Fireproof Read online

  The curtains Head Nurse had drawn were not the window’s exact size, they were smaller in width, leaving a gap between their edge and the frame, a narrow chink through which I could see a strip of Ithim’s cot. I stood there, hoping the fan inside would blow the curtains aside, make them flap, widen that strip so I could see more of my son, maybe the whole, but that didn’t happen, the curtains moved so lightly I could have waited there for hours and hours. And seen nothing.

  ‘Why don’t you go catch some sleep?’ Head Nurse was now out of the icu and standing behind me, in the hallway.

  I was taken aback. For a moment, I didn’t recognize her because she had changed from the starched white of the hospital uniform, the skirt and the blouse, to a blue sari, a white shawl draped around her shoulders. She had loosened her hair as well, the bun on her head stretched tight was gone, the hair now fell straight to her shoulders in a wave that showed she had put more than cursory care into its grooming. She looked shorter but softer, the change of clothes had smoothened the edges, the shawl had rounded her hard angles.

  ‘Why don’t you let me see him?’ I asked.

  ‘Just wait for a couple of hours,’ she said, ‘we need to do some tests and then you can take him home. You will get all the time you have to see him, you will get twenty-four hours. You will be his father, after all, won’t you?’ And with that she turned to walk away.

  The hallway was empty, no one to my left, to my right, up front or behind, and for the second time that evening, I felt like running up to Head Nurse, grabbing her by the shoulder, the arm, forcing her to open the icu door and let me see my son. I wanted to say something, anything, words that would sound like I was putting my foot down rather than going down on my knees, surrendering so meekly. But before I could even start arranging these thoughts into some kind of concerted action, Head Nurse was already at the end of the hallway and I was still rooted to my spot, near the window. Where the curtain had hardly moved, where the visible strip of glass was still as narrow as when I had first looked.

  Head Nurse had now disappeared, I heard her go down the stairs and it was then that I ran.

  I ran to stop her, I ran down the hallway, past the rooms on the left and the right, all closed. I ran down the stairs, two, sometimes even three, steps at a time. A couple of people coming up the stairs stopped, pressed themselves against the wall to let me pass, one I had to push aside although he was carrying a child in his arms, the child I had seen earlier on in the evening on the floor, his leg stretched in front, in a fresh cast. But I didn’t care, I had enough, I had to see Ithim come what may and I had to get Head Nurse to walk back to that ICU, change into her whites if she had to. I wouldn’t let her get away.

  But Head Nurse was gone.

  And I was at the end of the staircase, the ground floor, right near the main entrance to the hospital. I had run six floors.

  But Head Nurse was gone.

  ‘Sir, what are you doing, why are you running?’ asked a guard who had walked right up to me and was standing so close I could smell his sweat through the hospital’s blue regulation pullover. Mixing with his breath, the smell of his sleep, half-broken. His tag read: LOBBY GUARD.

  ‘Have you seen Head Nurse?’ I asked.

  ‘Who is Head Nurse?’

  ‘The nurse, she had my baby, she put him in the ICU and she has just gone home.’

  ‘I haven’t seen anyone, mister, and I have been here all this while,’ he said.

  ‘How could she have vanished? I saw her only minutes ago and I came running down.’

  ‘Then she must have gone,’ the guard said, this time not even looking at me. ‘If she hadn’t, she would have been here.’

  The lobby where I stood was empty. From above the reception counter, the row of wooden boards stared at me, telling me the names of doctors and their degrees and their departments. Paediatrics, Urology, Gastroenterology, ENT, General Surgery, Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Cardiology, Orthopaedics, Ophthalmology, X-Ray, MRI, Pathology.

  Ithim needed them all.

  I was breathing hard, my heart was racing and in the cold air that slipped into the lobby beneath the main glass door I felt sweat on my neck and forehead. Outside, the fog had thickened, scattering the light from the Emergency neon across a far wider area than earlier in the evening. The logical next step was through the door. And when I had taken that, as soon as I had stepped out, I turned my head to try to see through the fog – to maybe catch Head Nurse walking to where the auto-rickshaws and taxis were – but I found myself looking skywards to the building in front, its fifth floor, the thirteenth room.

  Fifth floor from below. Thirteenth room from the corner.

  That’s where I had seen The Face by the window. But the window was now dark and shuttered, the curtains drawn, exactly like all the rooms to the left and to the right, above and below, no trace of The Face. Once I had seen this room again, once I had a fix on its coordinates, I forgot Head Nurse, I ignored Lobby Guard. I was seized with the need to get into that room.

  Why?

  Again and again, over and over, I have gone back, in my head, to find out what made me do what I did that night, what made me search out that room and enter it. And, in effect, change everything in my life, perhaps for ever.

  Why did I decide to go there?

  As with every question, here, too, there must be a simple, straightforward answer that covers the surface and, then, there must be an answer that comes from the depths. I have neither so I can only speculate, conjecture. Perhaps, as I said earlier, it was my anger at Head Nurse, my helplessness after running down the stairs and finding her gone, my frustration mixed with my disappointment mixed with growing despair. Perhaps the events of that evening, Ithim’s birth, the condition of my wife, the realization that I could do nothing to change a thing, all these, like floodwater, had threatened to submerge me. And I needed something to clutch on to so I could keep my head afloat and that something had to be more tangible, something that should not only serve as a mere foothold but anchor my entire body from head to toe. In short, what I needed was a sense of purpose, the tug of a cause. Or maybe it was just curiosity, plain and simple: I knew I had nothing to do that night other than to kill a few hours before I could take Ithim home and exploring that room seemed more inviting a prospect than sitting in the lobby.

  Maybe.

  But then who knows, does anybody care? It’s now too late to look for reasons.

  So there I was, right in front of the entrance, the fog now so thick that in the glare of the white lights I could see its changing shapes, could see how it was creeping up the glass door, how it had blanketed the E M E and R of the EMERGENCY and was about to swallow the G as well. I checked my destination once again, fifth and thirteenth, as if afraid it might have disappeared when I was not looking. The fog had reached there, too, but because it was higher up, it wasn’t so thick and had left uncovered a small sign, black lettering on a yellow wooden board that caught whatever light reached it from the lamps below, a sign I had certainly missed when looking at the window earlier that evening: BURNS WARD.

  I had to go to the Burns Ward.

  FIFTEEN minutes and twenty rupees later, I was there. At the entrance to that room on the fifth floor, the thirteenth door from the corner, the four five-rupee notes slipped into the hands of a thin, old woman, wearing lenses so thick in her glasses that her eyes were two giant smudges, white, black and grey, filling each frame. She squatted on her haunches, wiping the floor, a mop in one hand, the other holding on to a red plastic bucket filled with water, milky with some sweet-smelling antiseptic. So frail and small was the woman at first glance, she appeared like an old, oversized bird which had flapped across the city that night and got lost. Strayed into the hospital ward to rest until daybreak. And would, any time now, hop from the floor to perch on the rim of the bucket, maybe even bend down to drink the water.

  ‘You have to wait for Sister,’ Old Bird said when I told her I needed to get into that room.

>   It was then that I handed her the money. ‘Keep this,’ I said, ‘it’s already so late and I can’t wait, I will take only ten minutes.’

  ‘Why do you want to go there?’

  ‘A relative was in that room, the patient left something . . . a bag . . . I am here to check.’

  I knew she knew that this was a lie. And if not my weak answer, my twenty rupees had given it away. It was a bribe and barely looking at the money, let alone counting it, she slipped it into her blouse over her breastless chest. ‘Don’t step on the wet floor,’ she said, ‘I just scrubbed it clean.’

  She got up, her knees clicked, a sound soon replaced by the slap of her slippers against the floor as she led me, her shoulders hunched forward, her back bent at the waist, into the room. Holding the door open, she gestured to me to walk in. I had put one foot inside when she reached out and with her free hand switched the light on in the room. She took one look around and seeing the emptiness inside was sure if I meant any harm it would be the harmless kind that would neither endanger her job nor compromise her position. Relieved, she walked out, closing the door behind her.

  ‘Hurry up,’ she called, from outside.

  Old Bird.

  There was nothing there.

  The Face had left nothing.

  Surely there should have been something, some clue, something to show The Face had been in the room earlier that evening? To establish, beyond reasonable doubt, that I was not imagining. If just hours ago there had been a patient in here, there must be a chart, a bit of a shiny wrapper left after the pill was swallowed? Or even a pill left untouched. A cup or a glass left there by accident? Some thread from her dress where it caught a nail? A dent on the mattress where she sat, slept? A hollow, even temporary, in the pillow where she rested her head? A puddle of water, yet to evaporate, something she spilled? But, there was nothing.

  So I walked to the window, stood where she had stood, looked at what she would have looked at. But nothing again.

  Just the black of the night, the grey of the fog mixing with the cold winter wind that through the windowpane lit by the soft white from the lights below looked like one huge shapeless smudge. I tried to write what she had written, those two words, help and me, but the windowpane was cold to the touch, there was a chill in the room – the heater must have been switched off – and hence no vapour had condensed on the glass for me to write in. Instead, like a child playing a memory game, in which you set a lavish spread on the table and tell the child to look carefully before you cover it all with a sheet or a towel and ask her to recall the objects one by one, I began looking around, trying to register whatever I could see.

  The bed was not made, there was no linen, no bed sheets, just the mattress and two pillows, all three bare and cold.

  I sat on the bed.

  A mattress, off-white. A sticker: Sleepwell, Foam.

  The floor beneath the bed, also off-white, was tiled, each tile a large square, the grout painted white.

  The door, the window, the windowsill, the curtains, the cupboard in the room.

  Old Bird knocked. ‘You are done? I have to lock the room now.’

  ‘Just five to ten minutes,’ I said. ‘I will tell you.’

  ‘Please hurry up.’ I heard her shuffle, her feet drag her slippers along the floor she had just wiped clean.

  For a moment, I closed my eyes and when I opened them again, nothing had changed: the swirling dark outside the window, the haze in the fog, the chill in the room. But I did have the impression that I had been dreaming, no not even a full dream, more a fragment, a dreamlet, torn and twisted, a piece that had perhaps fallen off from something larger because it had neither a beginning nor an end. And then I realized it wasn’t a dream, I had seen a photograph lying wedged in the narrow space between the mattress and the bed’s headboard.

  It was a photograph that may have slipped there by accident. And it was still lying there after the room had been cleaned so it meant the cleaners, possibly Old Bird, had not noticed it. And because it was the only thing in the room that I could pick up and take away with me, like a souvenir, I did:

  The photograph shows a pavement. A street in a city, perhaps this city itself because look at the rubble lining it, covering it completely, not even leaving a space for pedestrians to walk.

  There is a sapling that grows beside the pavement, you can see it in the bottom left-hand corner of the picture, and another a bit to the right, both stunted because their roots are trapped in cement, their leaves breathe in the fumes of petrol, diesel and kerosene of vehicles, their stems are drenched with the spit of strangers.

  In the foreground, that’s where I would like to draw your attention, in the pile of garbage, are three things lying on the street.

  Near the top edge of the picture, to the right of the halfway mark, you can see two stones, one on top of the other, the pair looking a bit like a hat dropped onto the pavement. Right in front of this are three things that don’t seem to be visible in the photograph: a book, a wristwatch. And then a piece of cloth, more like a towel since I could see the threading on the fabric, the curls that give it its furry feel. The book is open, almost halfway. The watch is lying, face down, its strap unfastened, maybe its dial face has broken, maybe it fell. The towel lies inches away from the book and the watch in a tiny crumpled heap.

  What you definitely don’t see in the picture is what I saw in the dream: a wind blowing, rustling the pages of the book and making the towel lift, at its edge. Not forceful enough for the towel to flip over but strong enough to run its fingers over my face, in my hair.

  How do I remember all this in such precise detail? It’s odd, I am not sure now, looking back, how much was in the picture and how much in the dream, where did one end and the other begin. I do still have the photograph, of course. It lay crumpled in my hand, imprinted on my eyes when there was a sudden, insistent knocking on the door.

  It was Old Bird.

  ‘Get out, now,’ she whispered. ‘You have to leave,’ she said, entering the room, mop in hand. ‘There’s someone here looking for you.’

  Seeing that her words had scarcely registered with me, she patted her chest with one hand. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, her voice falling several notches until I had to strain my ears to hear. ‘I have given you your money’s worth. There was a call from the icu, they were looking for you all over the hospital. I told them you were walking down the corridor and you looked tired as if you would trip, fall down any time, so I told you to rest for a while in an empty room. I told them it wasn’t your fault, it was my idea and although I shouldn’t have done that, what could I do? I saw you and felt sorry.’

  Old Bird smiled.

  By now I was up, off the bed and near the door, the picture in my pocket, folded, I could feel its edges press against my legs.

  ‘Who called, who was looking for me?’ I asked.

  ‘Head Nurse,’ she said.

  I was back in the hospital lawn, the Burns Ward behind me, the night’s fog still there, thicker than when I saw it last. I shivered as a blast of wind much stronger than the one in my dream, much sharper and more bracing, slapped me in the face. Head Nurse was waiting for me at the entrance, charged, refreshed. Where did she get her energy from? However much I detest admitting it, I couldn’t but feel a grudging respect for this woman. We retraced our steps, up the stairs, down the hallway to the icu, to its narrow glass window, to the drapes beyond which I knew Ithim lay.

  Ready to come home with me.

  ‘You stay here, I will be back with him in a few minutes.’

  There it was, the moment, when the child is handed over to the father. There should have been a celebratory warmth in the corridor and in my heart; there should have been smiles all around. Maybe a picture being taken. But there was nothing except for the taste of unfinished sleep in my mouth, that shred of a picture of a city street, the trash on the pavement, the book, the watch and the towel, the image as if stuck, thumbtacked to my eyes. I could feel the
winter in the hands that I shoved into the pockets of my jacket trying to warm them in the couple of minutes I had to wait: I didn’t want Ithim’s first touch with his father to be cold.

  ‘Here, hold it like this. Sorry, hold him like this,’ said Head Nurse, as she emerged from the room, the hydraulic door closing behind her with a whine almost as loud as her voice.

  ‘He’s a bit different from the other babies, so you have to be a bit careful,’ her voice now surprisingly soft. Gone was the harsh, matter-of-fact tone, in its place almost a whisper, soft and reassuring. ‘Cover him with one side of your jacket, hold him close to your chest, he needs all the warmth he can get as what he’s been through no one can imagine. But we know you will take good care of him.’

  Ithim was with me now, his father.

  Father and son.

  Once or twice, I have held newborn babies, a few days old, in a room crowded with branches of the baby’s family tree, all the leaves and all the fruits, rustling with joy. The mother and the father right next to me, telling me to do this do that, don’t do this don’t do that, hold her gently, support his neck, let her rest in the cradle of your arms, sit down, be gentle, look how his eyes open, crinkle, how she stares at your face, at the ceiling, at the light, at the black spot on the wall, how he likes black and white, can’t understand colour yet, look how small she is and look how good you look with the baby in your arms, so natural, so perfect.

  So I cradled my arms, my left palm underneath my right elbow, the fingers of my right hand outstretched to support his head but this was no baby I had ever held before. At first, I thought Head Nurse had given me an empty towel – like the one in the picture – wrapped into a roll and crumpled at either end, making it seem that it held something rather than nothing. But no, Ithim was there. I could feel him against my chest, through my shirt, even through my sweater and my jacket, through the towel.