India Chronicles: The Hospital

November 5th, 2008--Pune

I wake up in the hotel bed and the sickness that has been plaguing me for two weeks--intermittent fevers, horrible cough, weakness, an eventual runny nose--has manifested into a visibly swollen right side lymph node. It is terribly sore and makes swallowing difficult, but I don't really care because this is the first day the sickness is not weighing as heavily on my mind--it is election day. We are about to get a new president, and I turn on Ioana's computer while she sleeps to check the progress. It is still early on, and Obama is slightly ahead but few of the votes have come in.

I leave the room in my sweatpants and begun wandering the hotel halls, looking for people who are up and watching the news. I run into Clara and we huddle in her room, transfixed by CNN and feeling the tension. We hear people awake down the hall, and several of us go down to the dining area for breakfast (chocolate flakes and masala chai) and run away with the plates; technically I don't think this was allowed, but the staff was hardly going to argue with us. We are buzzing and talking and hushed and shaking.

Eventually the mass of people awake ends up in one room, and the votes are coming in faster and faster, Obama is speeding ahead. California lies in the balance, states keep coming back blue, and suddenly California is in and CNN flashes a message across the screen: "Projected Winner: Barack Obama."

There is screaming and jumping and more screaming. No one can handle it. There is nothing to be said, all anyone can do is smile idiotically and jump and scream. The room can't contain our joy and we careen out of it and down the hotels hallways, Clara and I tear up to the third floor to Arvind's room where we knock on the door and jump up and down. He is on the phone--as per usual--but when he opens the door we hug him and scream more and jump. We run downstairs and run through the halls making noise, and the hotel staff looks both alarmed and avidly curious. It becomes surreal when we make our way into the dining room and the waiters are gathered around the tiny television watching the ubiquitous Bollywood music videos, calm and bored and oblivious to the way we feel our lives have changed. I feel scandalized and want to change the channel and show them, but instead I go back to the room with everyone else and wait for the speech. A bottle of champagne appears and makes its rounds, but I am too sick to partake. Tilly gives me a cough drop instead.

The speech comes on the TV and draws tears from many of us, as we pay homage to the wonder that is our new and novel president--and our neighbor. People mumble things about being proud of America through their weeping and we all hug, people that barely speak hug, everything is good. Our profs find their way into the room and there is further celebrating, and more champagne is consumed. Eventually things dissipate. It is only 10am, and the whole day lies before us to wonder.

***

I start to worry about my frighteningly swollen lymph node and the pain I have in eating and seek out Arvind, who has already taken me to the hospital twice. When he sees my neck his eyes widen and he agrees to take me back once more. I have to pick up my blood test results from earlier in the week anyway, to rule out malaria.

***

As we stand in line waiting for the blood test results, I am suddenly overwhelmed as I've been on occasion for the past two weeks and my eyes well up with tears and I burn red with fever and embarrassment. By the time Arvind (my TA extraordinaire) turns to look at me there are streams running down my face and I'm sputtering slightly and this is the first of several times that he will experience my crying. I laugh and sputter. "I'm just sick of being sick," I explain ridiculously, and he pats my arm and nods. People have been staring at the white girl as I walk down the halls, and the crying has attracted even more attention; I feel horribly self-conscious as the stereotypical foreign girl with the weak constitution who can't handle their country--I feel somehow insulting, and want no one to see me, but everyone sees me and I just stare downward.

After being directed from place to place in the hospital, I finally have a chance to see a doctor--someone high up, the head of some department. He is the typical middle-aged Indian doctor, with glasses and a furrowed brow and mouth set in a small semi-frown. He asks me some rudimentary questions and pokes around at my enlarged lymph node, saying things in rapid Marathi to the nurse at his side. Then he tells me he wants me to stay at the hospital until it goes away. "It might be an abscess and we don't want it to burst. We might have to do a minor--MINOR--surgery and remove it with a needle if it doesn't go away."

The words "abscess" and "burst" sound big and urgent to me, but I feel more relieved than anything. I want to be in the hospital, I want to be poked and prodded and stuck with IV's, if that means my sickness will go away. I have been avoiding the outside, missing the guys, sleeping and grumpy, while everyone around me has been enjoying every second of sunshine and practicing yoga and shopping on Laxmi Road. I want nothing more than to be admitted to the hospital.

***

My room is surpringly nice, for a room in an Indian hospital. It is private and even equipped with a television. I lay down on the bed and suddenly feel so much better; I have been given a place to get better, and there are no other demands placed upon me. I have a television. Barack Obama is the president. Also, I don't have malaria. It will be okay.

Arvind calls the profs to tell them the news and he sits down in a plastic chair and we talk politics. I don't know him very well at this point but I feel comfortable with him and enjoy his company. He has taken me to the doctor time and again, dealt with the bureaucracy, without acting even a little impatient about it; he has even been sympathetic. We are deep in elated Obama conversation when Mark shows up, and somehow I have become something like manic. I am making a million ironic jokes a minute, throwing self-deprecating remarks at my intidimating professor and actually making him laugh. I believe I will be better tomorrow. I imagine having lots of energy, running around, feeding an appetite on dosas, hanging out with the guys.

Eventually they leave and my burst of energy ebbs and my fever is back. I lay under my blankets with my head on my pillow and watch CNN as Obama is discussed endlessly from an Indian perspective. Will he stop outsourcing? Will he help improve relations with Pakistan? I watch the exist same 10-minute clip of his story play at least three times. At some point I turn off the TV and it is quiet and I feel somewhat less happy. The team of Keralan nurses come in and stick me numerous times until they get a vein and start me on saline fluid. The smiling and shy guy from the cafeteria brings me a pack of food--which looks horribly unappetizing--and some hot milk, which I actually partially drink.

Arvind and Clara eventually return to the hospital, and Clara--bless her soul--says she'll stay the night (there is a bed on the opposite side of the room.) I don't know how to thank her for being so wonderful. The three of us sit around and gossip for a while, about the program and the profs, until Arvo must return to the hotel and Clara and I stay.

I have a needle in me and am beginning to feel the discomfort of tomorrow but I sleep like a baby through the dark of the night.

I had made it one-sixth of the way through.