Hearts We Call Home

3. Hospital

Nura

Nura's earliest memory of being in a hospital was when she was seven, after her grandmother had slipped in the bathroom over her brother's toy truck. Nura had been doing her homework in the room she shared with her two sisters when it happened.

Nura remembered her grandmother's screams as her father carried her on his back down the stairs and out to the car, while she stood at her bedroom door with her three-year-old sister, Ira, watching from behind her legs. Hana, who was ten and the oldest of them all, had made instant noodles for dinner that night while their parents stayed overnight at the hospital.

The next day, their uncle came and took them to his house, where they stayed for two days before he brought them to the hospital to see their grandmother. He told them that she had broken her hip and had been in surgery the previous day.

But when they arrived, their grandmother was asleep and their father was furious. He asked Hadi what his toy truck was doing on the bathroom floor, and Hadi replied, "Ira was playing with it."

Ira cowered behind Hana's legs and shook her head, her eyes filled with tears as she said, "Hadi bhai was playing with it."

Their mother stepped forward and picked Ira up in her arms as Hadi pointed at Nura and shouted, "Then it must have been Nura playing with it."

That was all their father needed to charge toward her and backhand her across her face. She fell onto her left wrist, a cry escaping her. Their uncle rushed forward to pull her father back as he tried to hit her again.

Their uncle's wife rushed to Nura as she cried, clutching her wrist. Two nurses rushed over from down the hall and she could hear people shouting, though the voices blurred together. All she saw through the pain in her wrist and her ringing head was white as she was carried into another room.

Later that day, a doctor informed Nura and her parents that she had fractured a bone near her left wrist and would need to wear a cast for a few weeks. The doctor reiterated that the situation warranted a police complaint, but after multiple apologies from her mother and uncle, he decided to let the matter go.

Nura heard her father complaining loudly as her uncle walked her down to his car, saying she had a habit of taking what was not hers and that her very existence was proof of it.

On the ride back to their uncle's house, Hana asked, "Did you leave the truck in the bathroom?" Nura simply shook her head in response and turned back toward the window to look at the other cars on the road.

Hana must have nodded, or maybe she didn't; she didn't say anything after that. That was the last time Nura ever touched her brother's things.

*****

Nura stood outside the door of her brother's hospital room, looking through the glass. On the floor, her mother was kneeling on the prayer mat, her lips moving silently in prayer. Her brother lay asleep, his right arm in a cast, on the hospital bed while their father on the sofa opposite him.

Nura hesitated, waiting to see if the sight of Hadi would stir any concern within her. But all she felt was indifference, staring at him as one might gaze at a passing ambulance—detached, aware, but ultimately uninvolved.

As Nura turned left, she saw Hana walking toward her, her left hand resting protectively on her stomach. A crease of confusion crossed Hana's brow when she spotted Nura. "Why are you standing outside?" she asked. Nura shrugged, glancing back through the glass. "They are sleeping."

Hana looked through the glass on the door and shook her head. "That's fine. Come on in," she urged, turning the handle and walking through the door while greeting loudly, "Assalamualaikum."