He was looking outside the window down to the street. Everything outside the dialysis room was normal. Suddenly his eyes fell upon the juice-carrying cart. His dry lips longed for the sweet taste of juice. It was the only thing he desired in this entire world. He would have given his life savings if he were allowed to drink a whole jug of juice. But that was the thing he could not have for his whole savings of life. “Ah”, he exclaimed with a sorrowful breath, “what’s the use of those savings I’ve collected my entire life”.
The two red and blue colored tubes that emerged from his jugular vein were hurting him. He turned slowly to see the other patients lying on their beds. He saw Shehla among them and went to greet her.
Shehla was twenty-four years old, long-haired and a divorced lady. She did her M.A in Philosophy but was married to her husband in exchange for her sister-in-law; who was married to her brother. This is what they call watta-satta; exchange of siblings. Her husband divorced her after her kidneys’ failure. She could not give him the apple of his eyes but she gave birth to a miserable creature. During her delivery the blood-pressure was out of control. So, she could not bear the pressure of being a silent-killer. This tragic incident turned out to be much more painful than the labor-pain during her delivery.
He approached her and said, “Salam Shehla”.
Shehla opened her parched lips and said, “Walikum-Salam, Balu”.
Balu sat near her bed on a broken chair. The chair resembled the condition of the entire surroundings. The beds, walls, windows, fans and the hearts of patients.
“Where is your brother Asim”, Balu inquired.
“He went to fetch some sweet juice packs”, she replied.
Balu was ready to ask about her health, but suddenly the light disappeared. All of a sudden, the whole room went with the sound of ‘ton-ton ton-ton’ and the machines that were fixed by the side of every patient’s bed switched to red light. The blood circulating through tubes stopped in an instant.
Balu rushed to Shehla’s machine, opened its hand spinner and started spinning it by hand.
“Ah! Shehla thank God I am here, otherwise this fucking light would have frozen you”, Balu said.
“I am not afraid of frozen bodies, are you? Don’t you think that our frozen bodies will get us all out of this shit?” she replied.
Shehla’s reply hit the core of Balu’s mind. He said without thinking while spinning the dialysis machine by hand, “Ah then your tortured soul will be free to drink from the river of Heaven”.
“What about Hell Balu? Possibility of going to Hell and Heaven lies fifty fifty”, Shehla muttered.
“Don’t be afraid of Hell my dear, if we are destined for Hell, I am sure, it will not burn those who have already been burnt by the dialysis room”, Balu replied.
“But it will be cruel to us if we are moved from this hell to another hell”, Shehla responded.
“This world is full of cruelties, Shehla. Hope is good for the next world”, Balu replied.
“Ah! We only have this weapon to calm our hearts”, Shehla replied.
“Yes, you are right Emily Dickinson of our ward ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers”, Balu said.
“But we are the birds with trimmed feathers, right side trimmed by Nature and left side by this ward. So, for our case ‘Hope’ is the thing with trimmed feathers” Shehla responded.
“One day we will grow our feathers and will fly to meadows of the Heaven” Balu said
“Ah! Balu we are just like those camels whose shepherd has brought to meadows only to slaughter them” Shehla replied.
They were talking and nurse Nazish was listening to their chattering. She stopped by Shehla's bed and asked Balu, “Aren't you afraid of Death Balu?”
Balu turned his body towards the nurse and said in a very somber tone “Oh dear, we are in the middle of life and death. Death is the ultimate reality, no one can escape from it. These weekly shifts of filtrations have made us familiar to death more than an infant familiarity to its mother breast”.
Nazish said in a sarcastic manner after listening to Balu's reply, “I wish you could see the beauty of the world outside this room”.
“The world has announced its departure and is squeezing towards origin, and it has started its backward movement. It is taking its inhabitants towards destruction and leading the masses towards death. Is that beauty you are talking about?” Balu said.
“There lies beauty in the world Balu, but it shows to those who show some thirst to it” Nazish replied.
“There isn’t any parameter to judge the thirst of a dialysis patient in this room,” Balu said.
“I think you are very thirsty Balu” Nazish asked.
“Obviously, the one with dissatisfaction with water does feel thirst. But how come you say that you are thirsty when you are in the middle of a pool” Balu replied.
“Oh Balu, I think you are afraid of the dialysis machine; that’s why you have weird thoughts today” Nazish commented.
“I am afraid of humans, Nazish,” Balu replied.
“But why Balu?”, she said.
“Because machines are not slackers”, Balu responded.
Nazish’s mind felt dizzy after listening to Balu. She had no answer to Balu’s sublime thoughts. So, she turned away without saying anything. In the meantime, light came and Balu’s hands were free from spinning the machine.
Balu went outside the dialysis room to bring a 20 ml injection from his own pocket money that a nurse would require at the time of dialysis. On his way to the medical store, he deposited his Sehat Card forum at the Sehat Card office. He knew that hospital staff would deduct 4000 rupees from his Sehat Card money. Normally for those patients who did not have Sehat Cards, hospital staff charged them only 100 rupees. The more patients with a Sehat card, the higher percentage of doctors earning from it.
He remembered Sultan, whose minor kidney failure led him to become a permanent dialysis patient. Sultan’s kidney failure could have been treated with medications but Dr. Siyal gave instructions to pass dialysis tubes through his body.
Balu knew that their existence in the dialysis ward resembled the herd of goats led by a shepherd. They were thirsty, really thirsty in every sense. Only drinking water could not quench their thirst. Possibly a gesture of a smiling face could do that.
After half an hour Balu returned to the dialysis room. He was to be in the room before 12:00 p.m. In the next shift of dialysis his turn would come. When he entered the room, he saw a body covered with white Chadar.
He inquired from a patient, “Whose body is this?”.
“Oh! That poor lady Shehla”.
“What? Shehla?”.
“Yes, Shehla. The moment you left the room. Her heart started pumping blood slowly. Her blood pressure decreased due to low sugar level in her body”.
“wasn’t anybody in the ward to call the doctor?”.
“His brother went to call the doctor, but he left for his own clinic”.
“What about nurses?” Balu inquired.
“Nazish’s son was crying when Asim went to call her. On the second call she taunted Asim by saying your sister is not going to die. Wait a minute”
Balu slapped his head by saying “Oh God! That one minute’s wait in such a critical situation”.
“When Nazish arrived Shehla’s soul had left the prison of her body” asked the patient.
“Oh God!” Balu said.
“We cannot change our fate, Balu. Once it has been written it will definitely be accomplished sooner or later” the patient said this by pointing his finger to the sky.
“Ah this isn’t the work of fate. It is a question mark on their performance” Balu replied in a gloomy way.
Balu went into a gloomy state after watching Shehla’s dead body. He sat at the far end of the dialysis room facing towards Shehla’s body. He said in a very low tune “Ah! The martyr of blood-pressure”.
Balu thought that currently the dialysis room was full of three types of people: living-dead, the dead and those in-between. The staff people were living-dead. Shehla was dead and all other patients including Balu were neither living nor dead.
He was in a dejected mood but he wasn’t afraid of death he was afraid of walking-dead in the ward. Who only desired the worldly things. Balu wasn’t like them. He followed the great saying of a great man throughout his life “This world is even less worth and less significant than the sneezing of a goat”.
He saw Nazish removing Shehla’s name from the board where patients’ names were written. He murmured while looking at Nazish, “Ah! dead-hearted, walking-dead of no use”.
Suddenly someone called him “Balu it’s your turn now”.
He went to lie on the same bed where Shehla died.