| Bharti Bansal | April 2025 | Flash Fiction |
Here’s a man in his sixties, maybe, a doctor, a word that has always been associated with a classist realization that some of us would never be enough. It’s my turn to enter the well-lit cabin, a clean one. I can find no spot of madness here. All the patients he receives are from well-off families, some in their newly purchased Crocs, some wearing perfumes so strong that the entire hallway wants to sneeze.
I am called inside, and I go with my father, who has been a constant in these hospital visits over the years. I hold the medical file with a registration number written on it, and I realize I am a patient now. My identity is reduced to the faults in my brain, neurochemical imbalance, and cognitive dissonance. The atmosphere inside is posh. The white color of the walls with a warm undertone greets my eyes as if welcoming me in.
A blue-colored, slightly worn-out sofa sits at the leftmost corner of the room. How many people have sat there? Numbers visible through the loose threads, I believe there are so many sad people in the world. Suddenly, I am brought back to reality by his warm greeting. “Sat Sri Akal!” he says, and my father replies with the same enthusiasm. I smile a forced smile and greet him as well.
“How are you?” he asks, and I find a childlike curiosity in his eyes. Nobody has asked me this in years with such curiosity. Maybe I am reading too much between the lines. After all, he is a doctor. He is supposed to ask questions that give the patients hope.
I, in my attempt to sound genuine, answer back with a vague “I am good.” He looks me directly in the eyes. I am fidgeting now. The black rubber band on my wrist has succumbed to the wrath of being pulled again and again. He notices it. I see him noticing it. I start scratching my nails as I tell him how I have been. How my world is a little stable but unsteady still.
“You need to go out,” he says in a stern yet kind voice. “You need to face the world. How else will you handle your job, marriage, and other things in life?” Suddenly, I want to cut this conversation by telling him that I don’t want to get married too soon. But I smile again. He tries to motivate me as I look everywhere but in his eyes. I see a tissue box in front of me, kept on the side table. How many people have cried here? On the left wall is his caricature hanging. A big-headed man wearing a turban, smiling. A gift, I assume. He asks me various questions, and I reply with a smile.
“Do you still feel angry?” he questions. I smile again. I have been smiling too much throughout this conversation. I nod yes, and he laughs before telling me how I have been suppressing my anger. How if given a chance, I will jump off a building, a birdman sort of delusion, and believe that I can fly before landing on my feet (I do not die in this one), alive. I think one needs to land on their feet, on the toes, to survive any great fall. He says there is improvement. “You have been smiling a lot. I never saw you smile during the initial years,” he reminds me. What a hoax! Smile as a sign of improvement! Smile in the face of adversity. I have mastered the art of smiling even when I want to cry. But the doctor doesn’t know it. The whites in his beard don’t give away that sort of experience.
I am pulling the little torn skin on my thumb now. He sees it again. With a newfound spurt of courage, I look at him and try to be as calm as I can pretend. This room welcomes a lot of sunshine through its broad windows. Sun as a way to embrace the patients as they cry. A nice strategy! The dull reddish-brown building peaks through the windows, like an old man looking at his past, reminiscing about his youth as a way of self-preservation. To my right is a printer and his photograph in a well-tailored suit. The sunlight is falling directly on the books kept in front of me.
“A Child’s Case in Psychiatry.”
“Evolution of Psychiatry.”
“Clinical Cases.”
And books with thousands of pages that look more like boxes than books.
“Do you still believe God will punish you?” he asks.
“Yes, I feel guilty all the time.”
“God doesn’t punish anyone. Waheguru, Christ, Allah, whoever you believe in, never punishes. He loves everyone.”
“I haven’t found the evidence for that yet.”
“You will, if you worship him.”
“I am not particularly a religious person.”
“Well, then, there is no God and no punishment.”
I smile, this time genuinely.
We leave the cabin, the prescription in my file that I am holding. He wishes me good luck and gives me a thumbs up.
“Thirty minutes!” my sister exclaims. “What did he say?” she asks curiously.
“Nothing, just another attempt at encouraging me to give life a chance.”
We leave. The medicines will be ordered tomorrow. The old man in his sixties, a doctor who says his patients are azeez to him, slowly fades into the oblivion of his cabin as we close the door behind us.
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Bharti is a resident of Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. She is currently pursuing BS in Data Science.
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Feature image by Kenny Eliason via Unsplash
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