Fiction: Ashwini’s mind spirals as denial and loneliness take over when she’s diagnosed with cancer

Deodorant – not allowed.

Cream, lotion, powder – not allowed.

Wear a two-piece dress! Without wearing any cream or deodorant Ashwini, who had not slept a wink, searched for a two-piece dress.

Where were the pants? Skirt? Shirt? Sweater? Couldn’t you select them when you lay awake the whole night? Logic asked her early in the morning. That was Mohan’s logic.

If she selected a pullover sweater, it would ruin her hair when she took it off and put it back on at the hospital. In the cold season, the heating would create static electricity, and make all the smaller hairs stand up with their hands raised. Her head might look like an overgrown lawn with weeds sticking out. So Ashwini had worn a shirt and a front-open cardigan over it.

Right in front of the hospital stood a majestic cedar tree, spreading its leaves which held the snow from the season. The leaves, which did not tear even if needles fell on them, remained stoic as autumn gave way to winter, winter to spring and spring to summer. The sunlight that lay supine on the snow mounds smiled deceptively. The glint gave the impression of being extremely hot. If one stepped out, lured by it, one was sure to be frozen stiff. In the cold stillness of the atmosphere, it appeared as if there was no wind at all. Not a leaf moved. Where had the wind gone? Was it hiding itself beneath the earth? Or did it fly into the high skies? Ashwini wondered.

Each room in the hospital had a separate admission form that the patients were required to fill. It asked for the name, address, age, height, weight, health card number and so on.

“You are at the same address, right?” the lady at the front desk asked Ashwini. This was the healthcare system. It was free for all Canadian citizens. But there was a flip side to it. Tourists or illegal immigrants were not eligible for this privilege. Yet they managed to creep into the system and cause havoc to the Canadian government. That was why every room of the hospital was furnished with a separate form, and managed by a front-desk person for verification. Besides, it was a precautionary measure to ensure wrong treatments were not given to the patients, the wrong arm or foot not operated upon.

What happened if the entries were inconsistent? Suppose, in a form supplied in the second room of the fourth storey, a patient stated that no one in the family had cancer but wrote, in the form submitted in the ninth room of the sixth storey, that the grandfather had cholesterol? Ashwini wondered whether the front desk employees would sit around a table, cross-check and underline the inconsistencies in red ink.

A portion of the tax paid by the citizens went into healthcare. Free healthcare was a huge boon. Its benefits were unquestionable. Now the e-health project was on the anvil. Before long, everything would be digitalised. Until then, one had to wait with patience, endure the paperwork, write down the details, permit the crosschecking… Unlike Ashwini’s company, this was not a private enterprise in which every action was efficiently managed. There was no one to meticulously monitor the loss of time and money.

As Ashwini sat in the waiting room, reading emails on the phone, a nurse called her. She ushered Ashwini into an anteroom. A hospital gown hung from a hook on the wall. Instructing her to remove her coat, sweater and shirt, and to wear the gown, the nurse left, closing the door behind her. When Ashwini wore the back-open gown, she felt cold. As she stepped out, a radiologist led her to an adjacent room where mammogram machines stood. Placing Ashwini’s right hand on her right shoulder, the radiologist placed Ashwini’s right breast on a cold surface. Then, a small plate descended and pressed her breast against the plate beneath it.

“Next, the left one.”

Ashwini’s breasts were squeezed between the cold plates of the mammogram machine. They that had provoked stealthy glances, tantalised many… She felt acute pain when they were compressed in the machine. Her flesh, unhurt till now, was getting squashed by cold metal. It is just flesh! she tried to remind herself.

“No, there won’t be any bruises. You’ll feel slightly uncomfortable for some time. Then it’ll wear off,” the radiologist tried to console Ashwini. She then took X-rays from both sides of each breast. They stood out from Ashwini’s body as though they were foreign bodies. It is just flesh!

With all the pain and the cold, Ashwini began to shiver. She dashed to the inner room to change into her own clothes as quickly as possible. Before putting on her bra, Ashwini looked at her breasts. Did the right one conceal a bomb within? Flicking away the pointless drops of water that fell from her eyes, Ashwini dipped her hand into the bag to pull out a roll-on deodorant. Applying it on her armpits, she walked out, a smile pasted on her lips.

She had to thank people, bid them goodbye – the usual Canadian formalities. Generally, no one left a place without following such etiquette. Even while getting off a bus, one had to thank the driver and wish him goodbye.

“Thank you…bye, bye,” Ashwini tossed the greetings at the chartpeering front-desk employee.

“Have a nice day, dear!” the lady responded, looking up from her chart.

“Thank you.” It was only on reaching her office that Ashwini realised she had left her mind on the mammogram machine. She could not recall how she had made her way from the hospital to the office. Which route had she taken? Had she stopped her car at any traffic light?

She could not immerse herself in the EuCa project either. That was the day Ashwini realized she needed the permission of her mind even to breathe properly.

Suddenly the day seemed terribly long. It took eighty hours for the clock to get to three o’clock that day. But there was no point in counting the hours. Ashwini knew that it would be weeks before the results of the mammogram came back. And so, every intervening day would be 258 hours long. Why did time, which used to gallop all the while, suddenly become so sluggish?

In the evening, Mohan asked her, “What’s the problem, Ash?”

“Nothing in particular. Time doesn’t seem to move as I sit here. How will I take myself through two more weeks, Mohan? If it is cancer…”

“Will you stop this talk? Wasting time, overanalysing things. That’s because you don’t have enough work at the office to keep you busy. And here I am, with no time even to breathe!” Mohan’s eyes were fixed on the corporate ladder. He did not wish to listen to anything that disturbed his focus, especially something about a non-existent disease. It hadn’t been diagnosed or confirmed yet, and was purely a creation of Ashwini’s imagination.

He had once said to her, “Ash, you are my asha, my hope!”

Ugh! Mohan was a mere lover.

That word, which lay right in the middle of her chest, right below her neck, was engaged in jugglery of its own.

Cancer.

Can sure.

Canker.

Can be.

Cana sore.

Canadore.

Cannanore.

Can sir.

She could neither swallow it nor spit it out.