Autopsy No.176/A

Inside a doctor’s diary

To my subscribers , I share today notes from my old diary. Yes , I’m also a doctor . Slow revelations , one at a time . I grew up dreaming of being an artist . Fate had other plans and delivered me right outside the gaping wide gates of a medical college where I stood wide eyed gaping at my life ahead .Someone dear to me once said, maybe my hands were meant to heal and that’s what bought me there . Through the years , I’ve tried to believe in it . Maybe I could heal in more ways than one . Art comforts . Writing heals .So here I am doing it all . This one’s a bit on the dark side .(I feel I should give fair warnings )

Autopsy No.176/A

The sun is a bit more torrid today in Belgaum . It was a long walk from my hostel interrupted by little escapes in the shade of Gulmohar trees .

It’s humid in the autopsy room . Its charcoal dusted walls are lifeless just like the ones that are bought into this room . They have seen so much that they now have nothing left to share . A wall calendar with some dates circled in red is all they adorn , besides a duty rooster written out in chalk on a dusty black board.

There is an arched window that looks out onto an unkept backyard. A mango tree is visible if I look out far on my right . There are no mangoes yet .

The familiar scent of acrid formalin fills the air as I walk in .

I place my backpack against the ledge of the window .

There is a stifling silence in this mute ,almost shadowed space . The only other sounds are those of a slow moving fan . An old rickety one … its blades making a low humming sound , almost trancelike in quality .

I’m holding the heart of a 25 year old woman in my hand .

She came in for an elective tubectomy .

Maybe it was the surgeon , or the anaesthetist .

Maybe her time was simply due .

Anyway, she’s gone .

Her brain and heart sitting on the autopsy table .

She had children . Maybe more than one . That explains the elective .

Right and left coronaries are clear . No thrombus noted .

No evidence of myocardial infarction .

Ruling out other causes .

It’s supposed to be helping the defence lawyer in court .

Maybe justice will be served . Maybe not .

It’s the ways of this world to get away with things .

The law is blindfolded .

To either give justice equally or not to give it at all .

But what about the one who’s heart I hold in my hands .

What about what’s taken away from her ,

And what she has been taken away from .

An entire lifetime .

She must have promised them ice cream after she’s back .

I’m scribbling some findings with a half dried up Reynolds pen .

Heart dissected by inflow outflow method .

Bits given .

Organs labelled :Specimen No.25/2013 . A , B

I remove my gloves , and discard them in the yellow bin .

Biomedical waste containers are colour coded .

Maybe there was a family vacation planned soon.

A visit to her ancestral home in Hubli ?

Money set aside in a pickle jar .

A newly purchased saree .Still in its packing .

A diary ?

Framed pictures of her children on her office desk .

A promise ?

Her mothers recipes in an old notebook .

She was the first to go .

176/A

Number of blocks : 7

Date of grossing : 29 March 2013

H&E slides awaited .

I step back out ,

I feel I need to stop somewhere . I find the nearest Gulmohar tree .

My backpack is not the only thing I’m carrying back .

There’s another weight . One that has no unit of measure .

It’s of another kind .

One that all doctors do .

The sky is the clearest blue I have ever seen .

Medical students in starched and bleached white aprons walk together huddled in groups ;

Like a sedge of egrets , walking across the vast green campus .

The sun has decided to be a bit more kind .

The world seems ok outside . Just the way I left it when I came in .