“Emergency!”, exclaimed Alok saar, carrying the unconscious Nisha in his arms. His eyeballs rolled hither and thither, as soon as he stepped inside the hospital. There were beds hurrying bruised kids to wards in different corners. Several doctors got their hands dirty with syringes or stethoscopes while the others were engrossed rubbing their palms with the kids’ tender ones.
Alok spotted a free bed. He rushed to lay Nisha on it; he rested the back of her head gently on the white pillow. He sobbed at her fresh blood in his hands. Without any further delay, he folded his thumb and placed four fingers on the side of her neck. He smiled and nodded as her pulse pushed her skin forward to kiss his anxious interior palm.
“Please help us! Please!”, pleaded he, shouting aloud and moving Nisha’s stretcher along, as he rushed from doctor to doctor who ran out to follow the beds brought out from the ambulance. “Why isn’t anyone answering me?”, shouted Alok. He blocked a young female doctor who too rushed with a kid’s stretcher. She shrugged at him. She pointed her left hand at the kid holding his left leg up and ailing to beckon his mother.
“Sir, please try to understand us. She is anyway a middle-aged woman. There is also a multi-causality coming in as you can see. A building where these kids went on an excursion suddenly caught fire. Saving the kids, the younger generation is more important than your wife. Wait for a little while”, refused she, shrinking her eyebrows and inverting her lips at the little pool of blood on Nisha’s bed.
“What do you mean, doctor?”, yelled Alok, at which all the hospital staff and patients in the waiting area shifted all their concentration on him. The female doctor bulged her eyeballs at him.
He justified, “Everyone here is a patient. I didn’t ask you to stop treating the others.” He joined his hands and pleaded, “On the contrary, I am requesting you to save my Nisha who is not my wife but my life, my happiness, my sorrows, my smiles, my drops of tears, my everything. That's all!”
May it be a second, a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year, a couple of years, or even throughout one's life, relishing the most beautiful feeling on Earth-the love, it still matters.
While most couples are almost near the silver jubilee of their wedding anniversary, Alok and Nisha are just about to begin their love life!
Love at any age is love. Why not a middle-aged love story?!
An elderly, bald, and fair senior doctor with a small rectangular badge pinned on his left chest, headed towards the reception. He frowned at Alok’s doctor. He pointed at a bruised girl on the next bed entering from the ambulance. “Dr.Shwetha, she will be your last patient in the hospital”, declared he, with a coarse voice.
“No, doctor! No!”, argued the arrogant doctor, shaking her head along. “I am sorry, sir”, she apologized to Alok who frowned, looking away. The medical director turned back at her. “Listen, before becoming a good doctor, be a good human being, in the first place.”
As Shwetha closed her fist and eyes, her senior ordered her, “Doctor, treat him, finish your HR formalities, and leave my hospital before you pollute it more with your biased views on patients.”
Alok ran along, as the nurses and the senior doctor rushed Nisha’s bed towards the nearest ICU. He patted Nisha’s shoulders, apologizing, “I’m so sorry. Please don’t do this to me. You can’t ditch me. You must survive for our love…Sorry, medam. Your saar can’t live without you. Nothing will happen to you. I bet my life…”
No sooner they entered the lift than he let his fingers through her hair, continuing, “I love you, Nisha medam. I love you very much…I want you...” As he continued grumbling, with his eyes on Nisha’s closed eyes, and the bed rushing along the corridor, the director nodded at him.
“Chill, sir. We will try our best. You won’t lose her.” The ward boys finally led the bed inside the ICU. “It's a critical case of heavy bleeding. Call someone from gynac. Hurry up!”, ordered the director, at which one of the nurses nodded and left.
Alok stopped at the entrance. Tears accumulated in his eyes. He sighed at Nisha through the circular piece of glass filling the hole on the ICU’s door. He walked backward, closed his eyes, and leaned on the yellow wall lit by the centralized lights of the corridor. He recollected giving her a french kiss a while ago that very evening. He sighed as the scene of her falling on his car the first time they met after years flashed in his mind.
“Sir! Are you the patient’s relative?”, called out the gynecologist.
He opened his eyes and nodded.
“It's a case of heavy bleeding towards menopause. Uterus removal is the only option”, she explained. She extended the consent form pinned to small brown cardboard and offered a pen to him. “Please sign the consent form immediately. We must start the operation soon only then we can save her. How are you related to her?”, she informed and enquired.
Alok grabbed the pen and signed. “I am Nisha’s husband. Please save her. Do any operation you must. I want her. I love her very much, doctor, please…” The doctor nodded. She assured him, “I will try my best to preserve your heart.” She barged inside the ICU.
“I’m sorry, Nisha”, thought Alok, walking towards the window at the end of the bright yellow-lit corridor. He gazed at the dark clouds heavy with showers of rain, through the glass.
“I feel sorry for you and I’m sorry too. Nisha, what a pity! You never had your own child. Look at what’s happening now. You’re already forty-nine. It's time to bid adieu to your womb. Uterus removal surgery, already?!?!” He wiped his tears. He leaned forward to rest his head on the window.
“Thanks to the great heavens that you have your foster son”, he smiled, swallowing his tears. He turned away as a flash of lightning appeared outside.
He shrank his eyes, correlating, “What a weird coincidence did I just notice! Neither Nisha nor I were blessed to get our own biological child’s love. I lost my son ruthlessly while she remained a virgin for I, her beloved, didn't love her and she had no interest in having her own family.”
He looked at the busy streets despite the heavy downpour that night. His smart watch read out a half past ten. “The evil Payal not only ruined my life but also my Nisha’s. Now, do I realize it? Harsh justice! What an unfair truth that Nisha only received pain in return for her immeasurable love for me”, wondered he.
The scene of a big red banner having ‘KTU’ written in bold white on a red background and stuck to the backrest of a bus stop, flashed in his mind.
What's the sweet memory running in Alok's mind?
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