Page 14 of Six Days in Bombay

I rubbed her hands to warm them. “Oh, Indira! I’m so sorry. I only went because no one at the hospital knew where you were. I thought you’d been in an accident.”

“I wish I had been. Then the girls wouldn’t have had to watch…”

“Let me see where it hurts.”

“No, Sona. You’ve done enough. You don’t seem to understand that your life is always going to be different from mine. You’re not really Indian. I am. I promised to be with Balbir for seven lifetimes. Perhaps in the next he’ll be kinder to me.” She sniffled. “Perhaps he will be one of my daughters instead ofmy husband. Or he may be my mother. We don’t know what fate has in store. You need to stop trying to reverse fate, Sona.”

I stared at her. Here I thought I’d been helping Indira when it looked as if I had only hurt her—or encouraged Balbir to do so.

“Promise you won’t get involved,” she pleaded. “Balbir is an angry man. I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to walk home together anymore, Sona.”

I felt as if she’d punched me in the stomach. I let go of her hands and sat back on my haunches. She was my closest friend, my only true friend in Bombay. Tears pricked my eyes, but I wouldn’t let them fall.

Indira let out a moan as she pulled her uniform over her shoulders and buttoned the front, wincing when she had to move her left arm. I could almost feel the welt on her shoulder and the bruises down the back. They were sharp, raw.

The door opened. I’d forgotten to lock it. Rebecca walked in and stopped short, her eyes scanning the room, scanning us. I stood up. Indira rose from the bench, wiping her eyes.

Rebecca pursed her lips, turned her gaze to me. “We have to tell Matron. It’s time.”

As calmly as I could, I said, “No, we don’t. Indira will lose her job.”

“This is not your problem,” Indira said, looking at me and then at Rebecca. “I am fine.”

With an effort, she slowly raised her arms and straightened her nurse’s cap. Then, with a nod to us, she left the room.

I started to follow her when Rebecca yanked on my arm. “What you don’t understand, Sona, is that we are not supposed to get personal with the sick.”

“Indira is one of us. She’s not one of the sick.”

“Look at her, Sona. She is.”

Why was it so hard for Rebecca to just be a friend? But, instead of saying anything, I pulled my apron tighter around my waist. I started to walk out the door.

Rebecca said. “You realize, don’t you, that it’s easier for us—you and me—to do what you’re suggesting than it is for Indira? We are protected. We can do things an Indian woman can’t.”

I took a deep breath. “I know. But if we don’t try to help, what good is our privilege?”

***

Later that evening, I saw Dr. Mishra and Dr. Holbrook deep in conversation in the hallway. Dr. Mishra was saying, “It’s not normal for her to be experiencing this much pain three days after a miscarriage. She would feel sore, yes, but her pain is far greater than normal.”

The older doctor frowned and shook his head. “You’re still stuck in Indian mumbo jumbo, chap. Those damn hakims and yogis. Medicine is the way to heal this type of issue. I keep telling Matron that too. She’s soft on Indian ways. Just look at what she allows that pharmacist chap to do. He distributes herbs for God’s sake as well as Western drugs! Listen to me, Mishra. The morphine will make her right as rain in a few days.”

“Dr. Holbrook, with all due respect, I need for you to understand that I am practiced in modern medicine. If you’ll remember, the hospital board hired me from England after I’d completed my training as an internist. I still feel—”

“Angry with theBurra Sahib, are you?” Before Dr. Mishra, who had clenched his jaw, could answer, Holbrook said, “Look here. I’ve been through this process a thousand times. The mother will take a week to recover and Bob’s your uncle.”

“Doctor, she’s miscarried a child at four months. There was an excessive amount of tissue. What if we didn’t get it all?”

Dr. Holbrook checked his watch. “I’m delivering a baby within the hour. Let me explain it to you simply. With miscarriage, the fetus would automatically have disengaged from the uterine lining. What Miss Novak is experiencing is nothing more than constipation. Bound to happen after all that morphine.”

He noticed me in the hallway and grinned. “Ah, one of ourmodel nurses.Modelbeing the operative word.” He waggled his bushy white eyebrows at me just as Dr. Mishra craned his neck to see who he was talking about. When he saw it was me, he cast his eyes on the terrazzo floor. He seemed embarrassed on the surgeon’s behalf.

“Oh, if only I were younger!” Dr. Holbrook was walking backward in the hallway. “Pay more attention to that, Mishra. Leave the surgical medicine to me.” He tapped a finger on the side of his bulbous nose and spun around toward the surgery section.

Dr. Mishra hung his head and leaned back against the wall. I knew he had been talking about Mira, trying to save her life. I could also see that she wasn’t getting better. The stats I recorded on her chart proved it. Her pain was constant as was her uneven temperature, which was unusual; it should have gone back to normal after surgery.

Men like Holbrook groped and pawed young women like me and laughed about it. They frequently lobbed thinly veiled—and unveiled—insults at Indian doctors and nurses. It must have been so tiring for Dr. Mishra to hear their salty remarks day after day. We had that in common. Different insults with the same power to sting.

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