Au Revoir

1
It was the first Monday in weeks when I was not in office before ten. As I saw the frosted sundial of my old citizen ticking a eleven thirty, I cursed myself for the umpteenth time for choosing that insurance company. I found out that the other companies did not require so many tests after signing up for that policy.

I scanned the lobby where i was made to wait before i could collect the reports of the tests. The hospital was one of those recently built ones that looked too cheerful and lacked the sobriety one expected of hospitals. I switched on the walkman in my sony ericcson and tried to listen to some music to stifle the urge to slap the hospital staff who were making me wait for hours for the report. But soon I realised I had never loaded any music into the phone. I smiled to myself thinking of how much i had changed for there was a time when I would listen to music all the time no matter what I would be doing. Things had been hectic at the office with the project dead line just a couple of months away.

I turned the FM radio on and a peppy A R Rahman number greeted me. I closed my eyes and eased a little in the chair. I was woken up by a pleasant looking nurse a few minutes later.

"Dr. Sridar wants to talk to you. "

"Can I just have my reports please? I will meet up the doctor later if He wants me to. I am already too late. I have to rush to my office."

"No, Sir. He wants to speak to regarding the reports only."

I followed her dutifully to the doctor's cabin. There was this geeky looking young man who was looking at the computer screen in front of him with utmost interest sitting behind a fancy looking table. He looked up at me as I entered and beckoned me to the chair opposite him with a pleasant smile.

"Good Morning Mr. Arun."

"Good Morning, doctor. You wanted to see me?"

"Where are you employed Mr Arun?"

'Thats none of your bloody business. Just give me the damn report.' My heart screamed.

"I work at Riversoft." I said bluntly.

"OK. Let me come to the point. We had run all the basic tests. A few of the tests showed abnormlities.There seems to be malignant cell growth in blood. I am afraid you have blood cancer." He blurted the whole thing in one breath. I wished it was some other doctor I was talking to. I wished I was somewhere else. I wished i was still sleeping in the lobby irritated by the delay. I did not know how to react. Somewhere in me there was this faint craving to hit the doctor across his face for all the blasphemous truths he dared to reveal to me. All of a sudden the hospital looked more sober than any place I had known. It seemed as if all the cheeriness had been sucked out of the place by this
The moment felt surreal. I kept looking at him, my new god who was dictating to me my new future. Sensing my thoughts, he proceeded to the next rehearsed line.

"We cannot afford to delay, Arun. We should run a few other tests to see how advanced it is, whether there has been metastasis and so on. You should start taking the treatment very soon. Cancer is curable." My thoughts had left the place temporarily. The gravity and the seriousness of the situation was too strong to bear. I irrelevantly realised that the doctor was too short, that with his pointed nose he looked like a character out of some comic book. But comic characters did not break such tragic news about cancer and death. Next few thoughts were about Pramila, Sheela's colleague. She had been diagonized with lung cancer. I tried hard to think of what happened to her after that. I had not bothered to ask about her to Sheela- the same way as i had never bothered to ask Sheela about the million things in her world.

The young, short, evil doctor Sridar was telling something in his lecture like voice. I did not bother to follow any of it.
"Don't worry, Arun. WE will start the treatment this week. Take these tests now. We will get the results in a couple of days."
I left his cabin without thanking him. All the tests i gave that day were a blur. They took a lot of my blood out of the veins off my left hand. I did not mind. I wryly thought that after all it was cancerous blood.After an hour, I was driving home. It was the first Monday in years when I did not attend office.

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