A Girl Like That(65)
I felt the blood drain from my cheeks. A face appeared in my head, watchful and quiet, her long black hair pulled back into a ponytail. Dr. Thomas’s daughter went to my school, was in my class. But I had never spoken to her. I wondered what had made her tell Dr. Thomas about me. Was it a fluke? Or was Masi right and Dr. Thomas wasn’t as professional as my uncle had claimed?
“I would normally not suggest something like this,” Dr. Thomas went on, “but your family has been coming to see me for a long time and I was wondering if some of these stresses at school have been having an effect on Zarin’s health. If you wanted, I could refer her to someone, maybe a specialist who works with teenagers at Bugshan Hospital.”
“Dr. Thomas, I—”
“There is no need for that!” Masi rose to her feet. Her nails dug so hard into Masa’s arm, I was sure she would leave marks. “There is no need for anything of that sort. We will be leaving now.”
Dr. Thomas stood and raised his hands, as if in supplication. “Please, Mrs. Wadia, I really think this is imp—”
“You think everything is important.” Masi’s voice was rising now and her lips were slowly turning gray. She slapped away Masa’s hands from her shoulders. “No—don’t pull at me, Rusi. This man has done enough. Something happens to someone, immediately he says, ‘Oh, she is mad! Give her medicine.’ More medicine to make her more mad!”
I felt myself freeze, hearing the faint plea of Masa’s voice through the rush of blood in my ears.
A knock on the door and a nurse peeked in. “Doctor, is everything all right?”
“No!” Masi shouted. “Nothing is!”
The doctor dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief and stepped toward Masi. “It’s okay, sister, you may go. Everything is under control. Mrs. Wadia, I won’t call anyone; don’t worry. Please sit down. Please.”
After several long moments, Masi finally sat down, her eyes darting here and there, as if looking for an escape from the eight-by-ten-foot examination room that suddenly felt ten times smaller than it was.
Dr. Thomas sat down again and scribbled something on his prescription pad.
“Here are some electrolytes. Mix them in water and have Zarin drink it. And please let me know if you need anything else.” He stared into my eyes as Masi finally allowed Masa to grip her hand again. “Anything.”
*
In the parking lot, the air was cool. Above us, the stars had been blotted out by clouds and city lights. The air was rich with the smell of earth, and a part of me wondered if it would rain the way it did during the winter. Hard and relentless, the water pooling on balconies, seeping into apartments, cars swimming through the streets like boats. Masa said that the reason Jeddah got flooded every time it rained was because of the poor drainage system. You could drown, I thought now, and no one would even notice.
Outside the emergency entrance, behind the ambulance, two policemen sat in a green-and-white van, watching the paramedics load someone onto a rolling bed. A man was shouting at the medics: “Yallah! Yallah! Yallah!”
Beside me, Masi was still breathing hard, her breath emerging in hisses. On her other side, I heard Masa, knew him by the quiet shuffle of his leather shoes on the tarmac.
“Bloody pill pusher!” Masi let out a sudden laugh. “Look how he did soo-soo in his pants when I shouted at him. It’s like in India. You have to throw a few tantrums sometimes. Why are you looking at me like that, Rusi? I’m fine! And so is this one.”
She glared at me. “Specialist, my foot. I am not mad and neither are you. Do you understand, Dina?”
I heard ambulance sirens, the thocks of car doors opening and closing. One of the policemen had stepped out of the van and was watching us closely.
“Khorshed dear, this is Zarin,” Masa whispered anxiously. I could tell that he had noticed the shurta, too. “Dina’s daughter. Dina died a long time ago, remember?”
“She’s such a bad girl,” Masi sobbed, and I was no longer sure if she was talking about my mother or me. “I was so worried.”
“Yes, she was very bad this week, weren’t you, Zarin?” Masa didn’t look at me. “Coming home late with Porus. Not eating her food properly. Worrying Masa-Masi for no reason.”
When I was seven, I’d slipped on a patch of wet floor in Qala Academy, my body temporarily suspended in the air, my heart in my throat, pulsing, until I hit the hard tiles, the pain grounding me once more. That evening, I felt much the same as I stared at Masa, only this time there was nowhere to fall, not even the ground.
“Yes.” Masa continued to speak, his voice nearly as soothing as Dr. Thomas’s as he gently ushered his wife into the car. His body was partly shadowed in the dim lighting, his face a half moon. “She was a bad girl. A bad, bad girl.”
*
It was Alisha Babu who first asked me about my absence. Her fancy blue-and-red class monitor badge was polished to a glistening sheen. “Are you okay?” she asked, approaching me in the corridor outside our classroom. “We missed you in class.”
“Fine,” I said, unwilling to give any more information. I stared at the candle engraved in the badge’s center, the words Qala Academy circling it. “Was sick for a while.” And I would have remained sick had it not been for the oral part of my English exam, which had to take place today, an exam Masa had insisted I take.