Dr. Sengupta emerged. — Dev! You kept your word.
— Padma would never forgive me if I had forgotten, he replied.
— Is that true?
— When women are involved, Sushrita said, — it’s always true.
— Not even a week and she’s running your affairs, Dr. Sengupta said. — Sushrita had me by the collar as soon as the ceremony had concluded.
— A good thing too, Sushrita said. — Padma will be a good influence on you, Dev. Now, if you don’t mind, I need Padma in the kitchen.
Padma excused herself.
— Lovely, Dr. Sengupta said. — You should be very proud.
— I am, Dev said. — You were right. I feel—
Dev stopped on the last word, unsure how to continue.
— Yes, Dr. Sengupta said. — Marriage changes boys into men. You look the same as the first time I laid eyes on you in class. Ambitious, yes. But also curious and stubborn. Unprepared for the rigors of life. Dr. Sengupta raised his hand. — Don’t misunderstand me, he said. — I saw my own, younger self in you, Dev.
— And now?
— And now, Dr. Sengupta said, leaning forward and lowering his voice. — You will discover, as I once had to, that—
At that moment, Padma and Sushrita brought out cups of tea, steaming hot. In each cup, the ground spices accumulated in a vortex. As she served him, Dev touched Padma’s hand, a small gesture, a finger on the base of her wrist. Dr. Sengupta paused. He blinked as his thoughts — disrupted and now shifting — seemed to take on a new form. Sushrita sat next to her husband, heedless that she had interrupted anything.
— Dr. Sengupta? You were saying?
— That nothing is more important in this world than family, Dr. Sengupta continued. — They are both history and future, your inheritance and your legacy. When the trappings of this world have fallen away, they remain. I see you changing, Dev, in ways that you yourself cannot. And I know that you and Padma will know the joy that Sushrita and I have felt these many, many years.
This was a speech Dr. Sengupta must have recited many times. It slid off his tongue like a piece of candy. It meant little, of course, but Dev would always wonder what Dr. Sengupta had meant to say before Sushrita and Padma had emerged from the kitchen. That — that would have been a real truth, a guide that heretofore had been hidden. And now — it was lost. Dev’s life contracted and expanded before him in one long breath. He smelled tomatoes stewing on the stove. Sushrita had Padma’s earlobe between her fingers, admiring the delicate gold hoops that Dev had given her. Dr. Sengupta pooh-poohed the women’s fuss over jewelry, but Dev knew that he would soon purchase a pair for Sushrita herself. Dev felt himself growing older, his cells dying and replicating more slowly, losing chunks of DNA. He would have his own students, and he would tell them that their own destinies would lie with their own families, and they would believe him. He foretold his own decay: the unsteadying of his hands, the loss of sexual vigor, his senses shaving off and fraying, until he and Padma could no longer attend to themselves and moved in with their children and grandchildren. Perhaps Dr. Sengupta was on the cusp of promising another life, an alternative, a secret that he had discovered too late to take advantage of it. But the one he had offered was the one Dev knew he had already accepted.
It’s near three in the afternoon when Dev arrives in Bhuj. A young soldier ushers him and four others into a Tata Sumo, which normally has room for ten. The rest of the space has been given over to equipment. Dev keeps a hand on the neck-high pile of boxes next to him. Others sit folded, like letters in an envelope, to make room for supplies.
Debris has choked off roads, points of exit. A caravan of Sumos stretches from the army base into the heart of the city, which bears no resemblance to the city Dev visited five years ago. All around them: rubble the color of clotted cream, and among the rubble, darker spots, which Dev imagines are bodies, clothed, crumpled. In the car, a collective gasp: some pray, and the remainder weep. Nurses weep; doctors weep. Dev, however, does not weep. Both he and Bhuj have changed irrevocably; there can be no crying over it now.
As they enter, others escape. The car in front of them has been consumed by the mass of evacuees on foot. The soldier blows the horn, but no one moves. There is nowhere to go. People press their palms against the car, heads bowed. Their knuckles rap on the windows, leaving rosettes of blood.
— What should we do? asks a nurse. She reaches for the window crank, and Dev yells, — Stop! They’ll swarm us. She is on the verge of tears but crosses her arms. In the box next to her, glass tinkles, the sound like ice crystals forming.
Men stand behind the tailpipe and hold up both hands, mouths downturned in anguish: Why do you not stop? The car moves forward, the engine whinnying as the driver presses the pedal.
— How much farther? Dev asks, and the soldier gestures as if waving away a mosquito. Somewhere in the distance.
The nurse asks, — Would it be easier if we got out and walked?
The driver shrugs.
Triage has been set up where Bhuj Civil used to stand. The peaks of the tents look like points of skin where the stitching needle has not yet broken the surface.
Speed is the key. Much of the groundwork has been prepared: the ambulatory and lucid are separate from the immobile and the dazed. The unresponsive lie on the ground on blankets, and Dev moves up and down the rows. Colored rolls of tape dangle from his right arm like bracelets. He holds a silver penlight and peels back each person’s eyelids. He cannot look at other wounds, not now; he stares only at their eyes. He focuses on the retina, on the iris, waiting for a contraction as the beam grazes the eye. And just as quickly, he attaches a strip of tape to each person’s chest, right beneath the collarbone.
He does not want to use the black tape, but more and more, the situation warrants it. As the roll runs out, he attaches small pieces of the black tape along his fingers until his entire left hand is covered, a dark semaphore.
New Delhi General has been the site of emergency simulations: terrorist bombs, poison gas leak, nuclear attack. The administration insisted that all personnel participate.
Dev refused. The HIV clinic is long-term essential services, he argued. Not emergency.
This is a government-mandated exercise, the director told him. Besides, it is always better to have a preparedness plan.
So, Dev said, you would have my HIV patients evacuate? Mingle among the other patients and reveal their identities?
No, said the director. Just you.
The operating theater is functional nine hours after the earthquake, and even then, far too late. Limbs that might have been saved are now gangrenous: rancid, black flesh. Concussions have bled into subdural hematomas, leaving patients disoriented, unable to sit for examinations. A doctor sits with three patients in front of him in a radial pattern so that he can stitch all three in one go. He shouts, — Needle! I need a needle!
With the surgical team in place, Dev can now perform more thorough triage with borderline cases. The man before him has an indentation in his temple the size of a walnut. The skin is unbroken.