Two Days in the life of - A narrative in 3 parts - Part 1

All of the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put Humpty Dumpty back together again. That is how his life felt, fragile like a bunch of eggshells on a busy pavement, like the snowflake on an outstretched hand, melting even as it touches the warmth of the skin.

The past 48 hours of his life had changed him completely, almost redefined the boundaries of his existence. Miraculously, he had made it through them so far, though unchanged was hardly a word he could use to describe the way he felt.

He thought back to the start of the day as it was with any other. His early morning cup of tea steaming into his face as he had gazed into the spreading orange of the sun clambering its way up the horizon. The thought that there were a few clouds obstructing the sun's right to passage had just been a fleeting shadow across the face of the plains in his mind. His quick shower and dressing up, wolfed down breakfast let him grab an early edge on the workday. He liked to start with an empty office and get some miles under him before the rest of the troop sauntered in.

He had started his drive by rote, tuning into his favorite radio station and easing the car into the traffic, another ant in the long migratory line. The car was like most of his other possessions - old and cherished, almost a part of 'him'. He felt it respond to the slightest nudge and smiled at his ‘stallion'.

The traffic had been a little dense for a Monday early morning, tempers fraying, sleeves rolling up and furious faces glaring disapproval. The long procession had carried on at snail's pace. The vehicle ahead of him had seemed to be moving like a rheumatic tortoise, jerking and shuddering to a start and likewise to stop after a foot of movement forward. He had felt sorry for the driver who he was sure was cooking inside the car weighed under by the weight of the thought he or she carried. Then he had chanced a glimpse at the driver through the rear view mirror - a woman looking very tense, upset and almost on the verge of bursting into tears.

She was young, must be about 30 and was pretty in a very ordinary sort of way like the common man's Aphrodite. He put the thought quickly out of his mind and focused on the road ahead. But for some strange reason, his eyes kept getting drawn to the rear view mirror in the car ahead. Now he was sure she was crying. It was the first time he had seen such an open display of emotion in a public setting and it nearly grabbed him by the throat. The girl was definitely sobbing now.

He felt like he was invading her privacy as he stole furtive looks at her. But she was past caring, window rolled down, tears streaming down her face, caught in the throes of some unnamed deep grief. She used her sleeve to brush away some errant tears that found their way past her jaw down her neck. He noticed that her top looked ruffled and creased like it had been slept in. She was stoically unaware of the stares she seemed to be attracting and sat there on her own island in the midst of this ocean of fuel and fumes, grieving and hurting.

He found himself thinking about what could have caused her the hurt. He started guessing. By her age, she was likely to be married. She was not dressed for office and so must be heading home this early. Was it a secret arraignment with a lover that had gone wrong? Or had she found out the husband’s infidelity, surprised him at home returning from a late night flight that she had advanced to make it early? Or was it a sudden spat, a rush of words spit out which cannot be taken back, an angry upsurge turned into a deluge of hurt? The thoughts rushed through his mind flitting like a bee, not settling on any one in particular. All the while, he kept glancing at the woman’s face. The tears had stopped now but the red rimmed eyes were gazing at some distant sunset on a faraway shore.

As the traffic inched forward like the ant trail that it was, suddenly, the car in front of him seemingly gave up its last breath and coughed up a cloud of steam from under the bonnet and stopped. Finally, relief, it seemed to say. He saw the woman’s face turn frantic and panic stricken. She tried to restart the engine - CPR to a dead horse. Cars behind him started honking impatiently, demanding right of way. This did nothing to help the woman’s already thinly stretched nerves. She finally gave up after what seemed like an eternity and put her head down on the wheel, between her two hands clutching the steering so tight that her knuckles shone like white ivory.

Seemingly, of their own volition, his hands turned off his engine, opened the door and stepped out. He waved the snail train behind signaling them to pass by. Then he walked across to the woman in the car. She was sobbing uncontrollably, unaware of his approach. He stood there at the window, not sure how to announce his arrival. Coughing seemed too formal, so did “Excuse me”. He finally bent down and said “Do you need a hand?”

The woman lifted her face, blind eyed with tears and unseeing past all that was still flowing out from her. She frowned in her incomprehension. So he repeated himself. She said in halting words, interspersed with her sobs which were still continuing “My car …” It was then that he noticed the red streak running from the corner of her mouth into her neck and disappearing into the nape of her neck, wet and glistening. He said “You’re bleeding”. In answer, she quickly wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and cheek, unconsciously spreading the red streak to a gulal stain. He took out his handkerchief and offered it and she accepted, using it to wipe her cheek and neck. Turning to give it back, she stopped, confused at returning a blood streaked handkerchief to him. He waved it off. “Could you step out of the car? I will push it across to the side and then you can call for help.” he offered. She simply got out of the car and stood there, weaving a little bit like a drunk trying to walk a straight line for a cop. He switched the car into neutral and put his shoulder to the side, steering with one hand. Feeling a resistance, he looked down to see the hand brake on – must have caused the problem in the first place. Releasing it, he maneuvered the car to the pavement and stopped it there.

He rolled up the windows, locked the car and turned to give the key to the woman only to find that she was still standing in the middle of the road where the car had stopped, looking at the cars now inching around her, a lone kingfisher on a dead tree standing in the midst of a flowing river. He walked across to her and said “Would you like to call someone? You need to go to a hospital to get that checked.” Once again she turned and gazed at him blankly.

Looking at his watch, he realized that he was in no way going to reach office early by any standards. He decided to then take the woman to the hospital. He asked her to come with him and started walking to his car only to find that she had not responded at all. He went back and repeated his request only to face the same blank unseeing stare. Finally, he took her hand, grasping it at the elbow and pulled her towards his car. She came, stumbling a little bit. He was at once struck by two things – his hand was on her skin and that she had a very high temperature. It was a mistake to have touched her in the first place. He started feeling uneasy and took his hand away. Thankfully, she followed without stopping. He opened the passenger side door and she got into the car without a complaint. He got in himself and started the car.

Turning around he asked her “Which hospital should I take you to?” Faced with the inevitable lack of response, he started the car and drove on, resolving to drop her off at the hospital a mile ahead. Having rejoined the traffic queue, he crawled on. Intermittently, he sneaked a glance at the woman’s face. She was continuing to gaze out of the windscreen, one hand still holding the car keys he had given her and another hand clutching what appeared to be some papers. One of them slipped and fell near the stick shift and he bent to retrieve it. Something caught his eye and he stopped giving it back. What had caught his eye was the renowned hospital’s name on it. Continuing to steer with one hand, he opened it to face a long list of medical gibberish with values written alongside. Flipping the pages, he came to the last one which ended with an ominous sounding word “POSITIVE”. Feeling intrusive, he glanced at her, only to be reassured that she was still studying whatever it was that caught her eye and held it firm outside the window.

His mind flooded with all sorts of imagined illnesses, alarm bells chiming wildly in every nook and cranny of his head, he related the streak of blood to her high temperature and thought the worst. He rolled down the windows thinking that fresh air would prevent any contagion from spreading and he started trying to accelerate so that he could drop her somewhere and be on his way. He glanced at the first page and read her name “Ms. …….” That blew most of his earlier theories through the open window. He handed back the report to her nerveless hands.

After what seemed like an eternity of trying to move forward, he gave up and resigned himself to the wait in the traffic. He turned to her and asked her where she wanted to go. She seemed to have composed herself to some extent by then and realized where she was. She replied that he could drop her off at the next turn. ‘What about the hospital ?’ he asked. She replied that she had already been to one and was taking medication. He felt a sudden rush of relief that he could drop her and be on his way. As suddenly, he felt guilty for being so relieved to be rid of her so soon. He reached the turn and on a sudden hunch asked her what she would be doing next. She gave him the same blank stare. He noticed her lips dry and cracked, red lines running on the corner where she had bled. Asking her if she had had anything to eat, he was faced with the familiar vacant stare. He decided for some inexplicable reason to stop at the café and get her some breakfast.

At the café, he ordered her a sandwich after getting no reply to his question on what she preferred to eat. She looked the kind who would like coffee and so he got himself and her, a cappuccino. The sandwich laid untouched and the coffee cooling, the silence uncomfortable fifteen minutes later. His coffee cup empty, he stared at it and thought of getting up for a refill when his thought was interrupted by a sob. Here she goes again, he thought. Looking up, he caught an infinite depth of grief in the unseeing eyes. The sob seemed to have escaped her lips which were otherwise tightly compressed into a thin pink line.

“Is there something that I can help you with?” he asked. This time, she looked; he felt that she had really looked, at him. “Excuse me?” she said, as if speaking to him for the first time. It was the first time almost considering the previous exchanges were mere gestures muted by her emotions. A cultured tongue, clear diction and a voice that was as husky as it could possibly be – some of her normal self reasserted itself. Parts of some of his earlier theories followed others that had gone out of the window. He repeated his question. And she took time, seemingly to search for an answer. The eyes were on him but he could see that her mind was furiously working at framing the right response. Normally, he guessed, the answer in terms of a brush off to an intrusive stranger would have come without a pause. But today, the response simply didn’t seem to exist. After a long pause she said “Thanks for all the help so far. I am sorry for the trouble I have put you through.” She opened her mouth to say something else and stopped, visibly shutting herself up. He waited, thinking that it would be best not to interrupt her.

Then she resumed “Could you please help me make a phone call?” He offered his phone and she took it with slightly trembling hands, rising to walk to the far corner of the café which was unoccupied. She called out “It is a long distance call?” And he waved her on. She dialed and waited for the person on the other end to pick up, forehead creasing into a frown as the wait continued. Finally, she said “Papa” and then realized she was too loud and covered her mouth with her other hand and started talking into the phone. He continued to study her surreptitiously. Clothes were not designer wear but were not street either – definitely a person who had a good means of life. And the car she had been driving – if it had not been for the hand brake, she would not have had a problem with it at all – a sedan about 5 years old but of a reputed make. She had the poise and behavior of a person who knew her way around – a career woman. She must have temporarily lost her way.

He remembered that she had a temperature, went up to the counter and asked for directions to the medic and got her some paracetamol. When he returned, she was sitting at the table that they had shared, phone in front of her and eating the sandwich. The coffee cup too looked like it had been drunk from. He offered the paracetamol and she accepted with a thanks. Taking a tablet, she washed it down with the coffee, flinching as she sipped. He started asking her what the problem was when his phone rang, strident and conversation stopping. Office call – asking where he was since there was a meeting at 11:30 AM. He made an excuse about the traffic and said he would be in by then. He then asked her if there was a problem with the coffee. She smiled at that – not a warm, accepting smile but a start and stop of a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. She said “It’s nothing.” He pushed, asking her why she flinched when she finally let in “I have bitten my tongue.” So that explained the blood, he thought. Contagion theory went partly out of the window too, but why the high temperature, he thought.

Suddenly he realized that he was being overtly nosey about the whole thing. He did not know who this woman was and where she was from or wanted to go. Why did he want to know all these things about her? He looked at his watch – 10:15 AM – time to go if he wanted to catch the 11:30 AM meeting, he thought. He looked up and saw her studying him much the same way that he had been looking at her earlier. He stood up offering his hand, deciding to end the meeting. She stood up too and half offered her hand. Then suddenly, her face changed, as if she had made a momentous decision. She drew her hand back and asked him “Do you need to go somewhere urgently?” He did not quite know how to respond and mumbled about being late for a meeting. She said, “I don’t quite feel like being alone right now. So, would you like to share the day with me?”

Sudden pictures flooded his mind again as he jumped to the a stupid conclusion about her wanting to sleep with him, stories of women who frame men and then blackmail them rushing to the forefront of his over fertile imagination. Then, cursing his overactive imagination, he thought about what she had said. He felt for the first time in his working life, an urge to skip that meeting and stay here. He put it down to his inordinate inquisitiveness. He found himself saying “I wouldn’t mind”. Then he added “I’d like to.” She smiled, this time the death warmed over act became slightly warmer. The eyes showed a flash. In that moment, her face was transformed – she looked pretty, not just cute but actually pretty and he thought, “My god, she is beautiful.” Automatically, his eyes searched for the ring on the finger. Not finding a band or a solitaire, the boyfriend theory followed the husband to the trash can. He somehow felt pleased about the absence of one. Now why in the world did that please him?

Somehow he started thinking that the medical report that he had seen was someone else’s and that there was nothing wrong with her. Maybe the name on the report was someone else’s? He hesitantly asked her what her name was only to find the pit of his stomach sinking as she confirmed that she was indeed the name on the report. Now what could be wrong with her, he wondered. Should he ask, will she mind, will she tell him - questions tumbled like little stones pouring down with the momentum of a landslide into the empty pit of his stomach. Finally mustering up courage like to recalcitrant schoolboy who had been caught peeking at the girl’s room, he told her that he had seen a medical report in her hand and asked her what it was.

Her reaction surprised him. She became angry. Face flushed, nostrils flaring and a frown creasing her forehead, her eyes sparked with the emotion. The sudden surge of anger told him that this was a woman who did not brook any infringements on her territory. He expected a cold hand me down – a cold water douse on the sparks of his inquisitiveness. For some reason, the brush off never came again. The fire died down, extinguished by a deluge that her reason appeared to have poured over it, the river pouring water on itself. A minute passed while she collected herself and marshaled her thoughts. Then she said in a halting voice “Will you still stay with me if I told you?” Another door hitherto never approached in his mind opened and an endless set of possibilities re-arranged themselves. He steeled himself for what he expected to be the usual story. And he said “Of course”, almost in an automatic answer, politeness taking over, a sudden withdrawal in his mind from the door that had opened partially, inviting him to enter.