Caregiver: Short Story

It had been almost six months now that Kirthana had been bedridden. It had been six months since her husband Karthik had been her caregiver. “Another silent day, another silent night. What a useless life!” the thirty something Karthik said to himself. Kirthana tried to move her left hand and leg but her best efforts failed every day. She felt like talking to her husband, but no words came out of her mouth. Thoughts of the brain injury six months back haunted her. Sweat broke on her forehead. She turned her gaze to the food Karthik fed her.

“I am paying for my own past sins,” Karthik thought to himself as he fed her dinner. She looked at him straight in the eye after the first gulp. Her sight was as sharp as her brain, and her hearing was fine. Everything else in her body worked fine. If not for her left hand and leg, and her speech, she would be buzzing around like any other newly married woman.

Despite her sorry state at such a young age though, the jaunty woman hadn’t lost her zest for life. She signalled to him with her eyes that she wanted ice cream, which he promptly got from the fridge and fed her. Karthik always kept some stock at home. He knew, that whatever else she may lose, Kirthana will never lose her appetite for ice cream.

He then walked around the house. He checked that he had locked all doors. He checked that all windows were closed. That was Kirthana’s habit earlier. Then he switched off the tube light and, saying goodnight, went off to bed. 

The next morning at 6.30 AM, the doorbell rang but Karthik didn’t wake up. Kirthana was already awake and heard it. She tried to make some sound to wake Karthik up, but he didn’t. She wondered, for a moment, if something was wrong with him. She knew it was the milkman when the doorbell rang again. When Karthik still didn’t move, this time she got irritated. She tried to stretch her hand and push him but couldn’t reach him. 

She pressed her automatic bed switch with her right hand to get herself into a sitting position. Then she tilted a bit and tried to get on to her wheelchair. She stopped short of it, not confident that she can make the distance on her own. She banged her right hand on the arm of the wheelchair hoping that the noise would wake up Karthik. This was their normal signal when she needed something. When that didn’t work, the feisty young woman knew something was wrong. She decided to take charge.

She wanted to move into the wheelchair. She used her right foot to pull the wheelchair close to her bed. Once it was close enough, she tried to push herself out of the bed using her right hand. When that didn’t work, she used the strength in her back. After excruciating effort, eventually she succeeded. For the first time in close to six months, Kirthana had moved herself from the bed to the wheelchair. That too, on her own, all by herself, without the help of her husband.

She felt jubilant but not a sound emerged from her mouth. She looked at her husband with one hand raised and a broad grin on her face. She say that he was still lying on the bed. All the noise the bed and the wheelchair had made in the process still wasn’t enough to awaken Karthik.

Kirthana pressed the motor switch on her wheelchair and moved it towards Karthik. Using all the energy she had in her right foot, she kicked him. There was no movement. She pushed again with full force. This time she noticed some movement. She breathed a sigh of relief. For a brief moment, out of worry for herself, she had feared that he was dead. Who would take care of her if he were gone – that was her first thought.

But he wasn’t gone. Then why was the lazy bum still sleeping? She kicked him with more ferocity now. After an unusual number of kicks and pushes, he stretched his hands and yawned. He opened his eyes and saw her sitting on the wheelchair close to him.

He got up with a start and said, “What happened?” She stared at him in silence.

“Good morning, why aren’t you saying anything?” he said.

“How will I speak?” she thought with a look of anger. “Doesn’t he know I lost my speech,” she stared at him in wrath.

He looked again at her and asked, “What are you doing on this wheelchair?” She glared at him even more. “Do I have a choice?” she thought.

He got up from his bed in slow motion. While going to the washroom, he said, “Get up from that chair. It doesn’t belong to us. Go and make some tea for me, please.”

“What’s wrong with him?” she thought. “Why is he asking me to get up from this chair? Whose chair is it, if not ours?”

“And make tea? Doesn’t he know I can’t do it?” A wistful tear fell from her eye on to her cheek in her own sympathy. “What have things come to? I can’t even make a tea myself.”

Memories of her early days of marriage filled her. Her thoughts went back to three years back when she had married Karthik. Theirs was a love marriage. They had been sweethearts in college. He loved his morning tea and she used to make it for him. They had a nice, simple life. Till six months back.

“What happened? Why are you still sitting there? I told you it’s not our chair,” Karthik came back, breaking her chain of thought and getting her out of her dreamy reverie.

Kirthana felt like shouting back at him in anger. But despite her efforts, words stopped short and didn’t emerge from her mouth. She felt a lump in her throat.

“I knew you are a lazy bum since college. What happened of my tea? I can tolerate anything in my wife, as long as she gives me my morning tea,” Karthik continued. Kirthana’s anger now turned to worry. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Why are you silent today?” Karthik asked with a smile. “Do you remember yesterday morning you made such wonderful tea and lunch for me? Make the same today, please,” he said.

“Is he kidding? What’s he talking about?” That was her first thought. “Or has he lost it?” she mused. She had an inexplicable frown on her face.

She watched him in silence. She didn’t have a choice. He went for a bath. He then wore his favourite blue shirt and formal trousers. She couldn’t understand why. He had left his job six months back to take care of her. So she wondered where he was going. The frown on her face changed to a question mark. Her eyebrows raised, eyes twitching, she probed him.

“I am going to office, Kitty. See you in the evening,” he said. He hadn’t called her Kitty, her pet name from college, for six months. After the accident, he had stopped calling her Kitty. Which office was he going to? Leaving her alone? Panic set in.

Kirthana started sweating. She didn’t know what to do. Her legs started shaking and her hands started trembling. With a quivering of her lips, she looked at him. He picked up his bag. Just as he started walking, he lost his balance and crashed on to the floor.

Kirthana reflexively tried to stand up from her wheelchair but couldn’t. In a few moments, Karthik got up holding the bed and said, “Kitty, I am feeling giddy. I think I am not feeling well. I will not go to office today. Ok?” He waited for a response but didn’t get any. She glared at him silently with fiery eyes.

He got angry and, out of the blue, shouted. “Why aren’t you talking to me? And why are you giving me that look?” She continued to glare at him in silence. His attention shifted and he sat on the bed. He was fidgety. He removed his shirt.

“What’s for lunch, Kitty?” Karthik asked as he sat on his bed. “And by the way, I am the one who is unwell. Why are you sitting there silently, lazy bum?” he asked. Her head grew hot like milk just before it spills over. “This is too much. Here I am, stuck to my wheelchair, unable to say a word. And he thinks he is unwell. Can’t he see what I am going through?” she wallowed in self-pity. “How can he have the gumption to ask me to make tea and lunch? As if nothing has happened.”

While she was stuck in her thoughts, he suddenly sat up and yelled, “Can’t you hear what I am saying? Why are you sitting silently staring at me?” His nostrils flared with wrath and his eyes glared. At the top of his voice, he shrieked, “Go, get up and make my tea.”

Kirthana trembled with fright. She moved her wheelchair out of the bedroom. She knew this didn’t look good. “Get off that chair, I say,” Karthik howled as she moved out of the bedroom.

Kirthana’s thoughts now went back to that fateful day six months back. The dreadful day that she hadn’t forgotten. It was on that day that a similar bout of mad anger had overcome him.

“Wait, won’t you listen to me? Won’t you get off that chair? Won’t you get me tea? How dare you won’t? Wait a second, I will show you,” Karthik screamed and got off his bed.

He walked past Kirthana on her wheelchair and pushed it in fury. The wheelchair banged on the wall and overturned. Kirthana fell on to the floor. Her thoughts were still stuck in that dreadful day. It seemed like Deja vu for her. She had been here before. She can’t let this happen again, she said to herself.

Karthik went into the balcony and picked up his cricket bat. He walked back with furious steps. On the way, he picked up his leather belt. When Kirthana saw that from afar, Kirthana was certain she had been here before.

She tried her best to get off the floor using all the strength in her legs. She got a grip on the wall with her right hand but her left hand didn’t cooperate. She felt like shouting aloud and calling for help but no sound came out from her mouth. There was precious little time left for her to do something.

She saw Karthik pace through the room towards her. He had red angry eyes, a bat in one hand and a belt in the other. Kirthana prayed to God to save her. She pleaded the Lord to give her strength somehow to escape from this terrible situation. Again.

Kirthana saw her crutches lying near the cupboard. She crawled fast towards them and grabbed them in her right hand as if her life depended on them. When Karthik came closer, she stood on her right leg and balanced herself with one crutch.

When he lifted his bat to hit her, Kirthana, with all her might, balanced herself on the crutch and kicked him in the groin with her right leg. As he howled in pain, she rooted her leg back and swiped the crutch across his face in one tight slap.

The bat dropped from his hand as he fell on his knees. The belt fell off as he held his groin with both hands. Kirthana stood on her legs and, for the first time in six months, walked using her crutches. As she crossed Karthik, she opened her mouth. To her utter surprise, a voice emerged from her mouth when, in utter desperation, she screamed. “Help!”

After six months, Kirthana had heard her own voice. After six months, Karthik had heard his wife’s voice. He raised his face up from the floor, turned his neck around and looked at her. Kirthana saw on his face, after six months, an expression of unexpected delight. Karthik saw her walk with her crutches. His face had a smile. Kirthana turned back and looked at him.

At that moment, his head fell back on the floor face down and he lost his consciousness.

Kirthana’s mind went back six months to that accident. On that day too, Karthik had a similar bout of angry madness. He had a bat in his hand and a belt in his hand then too. In a frenzied episode, he had tried to hit her with the bat. He had missed her as he fell crashing on the floor then too.

But in trying to save herself, in panic, Kirthana had banged her head on the wall. Due to the impact, she bled profusely inside her brain. Her left hand and leg were paralysed since then. She started slurring due to the injury. She eventually lost her speech. The anger that she had for her husband’s erratic anger was forever shut in her head. She had no way to express it.

Till today. She had found her voice. She had found her feet. She decided that this was it. She had had enough. This was the second time that her husband was attacking her in six months.

So what if he had been her caregiver? So what if she still loved him? He was the one responsible for the accident. He was the one who caused her the injury. He better pay for it now that she had got her voice and mobility back. This is no way to treat your wife. She was going to make a police complaint. And she was going to make him pay. She decided that the time was now. She started searching for the closest police station on her phone.

While doing so, she glanced back at Karthik. He was still lying unconscious. Her thought went back to Karthik’s face when she had seen him fall down a while back. She suddenly remembered seeing drops of blood near his mouth when he fell. Had her crutch caused so much damage that he had so much blood on his mouth? she pondered. And was the shot so strong that he became unconscious? she contemplated.

Karthik was a strong man. He had been a boxer in college. She had never seen him with so much blood on his mouth even after the toughest of his bouts. 

Then she remembered that he said he felt giddy earlier. And he had crashed into the floor then too. She decided that she will register her police complaint later. For good or bad, he was still her husband. And he had been her caregiver for six months.

So, she walked back near him with her crutches.

Karthik was still lying on the floor. Next to his face was a pool of blood. She turned him around. He was still unconscious.

She decided to call the ambulance. But where was the number of the ambulance? Must be in his diary, she thought. Where is the diary? Must be in his bag. She rushed to their room.

Karthik’s bag was lying on the floor with papers scattered all around it. She picked the bag up and rummaged through it. She found the diary. But her attention was drawn to a large medical file. She wondered why he carried her medical file in his bag. She opened it.

But the file wasn’t her medical file. It said patient name, Karthik. The file had a lot of papers and scans. She went through one of the reports. What she read gave her the shock of her life. It said, “Patient, Male 33 years. Advanced Glioblastoma. Symptoms include severe delirium, violent behaviour, temporary memory loss, giddiness, excess sleep.”

She scoured through all the other sections of the file in a rush. His first report was dated six months back. She recollected that the date was one week after her injuries. She now remembered how much he had cried after hitting her. And how much he had cried after getting her home from hospital on a wheelchair.

It was then that he had tested himself. He couldn’t explain his acts of violence to himself. It turned out that the violent behaviour six months back was an act of severe delirium. It was this delirium that had resulted in Kirthana’s injuries. And it was another act of severe delirium today that had got her back on her feet and her voice back.

Kirthana fell on her knees and started crying. She went to her husband and lifted his head and put it on her lap. She was a spunky, gritty woman. She decided that it was time for her to be strong. She called the ambulance in a rush. The ambulance came in ten minutes to their house.

At the hospital, the duty doctor asked her, “Who is the patient, any history?”

She pointed to her husband and said, “Mr. Karthik. Patient of Glioblastoma.”

“We need a signature here for consent,” the doctor said bringing forward a form. “May I know your name and relation with the patient?” he asked, looking at her crutches.

“I am Kirthana. The patient’s wife,” she replied and added with fortitude, “and his caregiver.”

***

This story was first published in The Writer’s Egg Magazine in their November 2021 Issue #12.