Friday, January 10

 
 
YEAR:  2014 | Tags:  | | |
 
 
 
 
 

The end of Temple Road, 15:50

 
 

Auo had spent the night thrashing around in the bed or wandering around the house. Irma knew about the first and I had first hand experience of the second.

In the morning she was bleary eyed and pale. At 9:00 Irma took her to a hospital in Trivandrum that Anib recommended while Naa and I cleaned and ironed. At 11:00 they came back announcing that Auo had food poisoning and that they had the required medicines. Auo was wobbly and had to be helped from the taxi. She lay on my bed half asleep.

Today was supposed to be packing day, for we are due leave for Delhi tomorrow. Naa and I went to the beach to keep out of the way, find apple juice for Auo and pay Hari. By 15:30 we had done all of these.

Now we are walking home and passing the kiosk at the start of the path to the beach. I always think that it is everything that kiosks in Kovalam should be.

Later Naa will go off to see Anu and I will lay on the bed with Auo, who will mumble and sleep fitfully. At 20:30 she will fall off the bed and be unable to stand up. When it becomes clear that she isn’t actually responding to us or anything else we will call a taxi and get her back to the hospital as fast as possible.

Food poisoning will turn out to be as wildly wrong as a diagnosis could possibly be, and by 22:00 she will be in Intensive Care, breathing through an oxygen mask and surrounded by a growing number of increasingly high-powered doctors.

We will sit in a hospital corridor for almost four hours before we are allowed to see her.