“And he hated himself and hated her,too, for the ruin they'd
made of each other.”
- Dennis Lehane
"Phileas.
Mr. Phileas Rodriguez? Can you hear me, sir?"
He
woke up with a start. Looked around the room like it was the first time he was
seeing it. He was not. He had been visiting Dr. Sharma for the past four years
now, ever since his first blackout. Though now he was just plain asleep and not
blacked out. He sat up straight and rubbed his eyes and face to wake them up.
He had a week’s beard on his face, peppered with white here and there. It did
give him a sophisticated look, but itched like a flea-ridden mutt’s crotch.
Blackouts
were nothing new to him; he knew very well what it felt like. They started a
couple of years ago. It was very scary in the beginning. He checked himself
into a clinic at his third incident and did all the tests they had there. No
one actually came to any conclusion as what was wrong with him. They all wrote
it off as a prodrome to something else and just decided to wait and see. So he
waited, until a few weeks from his first incident he blacked out behind the
wheel while driving back from work. Luckily no was hurt, but it sure did put
the fear for his life into him and he started looking out for every possible
avenues for help.
A
friend suggested he try yoga, didn't help except his back never felt so good
thanks to all the stretching. Another suggested him to drink a lot of liquids,
that didn't help much either except that he had to get up from his desk more
often to visit the restroom earning him a lot of catcalls from his coworkers.
Then his younger sister, a physical therapist, suggested maybe his ailment wasn’t
anything physical at all. Maybe it was all in his mind. That's how he had ended
up in this place where he was presently sprawled on a sofa in the lobby of the shrink’s
office.
"I'm
sorry. Was working late last night, didn't get enough sleep", he replied
to the receptionist who was looking over his computer screen to him smoothing
over his flannel shirt and plaid pants. She never understood why this guy had
to wear so proper all the time. It's been years she’s been watching him now, and
she had never seen him in casual Tees and denims. He was very tall and lanky, would
look great in jeans. Anyways, she kept her thoughts to herself and returned
back to the social network site she was surfing on while pretending to work on
her boss’s letters.
He
walked past the receptionist's desk and opened the door to the good doctor's
cabin. And as always, he was hit with the strong scent of roses. The room
seemed to brimmed with it, there were pictures of rose gardens on the back
wall, there were two pots filled with roses near the window, and there was
always vase with a few more rose stems on the doctor's desk. His guess was she
even doused herself in rose perfume before she leaves for work.
Right
now, Dr. Sharma was seated behind her desk writing hurriedly in her diary. She
kept one for every patient. She looked up and gave the very slightest of smile
and signaled him to take a seat.
Phileas
took his usual seat at the corner of the couch, closest to the doctor's chair.
He was soft on her, and she knew it. Obviously she did, a woman didn't need a
double degree in psychiatry to know if a guy is into her or not. But she was
not one to break a doctor-patient relationship. And he was not her type anyway.
She
was soon done with her notes, pushed the diary away and stretched while seated
in her chair. Sitting all day in a chair all day listening to people’s problems
takes its toll on a person’s vertebrae.
She
turned to the stack of hardbound diaries kept at one end of his desk and
shuffled through them to get to her patient's notes. Now she asked, "So
Phileas, how are we doing today?"
"I
am well, Ms. Sharma. This has been a good week. The trip to the capital was a
much needed break from all the stress." He could never bring himself to
call her Dr. Sharma. She looked so young to be called that.
"That's
nice. Yes, I remember, you were going to attend an ex colleague’s wedding in
Noida. How was function? Was there a lot of people present?" she asked,
mildly bringing up Phileas's fear of crowds.
Phileas
didn't take the bait, "No no, it was actually a small affair. Got to meet
with a few old friends from my time in Amazon and also there was a band and a
trip around old Delhi. It was really quite exciting."
"That
sounds good. Hope you did not stress yourself out too much, sometimes a rush of
old memories and emotions might become too heavy on one's psyche."
"No
it really was nothing like that. I actually had a good time...”
Phileas
started to fidget in his seat. The doctor could see that he was not saying the
whole thing; he was hiding something from her. The fidgeting was his tell; he
would be very lousy at poker. She looked
at him for a moment and spoke softly looking down at her dairy writing
something, "Take your time, Phileas. There is no hurry."
"I
don't think I have been completely honest with you, Ms. Sharma. About my
reason, my incessant need to attend this wedding even though I hate public
transport... I, um, the bride... Well, we used to be very close for a while. I
mean. Uh. We were in love." He shifted his eyes from her and started
looking at anywhere but in her direction. The doctor didn't seem to notice the
change. She just waited there bowed down to her book pretending to read,
waiting for him to continue.
He
took a moment of quite, and continued.
"We
met in an office party. She was a HR person dealing with recruitment. She was
the one who had assisted me during my induction process when I joined the
company. I'd never met her since in my nine months of working in the there, until
that New Year's Eve bash. I still remember her wearing the beige pantsuit, with
a tiny chain made of silver hanging around her neck. She looked beautiful. She
was also the biggest klutz, you’ll see. So she was always tumbling over
something or shoving to somebody else while passing. Still I liked her all the
same, she was cute." Phileas was by now looking absently out the window
behind the doctor's chair. His gaze was looking towards a different place a
different time. He was opening up far more than he had ever done in the four
years he had been her patient, Dr. Sharma was beginning to sense they were at
the verge of a breakthrough.
"Somehow
when dinner was announced we ended up at the same table; call it what you may,
destiny or sub-conscious plotting by my side. But I've never had a better first
time conversation with any woman ever. We sat there and spoke for hours, she told
me about her life, her aspirations, about her work with a local NGO, and I
shared my dreams and troubles with my sister. It was great. Soon it was past
midnight and the party was dying. People were starting to leave with their
spouses or friends. We both didn't have any so we decided to leave together and
share a cab.
“Well
one thing led to another, we kissed on the ride back to her place. I was 23,
and that was the first kiss I've ever had. I was a very sickly kid when I was
younger you see, no girl would come close to me by a ten meter radius. And it
showed I think, because soon she was taking the lead in the whole activity. I
was naive, and even I could sense that this wasn't her first time snogging in
the back of a cab. But I was not complaining anyway, it felt too good to be
true as it was."
