The Forbidden Path

Chapter 21

A waiter crossed her with a cup of coffee. She waved at him and ordered one too. Her mother had told her that everything was fine and that her father would be taken for the PET Scan in about an hour or two. She drank the coffee quickly and rushed upstairs to get dressed and left for the hospital. She called her mother again to ask if she needed anything. "Come fast. Everything has been taken care by the hospital. It feels like I'm in a hotel." Racheal could feel the happiness in her voice however she had dreaded in Kathmandu and worried that it might be a tedious task as there were just two of them.

But unlike the hospitals in Kathmandu, the hospitals in Delhi took care of everything and because they were not local patients, the service was even smoother than it was for the locals. Racheal smiled and walked faster than her usual pace. She preferred to walk rather than take the cab as it was in the walking distance and that she would be sitting in the hospital for the whole day. By the time she reached, the doctors had finished their morning rounds and a nurse was testing his blood pressure.

She nodded at the nurse who was very pretty and looked like a South Indian. She had beautiful twinkling eyes and was very polite. This was the third time Racheal had seen her. She checked all the vitals and completed filling her form with all the data and left the room.Racheal walked towards her father and said," Are you alright? Are you in pain." " No" he replied.

The three of them chatted randomly about the different things. Just then a nurse came and said," we are taking you fo the Pet Scan."! Racheal rushed towards her father's bedside to help him but two other nurses came and asked Racheal to step aside. They had brought a wheel chair even though her father wasn't too much in pain and insisted on walking. Apparently Lymphoma was just a common and curable type of cancer which didn't trouble the patient much. It had caused no discomfort as such, except the urinary issues. He wasn't able to empty his bladder due to the compression  on the urethra. So he insisted on walking but the nurses convinced him that it wasn't a good idea.

He got down from the bed without any help and sat on the wheel chair. The other nurses walked beside him while one pushed the wheel chair towards the lift in the lobby. Racheal and her mom walked behind him. The queue infront of the lift was as usual. But the nurses pushed past the visitors as there was a rule that the patients were the first priority. There was a board with the instructions on the wall beside the lift.. in fact all the lifts. The two nurses had gone to the other lobby leaving just the four of them. The nurse pushed the wheel chair inside the lift and Racheal and her mother followed inside. There were enough space left for other four people as the lift was quite big but no one joined them except an old lady who was limping and carrying a stick . Racheal assumed that she was one of the patients too.

The Pet Scan was at the ground floor. They got out and the wheelchair was pushed towards a large room at the end of the hall. They walked past X-ray Room, Ultra Sound room and entered the spacious hall. There was a door leading to an another room where a big no entry sign was stuck. The nurse pushed the wheelchair inside but Racheal and her mother sat on the steel chairs which were placed in a tidy row facing a television. Her mother sat in one of the chairs and Racheal just paced up and down wondering what would happen next.