— What is your name? Dev asks.
The man stands, as if late for an appointment, and Dev holds his shoulders. He’s a marionette. He looks fifty, pockmarked with evidence of a hard life. The blank intensity of his stare reminds Dev of a taxi driver.
Soldiers move the dead to make room for more living. They should, Dev thinks, keep better track — write down names, post a list. People come to the medical area, searching for loved ones. They fill the air with plaintive inquiries—Are you there, Ramesh? Please answer—and push at the tents with a desperation so violent that the soldier guarding the tents cocks his gun, on the verge of firing.
— Your name? Dev asks again. Still no response.
Dev administers a prick test with a safety pin. He starts at the man’s middle fingertip and makes his way down the hand and up the arm. — Sharp or dull? No answer. He repeats the test with a chip of ice. — Hot or cold? The man seems impervious to sound, light, pain — to any sensation. At best, he rates a seven on the Glasgow Coma Scale. Four grades away from death. The man once again tries to leave, but Dev detains him.
— Where do you need to go? What’s so important? This man needs a CT scan, a PET scan, MRI, EEG. Any number of unavailable devices. The man turns his head to Kalpataru Road. His chin tilts up, a tremulous nod. His pupils contract, and for a moment, Dev thinks he’s indicating a direction, someplace that he needs to be. The man’s moment of clarity disappears as soon as it appears — his pupils re-dilate, and he turns back toward Dev. He opens his mouth, and between his lips, thick cords of mucus distend.
— I can’t let you go, Dev says, but the man ignores Dev’s insistence. He belongs out there, the man seems to say. His family awaits, be they dead or alive. Dev takes a self-adhesive label and writes, as neatly as he can, “RAJIV.” If the man’s being has leaked out of the indentation in his skull, the least that Dev can give him before he wanders back into nothingness is a name.
Dev sees Sushrita wandering the hospital grounds. Of all people! Her poise — straight-backed, regal — makes it seem as if she is in charge, and the soldiers do not hassle her. She is too composed for chaos. She reaches into a bag slung on her arm and gives a nearby nurse a parcel. Dev is relieved to see her, but all the same, she shouldn’t be here.
They embrace. — I’m thankful you are safe, he says.
— Yes, she replies. — The earthquake gave me quite a scare. But our house was solid. She mumbles a quick puja.
— Sushrita…, he says, but he’s unable to continue. He doesn’t know how to say what he has to say. He has informed thousands of their serostatus and knows how to guide the conversation to what he has to say: I understand what you must be going through. There are treatment options. It’s not a death sentence.
But here, he cannot find the words to comfort Sushrita.
— Oh, where are my manners? She hands him a samosa, wrapped in newspaper. Dark spots of oil seep through yesterday’s news.
— What is this?
— The power has gone out. Didn’t you know? It probably won’t come back for days, and the food in the refrigerator will spoil.
— The army brought emergency rations, he said.
— Yes, yes, but those are for everyone. Look at you, working so hard. You should have something better.
— What about you?
— I have plenty, she said.
— Are you feeling all right? Did you fall? Hit your head? Dev gives her a cursory visual examination. She may be in deep shock.
— Such fuss! she says, waving him away. — I’m an old woman, nothing more.
The sun sets, bathing the world in dirty orange light. The dust and particulates diffuse what remains of the day. Soldiers have set up generators, jerking the start cords with their entire bodies and cursing the machinery, until, one by one, the engines sputter into life. Dev becomes aware of a sound — the tink tink of metal upon stone. Over at the ruins of Bhuj Civil, soldiers and civilians alike chip at the stones with screwdrivers, hoping to free survivors. The electric lights project jagged shadows. The dead are piled shoulder-high. Still—tink tink tink.
— About Dr. Sengupta—, Dev says.
— Mithram. Call him Mithram. Still so formal after all these years!
— I’m sorry, Dev says.
— He’s around here somewhere, she says. — Always helping. I knew when I married him that the lives of others would always come before mine. It’s my duty as a wife. My burden.
She looks around, as if realizing for the first time where she is.
— I shouldn’t keep you from your work, she says.
— Sushrita, I’m so sorry…
She holds up a hand.
— When you see Mithram, please give him a message.
And with that, she continues west along Mandvi Road, back toward Pithorapir. Surely Sushrita must be living on the street. No one trusts the indoors. The city has been turned inside out. Whole neighborhoods huddle on the sidewalk. Nothing vertical seems safe: walls, pillars, roofs, what has not collapsed still bears the weight of that possibility. Sushrita hands out samosas until she has no more, then walks in a straight line, weaving to avoid the families spilling onto the road.
Dev walks to the base of Bhuj Civil, away from the lights, away from the people hammering at rubble, away from their painful, futile optimism. He places a hand on a broken chunk of concrete. In the concrete, there are smaller stones of different colors — individual cells in the cross section of a torso. It feels warm beneath his palm, throbbing gently, matching Dev’s own pulse. He puts his face next to the stone and whispers, — Mithram, Sushrita says she’s having trouble falling asleep; call her before you get home.
Broken hands, broken legs, blunt-force trauma, burst intestines: patients from nearby villages — Anjar, Bhachau, Dhamadka — come to Bhuj. Doctors amputate mangled limbs with scissors. The hospital in Ahmedabad, despite suffering damage itself, has offered to take the most serious cases, provided they survive transport. Dev must make decisions, and make them quickly: You, who have lived a long life, will stay; you, who have not yet begun to live, will go.
Then come the aftershocks: sleepers wake, the rubble shifts ominously, and the lights sway. One falls and bursts into stars. People scream and scramble.
Dev crouches low and puts out his arms to steady himself. His heart jumps. The aftershock finishes as quickly as it comes. Dev hyperventilates; his fingers and toes buzz from excess oxygen. He feels dizzy, as if he might topple. Around him are desperate screams, a deafening cacophony. Panic is as palpable as rain. But Dev — he feels more alive than he has for a long time.
The generators chug out black fumes and heat and electricity. But they also stall out and fail. The sudden darkness sends people into terrors. One soldier has been given generator duty; he patrols with a canister of petrol and a funnel, trying to keep all of them functioning simultaneously. In this patch of night turned back into daytime, the light dries Dev’s eyes — each time he blinks, his eyelids stick to the balls.
These small emergency generators aren’t powerful enough to run a full refrigeration unit, so plasma is stocked in a tent walled with slabs of ice. The bladder bags grow skins of frost, and the nurses melt windows with their thumbs to uncover the type.
The night brings its own cold. Dev has no other clothes than what he wears, and his sleeves are smeared with blood and lymph and who knows what else. Impossible to keep sterile conditions. Latex gloves are scarce. He has one box, which he guards between his feet. He would share with his colleagues, but he remembers the times they snubbed him, when they passed him in the halls of New Delhi General and turned their bodies to avoid even accidental contact. Two years ago, after his testimony before the World Trade Organization, India Today featured him as “the new face of the struggle against AIDS,” and they avoided him even more. Jealousy. Cowardice.