Page 5 of Six Days in Bombay

My shift started at six in the evening and ended at four in themorning. Before I left, I went to Miss Novak’s room to give her the morphine she was due. She woke up when she heard me moving about.

“I’m giving you the rest of the dose now before I leave.” I rubbed the injection site with a cotton ball and antiseptic solution. She held on to my forearm and closed her eyes.

“Tell me about your father. I’ve been thinking about mine.”

For a moment, I was speechless. I’d never had a patient ask me such a personal question before, and I’d never even talked to anyone about my father except Rebecca, back when we used to share a plate of my mother’s bread and butter pudding. I placed the syringe in the enamel pan I’d brought and applied antiseptic where I’d injected the drug.

Mira was waiting patiently. Finally, I mumbled, “Why, ma’am?”

She opened her eyes. “Is he that odious?”

I said nothing.

“Did he hurt you?”

My jaw tightened.

“I see.”

We regarded one another. Which of us would blink first? I wondered. Just because she found it easy to talk about intimate parts of her life, didn’t mean she could expect me to. And I didn’t appreciate being forced to reveal things about my family even my mother and I didn’t talk about.

I walked to the foot of the bed and noted the medication on her chart. “Is there anything else you need, ma’am?”

She shook her head and closed her eyes once more. “This isn’t over, Nurse Falstaff.” Her breathing was now steady.

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow evening, Miss Novak.”

***

In the stockroom, I traded my uniform for a jumper and skirt. The uniform would stay in my locker. All the while, I couldn’t shake off Mira’s question. Back in Calcutta, everyone had known about my father. I’d only been three when he left. But I’d heard the whispers when I accompanied my mother to her clients’houses. He had come from Britain to work with Indian soldiers—many of whom had fought for England in the First World War—when he met my mother. She was a seamstress, and he needed a tear mended in his uniform. They had me, then my brother, and when I was three years old, he returned to England and never came back. I didn’t have many memories of him. My mother didn’t talk about him, and I never asked. Six months after he left, our family was down to two, my mother and me. My brother died before his second birthday. Why would Mira want me to relive the pain of his abandonment? What was it to her what I knew of my father or what I thought about him?

I was lost in thought when my replacement appeared. Roopa was one of the Indians newly recruited into the English nursing system. She was lively, always ready with a smile. She loved to tease and be teased. She was a favorite of the doctors and orderlies.

“How’s the old codger?” she asked as she changed into her uniform. “Still causing trouble?”

I laughed. “Dr. Stoddard is waiting for you to brighten his day.”

“Did you win today?”

“Not quite. But I’m up tenpaise.” The old doctor and I had started making bets, albeit small ones, when we played.

She snapped her apron on my arm. “Mind you don’t spend it all in one place!” Her laughter followed her out of the stockroom.

With a lighter heart, I went down to the equipment room at the back of the hospital to get my bicycle. Most nights, I walked home with Indira to her neighborhood, and cycled the rest of the way home. At four o’clock in the morning, trams were not an option. My mother worried about my coming home at dawn, but the night shift paid much better than the day shift. And the streets were practically deserted in the early hours. It was quiet, peaceful.

The equipment room had a cement floor and walls painted gray. I found the chemical odors here—so different from the medicinal aromas on the floors above—pleasing somehow. Morethan once, I’d wondered if I’d have liked to work with my hands, making things instead of tending to people. But my mother had spent every rupee she made on my nurse training, counting on my income to support both of us. When I had received my certificate, I held her hand and pressed my forehead to hers, our private signal that all would be well. What I wouldn’t do to ease her worries about our rent, the mutton she insisted on making for me because she was convinced it would bring me strength (even though she never ate meat), the nursing shoes I was required to wear (and the only part of my uniform she couldn’t sew)! I wanted to give her the life she should have had instead of the one that had been forced upon her. And nursing was a way to build our savings so that one day I could.

Mohan worked here, cleaning the equipment, oiling the wheels of the gurneys, working the broiler and fixing anything that needed fixing. Tonight, he was repainting a wooden side table, his back to me. I watched him for a while. The smooth, even strokes of his brush soothed me.

I walked to the corner where the bicycles were kept. When he heard me, he looked up, straightened, and offered me a lopsided smile. I’d felt his eyes on me whenever he delivered a piece of equipment or furniture to our floor. He sought me out to say hello and always tried to chat me up. I held back; a woman of twenty-three without a husband (an anomaly in itself) didn’t need to invite rumors of assignations that never took place.

However, Mohan was kind. He felt safe. He was a tall man with thick hair that started low on his forehead. His chin was blue-black, eager follicles already on their way to a new beard (although he’d probably shaved before the start of his shift). His shirt was stained with oil, grease and paint solvents—the room’s perfume.

Like me, he worked evenings, probably because it paid more. I had always liked the calm of the night, the barely perceptiblehum of hallways without visitors, without interruptions. Perhaps he did too.

Mohan wiped his paint-stained hands on a rag, which had seen its share of work over the years. I noticed his fingernails, perpetually outlined in black grease. No matter how many times he washed them, the oil remained a stubborn tenant. Those fingernails were one of the reasons I couldn’t imagine Mohan in my bed. The image of his blackened cuticles on my hips sent a shiver through me—and not in the way he might have wished.

I had wheeled my bicycle almost to the doorway when I heard him clear his throat. “There’s a showing ofDuniya Na Maneat the Regal tomorrow afternoon.” His smile was hopeful.

---