Two Losers Find Love || Chapter 02

 CHAPTER 02- Another Boiling Frog

‘Gaurav and his daughter are coming to dinner, you have to come.’

Avni sighed, she knew her mother had prepared all the arguments possible to convince her to come home. It felt odd, given two months ago, they hated the fact that she was always at home and not leaving for her residency. A useless vacuum of money.

‘It really depends on when I get out of my shift.’

‘It would be disrespectful not to come, especially after Bhairavi has passed.’

‘That makes no sense.’

‘7 pm tonight.’

The line was disconnected. She looked over to her ward, was it really hers? The patients were mostly those of obstetrics and gynecology, new mothers. The babies were hers–it was her job to keep track of which newborns were underweight, hypoglycemic, developing jaundice due to inadequate feeding, and if they were sent for their required tests and vaccines.

Her intern wasn’t going to turn up today, she had called in sick at around 6 am. It was courteous of her to inform her, most didn’t bother since she wasn’t a student like the rest of them. They only answered to their department heads or the academic residents. She was hired by the hospital on a 91 day contract. And today was her 61st day. She didn’t try to mix with the students, interns or residents, it was a futile attempt. Sure, she was a resident too but she didn’t have their ranks to wager on any social grounds with them.

‘Hi Swati, how are you doing today? How is the pain?’

Swati and her baby had come into the ward around 2 in the morning today and her baby didn’t have his thyroid stimulating hormone tested. He was about 2.46 kg so he did need his blood sugar checked too. Swati was recovering well, the pain was mercifully tolerable, albeit present. Her mother quickly waved her off, saying it was okay. 

‘No, I can alert your doctor about that, it is important to us that you are comfortable.’

Swati nodded and listened to what Avni had to tell her. As Avni explained the appropriate method of breastfeeding to the mother and her accompanying family, she wondered if the ward viewed her as a vampiric villain. She was always around to either draw blood, measure the babies or teach mothers how to do their job. The family with the mother did give her dirty stares, especially when she talked over them. 

Procuring blood from a newborn had its own depraved humour to it. She was sure the method was something hospitals here concocted due to lack of a proper supply of needles for newborns. They would take a 22 gauge needle and break it into two. The bevel would go into the vein and the blood would trickle a drop at a time out of the open shaft into an opened vac–breaking the vacuum seal and so many rules. 

She considered squeezing an extra drop onto her glucometer strip but then got herself stuck with figuring out if her glucometer was calibrated to reliably provide values for anything other than blood from capillaries. Was that a valid doubt? Was she overthinking this?

Pricking the toe wouldn’t be that bad after she had a 22 gauge needle up his 1 day old dorsal vein network.

Thankfully, she had a closed room to conduct her improper insanities in, away from the eyes of rightfully concerned families. 

Thankfully, the babies didn’t organise a protest. They would be easily distracted if they were allowed to suckle on her gloved knuckle during the procedure. A generous trade, given the arduous nature of the task. 

Blood sugar was above 60. Swati needn’t worry for a while.

Her work at this ward would be over by 2 pm but her family did not need to know that. She told them that she worked at the emergency department. Well, she had given her interview for that position. But the paediatrics professor liked her and she had managed to answer most of his questions. Avni simply did not give an update. In her defense, they didn’t ask for one.

Maybe, she humored herself, the bribe to the clerk wasn’t even necessary. 

The bribe required a loan since her family would see it beneath them to engage in it and she wasn’t going to get this job without one. It’s just the way of the system, the clerk told her. People who came before her repeated what the clerk told her. She could have settled for a job at a private hospital but then her pay would be half of what it was here and expenses would have been unbearable.

A personal loan came relatively easy when the bank employees learned she was a doctor. Was a 12% yearly interest really a steal? The money vanished faster than she thought, with the security deposit, the society maintenance fees–’you could take a builder flat’ the broker told her –but it seemed too shady, in the metaphorical and literal sense since the windows opened to walls and vents. The buildings were packed together like domino cards with balconies of adjacent buildings opening into each other.

Maybe she was a spoiled brat for wanting sunlight. 

‘Stay in your lane,’ she remembered her mother telling her, while she adjusted her centralised air conditioner to 16 degrees celsius. 

The smell of mold gave Avni visions of perpetual headaches and clogged sinuses, so she stepped out of her lane, and coughed up the money.

Every day was budgeting for monthly installments and wondering where the money went when she still needed more money. Maybe, her parents were right about her and money.

For now, she had to get 35 babies fit for discharge. To take their measurements for anthropometry, their final weights before discharge, and mark their growth on their graphs, and give a final counselling to the mothers. She did notice how often the mothers were already frustrated. She was sure they couldn’t help it. 

The void of support was a self perpetuating machine. 

She had one month until she was going to be replaced, as per the contract. Reapplication wouldn’t put her in a favourable position for the interview since newcomers were prioritised. She had to start looking for new jobs in the private sector. And that meant accepting half her current pay. She had barely anything saved and what if she had to move?

What if by a miracle they decided to continue with her?

‘Baby of Farida, ma’am?’

Rubina noticed she was distracted. Avni gave a wry smile and sanitised her measuring tape. ‘Did you have your breakfast today?’

It was the go to ice-breaker question. It shamed Avni that she had the same unconvincing lie every day, ‘Yeah, did you?’

‘Of course, I packed some potato rolls with mint chutney for me and the kids too.’

In the lonesome 5.5 year journey with acquiring her degree, she never anticipated her daily life after it would be scattered with such inane conversations and that she would look forward to them. Not everyone indulged in it with her and she didn’t have the skill to initiate them. Rubina was kind. She was the senior floor nursing officer and had been posted in the postnatal ward for the last 4 months. 

‘How do you prepare them? You know I am always looking for recipes.’ 

That wasn’t a lie. But Avni barely cooked; the kitchen was too stuffy with the sweltering heat these days. She could see Rubina had the same issue when she shared her recipe. Lately, her skin was shiny and perpetually, a bright shade of pink. She didn’t have a choice but to withstand it; she couldn’t afford to abandon self preservation the way Avni could. 

How ironic that abandonment felt like a privilege.

‘Would you like to meet at the canteen later today? I was going to grab lunch there and I could get us some mango lassi?’

Avni furiously scrubbed the underside of her feet and scratched out the dead skin in the crevices at the edges of her toenails. She had finally used the exfoliating scrub she had bought for herself when she moved in and shaved off the hair on her legs, arms and armpits. It helped her skin look glossier and smell less.

No one wanted to smell ‘working too hard.’

She undid weeks worth of knots with a conditioning hair mask and applied a sheet mask right after finishing her shower. 

Overkill?

Nah.

Her parents would still find a way to get under her skin about her appearance.

Thankfully, her outfit for the evening had dried up under the fan. Even the evenings felt like the inside of a furnace. Maybe there was an advantage to this lethal heatwave? Avni scorned her own insensitivity. 

Divya was invited too. 

She paused in her tracks, before returning to her outfit and considering if they needed to be pressed. Divya and her used to be decent friends, meeting almost everyday with other kids from the neighbourhood. They were in the same clubs at school too. And she wanted to be a doctor, just like her. Or, both their parents had similar expectations from their daughters. 

Avni couldn’t escape it but Divya did. Maybe she found a way to be herself because the exam rejected her. Avni had lost every trace of herself in the last eight years; she couldn’t even remember who she was before she was hurled onto the race of filial glory. At least, Divya got to hold onto the remnants of her personhood.

Divya didn’t have to gamble her entire worth into answering a bunch of questions. She got kicked out early. Avni was now forever stuck in the trap. She thought her parents would get off her back once she got into medical school but now she was a waste of money because she wouldn’t get into residency and specialise. 

Divya didn’t have to do any of it. 

Her mother is dead. 

She was in her surgery rotation when it happened. Her senior resident had refused her request to leave and honestly, she didn’t know if she would be of any help to anybody. Divya had stopped answering her messages once she started architecture school. She wanted to fade away.

Friends fade all the time. They were only friends because they were in the same clubs at school after all.

Avni kept blotting her sweat every opportunity she got. She only carried a bottle of her perfume with her. It was odd, having to travel to the posher parts of the city. The last time she was here, she was disheveled with two trolley bags with all of her belongings. Out of place. Subjected to silent scrutiny. 

Now, with her hair blow dried and hopefully, with the heat not betraying her, she finally fit in and there wasn’t a scent of executive dysfunction with three layers of perfume on her.

She booked an air conditioned cab from the metro station to her parent’s home, that much she could afford. And it helped avoid comments. 

‘Thank you,’ she bowed to the driver upon arriving and completing her payment. 

Her mother was on the balcony, looking down. The same sharp features, the disconnected gaze that you couldn’t be sure wasn’t just a judgmental glare, the same pursed lips and tightened jaw, like it was biting something back. 

Avni beamed a bright smile and waved at her, ‘I’ll be right with you.’ I’m taking the stairs. 

It was only 2 floors above the ground. She should be fine. Her shoes clattered against the marble tiles, a sound that had become unfamiliar to her now. She blotted her neck and her armpits one last time and applied perfume on her wrists and neck, and looked around before rolling some on her armpits, just to be safe. She flipped her hair and readjusted it for fluffiness before leaping up.

Avni stopped in her tracks, right at the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor.

It was Divya, against the wall, right beside her door. 

Avni had no idea when her feet moved and when she started climbing up the stairs. She noticed an extra pair of shoes outside on the rack, so she guessed her father had already invited himself in. 

It looked like Divya was collecting her breath. 

Her eyes did look tired, but her makeup betrayed it. Her cheekbones were sharper now, Avni’s attention kept returning to her eyes–they had the same fatigue she had grown familiar with across these years. Her hair looked very different–long and wavy. Her mother used to insist on her keeping it as a bob well into her adolescence, she remembered. 

This suited her. The deep crimson she wore suited her. Perhaps, she did get luckier. And good for her if she did. Someone escaped the madness. Someone escaped the wheel. But, however well she wished for Divya, somewhere deep inside, against her will, envy bloomed, wrapping its ever growing tendrils into her good intentions, ever slowly constricting it, consuming it.

Suddenly, Divya turned towards her and Avni froze. 

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Author’s Note- I offer no apologies for any language error made in this story. All errors, if any, were made purposely, obviously. Thank you for your patience.