taking charge of the situation” apparently. Among others, there was an old woman, his mother who was also the patient’s wife who sat on a stool next to the bed. Out of all those present, she was the only one who actually touched Mr. X while everyone around was “concerned” about him or otherwise. She was exhausted and visibly helpless but was trying her best to attend to her husband.

We had to remove the crowd because it hampered patient care and increased the risk of infection. After all was done and dusted, I looked again at our patient: only his wife sat beside him. She was wiping his forehead with a cloth while he continued shouting nonsense in the air. Everyone else had left already.

The fire that the son mentioned wasn’t symbolic of the tenacity of a person to brave through difficult circumstances and to never give up in the face of adversity. But rather it was an expression of hatred so fiery that it had burnt away the old man’s relationship with his son to a crisp. The son’s resentment was not difficult to understand; hatred of that intensity is seldom born in a day. But what chain of events had resulted in this particular outcome was unknown to us. Neither was it our place to know. Whatever had transpired between the two men had clearly left scars that time had failed to heal. Yet standing beside the bed, it was impossible to ignore the present reality: the old man lay helpless, unable even to make sense of his surroundings. Whether his suffering was justice or a misfortune was a question for another day. At that moment, he was simply a patient in need of care. Something which was only being partially supplied to him by the doctors and his wife.

Standing beside his father, the son must have had every reason to despise him. Or maybe he had none, again we do not know. We could not. What we could see was suffering had reduced a once formidable man to be completely dependent on the whims of the people around him. But Mr. X’s story had already been written; he was lying on a hospital bed. The son’s story, however, was still being written. Standing beside that bed, he was no longer deciding what kind of father the old man had been but rather what kind of son he himself would be. The past had already made its choices. What remained was the son’s. And he had left.

The outcome of the patient’s treatment is unknown to us. Someday we might discharge him, or he may stay longer with us. Whether he would live a normal life again or not we do not know and none of it matters anyway. Not in the grand scheme of things. But in his senseless mind he might still be yearning for his son’s touch, to hear his voice. Maybe he is counting the end of his days. These “insignificant acts” might not avert the inevitable, but they may make the journey less difficult for the old man.

But in spite of all this, the wife sits beside her husband, feeding and nursing him day in and out. She changes his sheets. She replies to his nonsensical words with patient silence. Old age has worn her down and drained her of much of life’s vigour but she still brings warmth and light to Mr. X. The son spoke of fire and perhaps he was right. Only it is lit somewhere else.