Falling Story Book -1

Chapter 3

Before the doctor could move out of the attending room, the smiling nurse barged in; she looked worried and was shakenly slightly. On seeing her, Mayank thought there were gunmen in the hospital or some drug-knackered ghetto rat looking to score some drugs for himself. He knew such things happen every time in the ghetto, or rather, he'd heard stories.

The smiling nurse looked around her at Vivan and Mayank before she talked. "It's the gas doctor. We are out."

"What? The oxygen?" Doctor Rajesh said.

"Yes."

"How are we out? It's not supposed to finish for the next two weeks."

"I don't know. I don't know. Something went wrong, and there is no one on oxygen right . Two people have died already, and some family members are pulling riots, demanding to know why the oxygen supply had been cut short."

"Tell them, the hospital is out of oxygen then."

"The hospital is out of oxygen?" Mayank wondered aloud at the ridiculous thing he just heard. How is it possible for a hospital to run out of oxygen? "Don't you guys have like a sort of gauge to know the levels of the gas or something?"

"Shut up!" Doctor Rajesh yelled at him and started to pace around the room. The noise in the hospital increased, and it seemed to have escalated into a full-blown riot. "How many people are on oxygen, Amoli?"

"In the whole hospital? One hundred and eight, sir."

"How many in critical condition requires a constant supply of oxygen?"

"Fifty, twenty of which are children. What do we do?"

She kept on eyeing the twins in the room. Mayank got the sense something was off about the oxygen getting exhausted out of the blue. And that the nurse was holding back on what she was telling the doctor. There was more. And she couldn't see say it in front of two kids who like they ran away from home in search of some glorified thug life in the street. If Vivan's reddened eyes isn't enough indication that there isn't much of glory in it, then the boys are in for an ugly ride.

"We better get going. It seems you guys have a big decision to make, and I don't want to be in here when that mob outside comes in here." Mayank said and walked over to Vivan.

"Wait!" Doctor Rajesh yelled again. "We could use your help here." He seemed to be spluttering out his thoughts.

"Our help?"

"Yes. You know this hospital is government-funded, so it is underfunded, and we are understaffed. What do you say about doing a quick humanitarian work for us here? Help the nurses out with the patients while I find a way to pacify the crowd out there. We'll be lucky if we get anything done with their rowdiness."

Mayank and Vivan exchanged looks. They could stay and help, that after all, has been what their day had been about so far, helping out. What more could go wrong? Vivan had gotten pepper-sprayed already, and the probability of one of the patients or the nurses being armed with pepper spray is close to non-existent, so they weren't at risk of suffering another pepper spray, and if they did, they were at a hospital already, help would be only a call away. Mayank thought of all that and decided it wouldn't hurt to stay and help. He gave Vivan the shoulder shrug, suggesting they could stay and help. Vivan sighed and nodded. Mayank read meaning into the nod right away. Anywhere but home, right?

"What can we do to help?" Vivan asked.

"You go with Amoli; she'd direct you on what to help with," he said to Vivan. "You come with me, please." He pointed at Mayank, and they walked out of the room into what seemed like an insurrection. There was a crowd chanting and demanding to see the medical director of the hospital. They had taken over the nurse's station, broken some vial of medicine and a chair.