Chapter 6
Chapter Six
AMAY
“I’ll see you in a little bit, baby. Now go!”
His mother’s last words to him echoed in his brain as he watched the police leave the room, Dhrithi’s father hot on their heels. He wanted to follow them but his body felt rooted to the floor, an indescribable need to stay by Dhrithi’s side filling him.
“Sir?” Dr. Sathe was staring at him. “Shall we?”
Amay nodded. But his feet wouldn’t move. He glanced at Dhrithi, her tear filled, bruised eyes begging him for something he couldn’t give her. He didn’t have it in him to give her, or anyone else, anything. He broke the eye contact, turning away from her without a word and striding to the door.
“Rounds?” he asked Dr. Sathe who nodded.
“I’d like your opinion on a case in the ICU, if you have the time?”
Amay didn’t waste time with a response, just changed direction so they were heading towards the ICU. Sathe fell in step beside him.
“What do you make of all that?” Sathe asked, jerking his head towards Dhrithi’s room, the door to which was fast receding from sight.
Amay grunted. He had no interest in being a part of the gossip mill that fueled the hospital like steroids in a hamster. Especially not when it came to a toxic scrap of his past. They reached the ICU without another word and pushed through the large double doors into the hushed quiet behind it.
“The case?” Amay asked, following Sushant’s lead to a middle aged man in a corner bed. The patient was fast asleep, his thin, frail chest rising and falling in a reassuringly steady manner.
“Kidney failure,” Sushant said grimly. “With the added complication of cystic fibrosis.”
“And you want my opinion on?”
“We have a donor match.”
Amay’s eyebrows shot up. “You want to do a transplant on a cystic fibrosis patient?”
Sushant fell silent, looking at the man sleeping in the bed, his normally unflappable expression visibly flapping. He swallowed hard. “He’s my brother.”
Sympathy had Amay softening his tone. “You shouldn’t be his doctor then.”
“I agree.” Sushant took a deep breath. “I was hoping you would take the case.”
Amay reached out to grip the other man’s shoulder. “The board will never sign off on this.”
“If you would just read through his reports-“
“Dr. Sathe.” Amay’s firm voice cut through the other man’s desperation. “Transplanting a kidney into a terminally ill patient would – “
“Not a kidney. We have a lung donor.”
Amay paused. A lung transplant was always the best case scenario for a cystic fibrosis patient, all other factors supporting it, of course. But if the patient was in renal failure, then his body would never take the surgery.
“I have a donor for the kidney too,” Sathe said quietly, reading Amay’s mind.
“It’s raining organs, is it?” Amay asked skeptically. One donor match was a miracle. Two on the very same day was exceedingly suspicious. “Where are you getting this kidney from?”
“Me.”
Machines beeped in the hush of the room, desperate fear a ragged stench on the air.
“You?” Amay asked cautiously.
Sathe nodded. “I’ve had myself tested. I’m a match.”
Amay stared at the other man, a colleague whose professional skills he respected and a man he barely knew on a personal level.
“Please Aatre, he’s my brother. I would do anything for him. Surely you understand.”
Yes, he did. Amay didn’t understand much about families or familial bonds but brothers…that was a bond he lived and breathed. Not brothers of blood but brothers bound by bloodshed.
“I’ll review the case file,” he said, curtly. “How long are the lungs viable for?”
“Another three hours, at most.”
“Meet me in the lounge in half an hour.” He strode out of the ICU, the file already open in his hands as he scanned the information rapidly, committing it all to his photographic memory.
He was so absorbed in the details of the case that he almost didn’t see the little scene playing out in the waiting area. Almost.
“My daughter is a widow! How dare you harass her like this?”
He slowed, watching Dhrithi’s father scream in the policeman’s face. The arrogance of money, he mused, never ceased to amaze him.
“I know Sir,” the cop drawled, looking completely unperturbed. “The problem is that your son-in-law was instrumental in making her a widow. So, we need to ask questions no? Was it suicide? Attempted murder gone wrong?”
The man glanced up and saw Amay watching them. “How many of those bruises did she have before the accident?” he drawled, the intensity in his eyes sharpening as he watched Amay watch him.
“How does it matter? He’s already dead,” her father shot back, not noticing Amay standing quietly behind him. “Leave it alone and allow my daughter to heal in peace.”
“And what about justice for your daughter? How will she heal without that?” the lady cop shot back, clearly triggered by the sweeping comment.
“Justice? For what? All she wants is to be left alone.”
“Does she want that? Or do you?”
A niggle of awareness slid through Amay as he watched the older man. There was something there, in his tone, in his body language, and mostly in his shifty eyes. He’d always had shifty eyes.
“Leave my daughter alone or I will call my contacts and have you suspended.” With that last, obnoxious statement, Mr. Sahay stormed off.
The cop looked at Amay, tipping his head to him in acknowledgement. “Do you also think we should leave Mrs. Gokhale alone, Doc?”
Amay’s cool gaze raked over the two law enforcement officers. “I think you should do your job and allow me to do mine.”
He walked past them, his attention, at least overtly, on the case file in his hand. But every single cell in his body swam with the certain knowledge that a can of worms had just burst open and there was no way in wriggling hell that anyone was shutting the lid on it again.