Addiction: Part 2
To Ayaan, it looked exactly the same. Three connected chairs; all black, strong and peppered with a thousand tiny holes. When he tried to get Karthik to lie back and relax in the chair, he couldn’t have imagined something as trivial as a cold chair tripping Karthik’s alarm bells to such an unprecedented frenzy. Just last night, Karthik was in the dark hall downstairs, sitting on a similar metal chair set. All night, Bayern Munchen commanded his complete attention and neither the colder chair set nor the frosty remains of Ayaan’s non-stop analysis registered in his mind. Fast forward 12 hours, here was Karthik; going haywire at the thought of cold steel.
At once, Karthik noticed all the other faces in the room, took a deep breath and sat back. His body was trembling and the sudden touch of cold steel didn’t help. He bit his tongue hard and swallowed the shriek sent up his spine. Ayaan continued to stare at Karthik and wondered if he was always like this. His curiosity drove him to the brink of asking, but his common sense suggested otherwise. Minutes later, he led Karthik to Dr. Naina’s room, helped him on to the patient’s stool and told Dr. Naina what happened. “Ma’am, he tells me he is feeling scared for no reason. He can’t seem to catch his breath for some time now. I tried to calm him down but he won’t stop panting.” Dr. Naina listened to Ayaan while her sharp, piercing gaze inspected Karthik for a moment. “Since when?” she enquired. “Sssssince annn… hoooour” came the patient’s reply, struggling to put together a word. “Is this the first time? Just nod.” she enquired again. By this point, Karthik’s anxiety shot through the roof. The metal patient stool wasn’t helping, there was a new person he had to talk to and he was in no position to think and put together a proper lie for the tough questions he knew he was going to face. Though he was in no position to show his appreciation for her presence of mind, he felt relieved at her asking him to reply by nodding. It even calmed him down a bit as he nodded while shivering through a long exhale.
Dr. Naina turned to Ayaan and said “Can you wait outside for some time? Don’t go away. I’ll need you to accompany him back to the hostel”. Ayaan frowned and muttered a long “hmmmmmmm”. His right eye went small and he looked like he was trying to find a reason to politely reject her request. His long “hmmm” eventually ended with a defeatist “okay” and he walked out of the room. Dr. Naina turned back towards Karthik. His trembling eyes were fixated with such intensity on the bare green walls inside the room that one wouldn’t be blamed if he thought Karthik was staring at a piece of impressionist artwork. But Dr. Naina saw right through the situation and calmly lifted the phone and muttered gibberish into the receiver while Karthik was busy trying hard not to let the fear drive him mad.
A warm hand approached him from the left and rested on his shoulder. “It is going to be okay. Just focus on my voice” she said as a nurse rushed into the room with what looked like an oxygen mask attached to a small transparent cylinder. Dr. Naina took the cylinder, extended the pipe and handed over the mask to Karthik. “Put this on your mouth and take 10 long, deep breaths. Focus on my voice if you are feeling afraid”. Karthik wore the mask and took jagged, broken breaths of the funny smelling air that flew through it. “Deep and slow. Deep and slow. No hurry. There is nothing to be afraid of. You’ll be alright” She said. After a few breaths, 6 to be precise, Karthik felt a strange sensation take over his mind. A million cells activated inside his body and he could feel every last one of them tingle. It was the same sensation he experienced every time he saw her; a sudden wave of goosebumps coming alive on every inch of his skin, every strand of hair he had standing up in shock and his neck tingling into a pleasant warmth for a good 3–4 seconds. Only this time, the tingling didn’t stop and he could feel a calmness creeping into him. And it was heavily focused on his head, in his brain, lighting up every bone and muscle there. His jagged breaths slowly went to full blown smooth and deep sine waves. He was starting to feel better with each breath of the magic gas she had given him; he could now look at the wall and feel bored instead of afraid, as a normal person would have.
With each passing second, his shivers faded away. Suddenly, he felt his mobile vibrate in his right pocket and in a reflex, his hand entered his pocket. But Dr. Naina looked at him with such dedication and intensity that he remembered he still hadn’t completely recovered. Almost there, but still not there. His hand came back up to the mask, he took a few more deep breaths before cooling down and returning to a normal state physically. His tremblings and panting died down completely. But his mind was a different case entirely. It was like after one of his chess games; he felt completely drained and just wanted to drop dead on the floor. Thoughts stopped flowing through his mind and all he could feel was the tingling sensation; now slowly subsiding as well. Dr. Naina no longer intimidated him as much either. She asked him to remove the breathing aid and sit quietly for a while as she jotted down medicines on her prescription pad.
Karthik dropped his head into his palms and felt the warmth for a full minute, unable to process what just transpired. It was his first panic attack and was it was way more intense than anything he had ever felt. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes to the gloomy green walls again. By reflex, his hand went into his pocket and checked his phone for notifications. There was a message from Ayaan which read “Sorry man. Need to rush to class. My friend Rohan (A Wing) is outside and will accompany you back.” Normally, Karthik would have started to get anxious as soon as he knew he was going to meet someone he didn’t know. But now, there wasn’t any juice left in him to feel anything bar the fatigue that lingered.
“Feeling better now?” She asked. He nodded back in agreement, closed his eyes for a moment as if to just check and looked at her again. “Yes. Much better” he answered, heaving a huge sigh of relief. “Thank you ma’am” he replied. ”Her expression suddenly turned stern and a bit angry. “Which year are you in?” she asked, with her sharp piercing gaze now focused solely on Karthik. “Third” came the reply from a cowering voice. She let out a disappointed sigh, looked at her table and removed her spectacles. She slowly cleaned them with a velvety looking cloth and started speaking with confidence. “Now I’m going to ask you some questions. If I am right, you avoid personal conversations and anything that borders outside professional talk. In your attempts to do so, you often turn to lies. But I want you to understand that I’m only doing this to heal you and help you. So it would serve you well not to lie to me”. She put her glasses back on and turned her gaze back to his cowering eyes. He was struggling to find the right words to respond. “Calm down. Don’t worry” She almost ordered him. “That boy who came in with you. Is he a friend?” she asked. Karthik evaluated the question in his mind and gave a robotic nod. Everyone is a “Friend” to everyone; it was a stupid question. Fatigued or not, he was so used to avoiding personal questions that it became a reflex of sorts.
A nurse soon walked in and was instructed to take Karthik out into the waiting area and to call Ayaan. Karthik walked out of the door with the nurse and saw Rohan there, sitting with a bandaged arm. Rohan got up from his seat as soon as he saw him and walked towards the nurse. “Hey. Ayaan had to leave for a class. He asked me to accompany you to the hostel. You feeling okay?” he asked. Karthik nodded and mustered up enough strength to say “The doctor wanted to talk to Ayaan. Since he isn’t there, I guess you should be the one going in.”. Rohan walked past the moaning door and came back out after ten minutes. He signalled Karthik to wait and went on to the pharmacy to collect some medicines, post which he spoke to the receptionist. He walked over to Karthik again and said “The pickup is here. Let’s go.”
They got a short ride back to the hostel and a grunt from the driver who didn’t look too happy about what he was doing. By now, Karthik was on the verge of having another anxiety attack waiting for Rohan to open up about the conversation he had with the doctor. Rohan stopped him at the canteen and said “I’m famished. You want to grab something?”. Karthik nodded and they soon sat munching on the lifeblood of college life: Maggi; this variant fried and inundated in cheap ketchup. Karthik, still looking at his maggi asked slowly “So, what did she tell you inside?”. “She asked me if you smoked” He replied, chomping down more maggi down his throat. “And I said yes” he said gleefully, gulping down the lifeblood in his throat. “Oh. By the way, do you smoke?” he asked, taking out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
“What?! No!. I mean I used to, but I don’t now. Why did you tell her I smoke when you don’t even know if I did?” Karthik asked, desperately trying to raise his tone.
“Cool down man. I thought she’d give me some tips to quell the effects of smoking. It was free consultation without the judgemental looks that generally follow. How could I refuse? win-win man!” He said and turned away to the smug looking pseudo-chef at the canteen counter. “Bhaiyya. One cold coffee” he said and turned back to Karthik with raised eyebrows. He pointed towards the canteen and questioningly let out a “Hmmm?” as if to ask if Karthik wanted a cold coffee as well. Karthik declined and Rohan got back to playing tug of war with gravity. He was clearly winning as all the gooey yellow lines made their way into his mouth.
Karthik suddenly realised that Rohan had a bandaged arm. He asked Rohan out of formality “What happened to your arm?”. Rohan looked at his arm, forced the yellow goo down his throat and replied “I wish I knew man. I’ll know by evening.” Karthik knew very well what happened to Rohan; half of the hostel did. Bar a couple of specific details about the exact accident, there was nothing left to guess: Rohan, got drunk on the terrace of the hostel and injured his arm while dallying to the tunes of Zeppelin. The water coolers and washrooms at every wing in the hostel had already radiated this piece of information to everyone; Karthik included. He heard a couple of B-wing juniors fretting the details of the story though they had nothing to do with it.
After licking his paper plate dry, Rohan got up, collected his arm and looked at Karthik.
“Which room was yours again?” he quizzed.
“316, D wing. Why?” questioned the reply.
“You’re a smoker and I want to know where to find smokes if I ever run out of them. Besides, you owe me.” Rohan retorted.
“And I have complete faith in a smoker’s lack of will. So don’t even start with the “I don’t smoke anymore” shit.” he added.
Karthik’s reply seemed to be lost in his efforts to find one.
Rohan got up, waved an imaginary salute and walked away.
Karthik counted the stairs on his way back to the room. 54, they were all there. He opened the door to his room and crashed on the pile of clothes lying on his bed. The joysticks connected to his system were missing. He knew he couldn’t care less about them right now, but strangely he did. Maybe he didn’t like the fact that he had to walk up to his senior’s room and ask for them again. Asking required confrontation and the mere thought of that drained him.
Karthik’s head still wallowed in a strange ennui. Random thoughts flushed into his mind from everywhere and passed his consciousness unattended. One minute, he was thinking about the joysticks, the next minute about smoking and the words Rohan left him with. He already craved for a smoke. A slow fatigue crept upon him and all his thoughts blurred into a confusing dream that he blissfully saw and ignored at the same time. He was in Dr. Naina’s cabin again in the dream when there was someone knocking on her door. The knocking continued and the door received no touch from either side. Karthik started to wonder why no one was answering the door. He tried to get up, but could not.
He suddenly woke up to the sound of loud, persistent knocks on his own door that made their way to his dreams.