Editorial Rasoi Short Story Prev Issue Next Issue

By the time I was ten years old, I knew something was wrong with me. I liked to cut myself and see the red blood staining my brown skin. Naturally I had to keep my passion for this unusual habit a secret. When mother yelled at me for leaving the front door open or the tap in the bathroom dripping, or brother pinched me when he thought no one was looking, my face would go red and take on a closed, shuttered look. Then in a few days I would go running out of the bathroom clutching a bleeding hand. I would be rushed to the General Hospital for stitches, small white tablets and thick sour-bitter syrups and sent home to recover. My parents told the aunts and uncles who were always visiting and staying over for weeks, that I fell on glass, stepped on Dad’s razor or tripped on kitchen knives for these were the excuses that I fabricated. No one, least of all my kind parents suspected the truth and though I cost them a considerable portion of their paychecks in hospital bills, they did not complain. I was labeled ‘accident-prone’ and they watched me carefully and tried to keep sharp objects out of my way.

I, however, obtained my own implements by a simple and ingenious method: I searched the waste paper basket in the hall bathroom that Dad shaved in, sometimes at three in the morning, for his old razors. In this manner I collected more than twelve every year and discarded the old ones when I had no need of them. When no one was looking, I sharpened the razors on a huge stone in the back yard otherwise used to wash clothes. Armed thus, I was able to cut myself atleast once or twice a year when the grievance was big enough to warrant it. The surprising thing was that I got away with it. Apart from the attention my wounds elicited, the pain and anger I felt at someone’s insult dissipated as if by magic and this was the main reason why I returned to the blade again. Mother, father, aunts, uncles and cousins crowded around me whispering and blaming each other for not having watched me, contrite for having scolded me the previous day. I lay back in bed eating ice cream, a rare treat for I had weak throat glands according to mother. Lying in bed watching the thick vanilla-flavored ice-cream in my bowl and knowing I had many more spoonfuls to eat as I stirred it round and round were some of the happiest times of my childhood.

Of course the pain was almost unbearable. When the razor touched skin and broke through to the gooey stuff beneath, my hands trembled and I forced myself to endure it. But I never pierced too deep for I had learnt in a science class at school that there were veins lurking somewhere below and I had no wish to die. I also had no wish to look ugly and so I avoided the face and neck and confined the cuts to the inside of the arms or the soles of my feet, which I thought had no aesthetic appeal anyway. Things went well until I was sixteen and then my hobby collapsed in a dramatic manner and I never took it up again.

By now my world had widened considerably and though I was a bookish sort, I had a few friends and even acquired a boyfriend (a classmate’s brother whom I met at her birthday party). I met him on Fridays after school. One such Friday, behind the old school building, he took my hand and after blinking rapidly a few times, said quickly ‘Nora, I can’t meet you anymore because I have a new girl.’ I was stunned and hurt beyond measure but since I could see he was bracing himself for the inevitable tears, I decided not to give him the satisfaction. Snatching my hand away, I burst into a run and ran all the way home past crowds of school kids and evening commuters, my hair and school tie flying in the wind. I shut myself up in the room I shared with my brother and planned the greatest cutting project yet. It would have to be on the thigh this time where I could see a lot of blood. I had never done a thigh before, but even my thin ones were fleshy above the knees and ripe for a razor. I planned three quick cuts, one straight down, the other two diagonals to make them look as if I had fallen off my bicycle on my daily evening rides around the street.

I scrabbled around under the mattress and found my sharpest razor. Dad had thrown it away only the week before and I had not used it yet but I sharpened it again on the washing stone for good measure. At 4:30 p.m. I went for a ride on my bicycle so I could prove it later. On returning, I threw the bike against the wall of the shed and ran into the bedroom before any one could spot me. My razor was waiting for me under the mattress where I always hid it. I pulled up my skirt, took the shiny blade firmly in my right hand and sat on the edge of the bed. Closing my eyes, I recalled my meeting with Allen that afternoon and how he had held my hand. Predictably the pain came rushing into my heart and in the throes of it I pushed the razor down, keeping it pressed firmly and drew three lines quickly on my left thigh a few inches above the knee. With my other hand I held the flesh of the victimized thigh squeezed up so I could work better.

At first to my surprise I saw only something thick and white and solid underneath the brown skin, parting before my blade. I wondered where the blood was, and the pain for that matter. Then both hit together: The blood a thin red line between the thick white stuff and the pain a burst of white in my head. Quickly the blood gushed and covered my upper leg and then the knee until I could see nothing but blood every where. It dripped on to my sneakers, soaked my school dress and fell on the white bed sheet in huge red drops. I saw that I had made only two cuts. The third line had failed to cut the skin. The pain descended to my neck, shoulders and chest and for a while it remained in my chest, growing and growing until I thought I would suffocate with it. I waited for it to go down to my leg but it remained in the chest and my leg was numb. At this point I panicked and ran out trailing blood on the floor and yelled for Mother who was in the kitchen. Then everything became a blur and all I can recall was that others started yelling drowning my voice. Faces hovered over me: shock-filled bulging eyes and pink hanging tongues in open mouths that kept gaping and gasping and would not shut.

The next thing I know I found myself in a car filled with people. I was squashed between mother and an aunt. Two aunts and a cousin were piled on the other side of mother and the aunt next to me. Dad was in front giving the driver directions. I was being taken to the General Hospital again. Since I’d visited the place many times, I closed my eyes in anticipation of the sweet attention I would get. But I’d never before been taken there in a car. Dad had always rushed out to hail a cab because we didn’t have a car and neither did any of the uncles. When I muttered something about this to mother, everyone strained forward as if I were dying and bequeathing millions to them right this moment. Mother said the rich neighbor had lent his car and I knew then that my cuts were very bad because the rich neighbor never lent his car easily.

In the hospital, a burly male-nurse lifted me on to a stretcher at the reception. I did not notice his face then. Father signed some forms and then the nurse wheeled me down a long empty corridor with shiny antiseptic white walls and an equally shiny bare floor. I turned my head with effort and saw behind me the receding anxious faces of mother, father and the others in the reception hall. Then there was nothing but the corridor stretching ahead for miles and the sound of the nurse’s heavy rasping breathing. I lay back eager to see what the kindly Dr. Green would say this time. How I enjoyed his concern! After what must have been a few minutes, I became aware of a strange sound. The male nurse was breathing in a loud Hraaah Hraaah Hraaah. The white sheet covering me from the waist below was stained with blood and my head felt light and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth so that I could not speak without difficulty.

‘I've never been down this corridor before.’ I wanted to say but I heard myself saying instead, ‘Why are you breathing so hard?’ This was an absurd question and for a second I thought the nurse might be offended. But there was no response only the loud Hraaah Hraaah Hraaah that seemed to get louder and louder. ‘Why are you breathing so hard and loud?’ I repeated. I had difficulty articulating each word and felt exhausted at the end of my question. Again no response. With a great effort I said ‘Why? Why?’ like a petulant child. Silence. I twisted my neck a bit to my left and strained to see him. Now the Hraaah Hraaah Hraaah was very close to my left ear. From the corner of my left eye I saw one large brownish-black hand larger than any hand of the uncles or Dad, surely the largest hand I had ever seen. Bluish veins bulged along the back of the palm and the thick fingers were curled tightly on the head of the stretcher. I looked away. Again the silence punctuated only by Hraaah hraaah Hraaah. Every instinct told me to jump down, away from the stretcher, but I was too weak from the loss of blood.

‘Where are you taking me?’ I cried, fear giving my voice strength. No answer but now he began running pushing me along. I clung to the sides, my legs bouncing beneath the sheet. Hraaah Hraaah Hraaah, louder, louder, louder and now he was really running, breathing, running, breathing, running, the corridor walls flying by us. Just when the breathing grew so loud I thought the whole hospital would hear, we came to a sudden turn and he turned sharply to the right almost hitting the wall. When he straightened the stretcher I saw we had entered another corridor, very narrow and much like the one we had just left but this one was short. It had white walls and a shiny floor and ended in an unmarked brown colored door ahead of us. Pushing me with one hand now, the nurse reached the door in three long strides and knocked on it sharply with one huge knuckle. I strained again to see his face but the pain in my thigh made me lie back. The door swung silently open almost at once, revealing a tall spindly nurse with white mottled skin and stick-like legs encased in white nylon stockings that had a run in one leg. Her high-heeled shoes were white too like the corridor and this dimly lit room. Her starched knee-length uniform hung stiffly on her bony shoulders from which rose a long neck dotted with red blotches like the spots on the giraffes in my old picture book. Her face seemed at first glance only an extension of the neck: long, thin and blotched with the same red spots. But it sported a straight, thin sharp nose, thin lips clamped together and two slits for eyes a vague watery shade of gray. She peered at me through these but without any kind of curiosity. In her right hand was an empty syringe with a thin silver needle sticking out in mid-air. Her left hand lay on the doorknob of the half-opened door.

‘We have two more such cases.’ She said in a low soft voice to the male nurse. ‘The doctor’s busy now but you can bring her in anyway.’ The attendant only grunted in reply and emitting a loud Hraaah once, he pushed me in and backed away to the door. Before I could twist my body around he banged the door shut behind him and I was alone with the woman. She extended a bony hand towards me and for an instant I thought she was going to introduce herself and shake my hand. Instead she pulled off the blood- stained sheet in one swift motion. My skirt had gone up to my waist and a bit of my blue cotton panties stuck out. The red and white mess was now somehow smeared on my right thigh as well. The nurse took her time and gazed at both thighs intently without a change on her face. Presently she walked to a nearby table filled with more syringes, bottles, needles and small papers. She carefully placed the syringe in her hand in a corner of the table. Picking up a white paper pad and a pen she began writing methodically, looking every now and then at the oozing red cuts. When she had filled the notebook-sized sheet of paper with her neat handwriting, she turned away, placed the pad on one side of the table and the pen neatly beside it and silently wheeled me further along inside the little room. We passed another dull brown curtainless door that opened out directly into a hall of some kind. The hall, which resembled a hospital general ward but was empty, had whitewashed walls and the same white shiny floor that was really beginning to hurt my eyes.

‘Wait here for the doctor.’ She instructed, leaving me at the far end of the back wall. It was an order and there was no kindness in her tone. She left at once after this, shutting the brown door quietly behind her. Alone for the first time to contemplate my actions, I looked down at my wound, exposed now after the nurse had whipped the sheet away. It had not been cleaned or even washed with antiseptic since I’d entered the hospital. I had never been in this hall before, indeed I had never been down that long corridor and I wondered if this was a new wing with new doctors and nurses. Nevertheless I made up my mind to tell Dad who knew the president of the hospital, that services here had become extremely poor. When I was discharged I would find out the names of the strange male nurse with his horrible breathing, the rude female nurse and any others who treated me this way. My fear abated and a sense of reality seeped back and with it, my anger rose at having been abandoned in this empty hall that did not look in the least as though it were part of the hospital. For want of something to do I studied my wound. I had cut well and deep and I allowed myself a fleeting moment of pride in the deed. The two cuts on the thigh still oozed blood though they were beginning to clot. It had after all been close to two hours since the razor had sliced skin. The white that I had first seen before the blood under the skin seemed to me now to be tendons. I tried to recall a picture of the human body and what a tendon looked like in my science book but nothing came to mind. I had wanted to ask the nurse about it but instinctively I did not want her touching and probing my wound with those bony fingers, looking for the white under the mess. Now the white had taken on a yellowish tinge under the clotting skin. The cuts themselves had coagulated to no more than two thin straight lines interrupted by tow or three wide ovalish openings where the clots had not yet fully formed. Through these openings, I could see blobs of sticky flesh covered with fresh red. Revulsion at the sight of my wounds was rather new to me because in the past the rewards had been so great and I had been so fussed over. I had never had time to actually examine my cuts. Moreover they were always quickly washed and bandaged, not left to clot like this. Now I wanted to vomit at the sight of all the colored stuff on the thigh. I looked away towards the door. It was still shut and I heard nothing beyond, no telephones ringing or voices discussing patients. It was quiet even for a hospital. The nurse had placed me in one corner, facing the door. From my position I could see all of the bare room. The walls had no windows or pictures and the floor was devoid of carpets or rugs. The furniture was sparse: A steel swivel chair that came up to the stretcher’s height and a long steel table covered with implements of the strangest kind such as I had never seen before stood against the wall to my right. To my left, was a low wooden table with carved legs that looked incongruous with the steel and shiny white. A pair of chain-link handcuffs like the ones I’d seen in detective movies lay on its surface and retracted from some of the charm of the carved legs. Above the table hung a naked lamp, bright enough to bathe all corners in a dim glow. It was the only light in the entire hall and I was glad it had been on when we entered for I was sure the rude nurse would have left me in darkness. Two white folding chairs stood on either side of the low table.

The pain in my leg had become intense and I cast about for something else to divert my attention to. The implements on the long table to the right drew my eye. No doctor I had met ever carried any of these, let alone arranged them in such neat rows as if on display for the patient. Perhaps these were new like the wing and the staff. Nearest me, in the first row, lay a long rod-like thing. It ended in a curved hook that looked ready to pull someone’s eye out. Next to it in the same row was a regular hammer like the ones Dad and the uncles used to beat nails into walls at home for pictures or Christmas decorations. But this one was slightly smaller and the gleaming handle was steel, not wood. Beside it were two long nails about half an inch thick. Next I noticed what looked like a crow bar and then an assortment of knives with plain and serrated blades and steel handles, highly polished. At the back of my mind the fear crept up again but in this silent place fear seemed futile, a passive helpless thing and so I just lay there looking at the table. From my half-lying position, I could not properly see the remaining tools or what ever they were but there seemed to be many of them and they stretched out in neat rows all along the table. The bony nurse was very efficient.

I eased myself completely into a lying position and bit my lip against the pain that exploded at this movement. Sweat poured down my neck and back and into my blouse. I closed my eyes but the dark behind my eyelids was not dark enough and I still saw the strange implements so I opened them again. Then I heard some voices on the other side of the door: A man’s voice and a woman’s soft rasp giving monosyllabic replies to the man’s sharp questions. I struggled to rise when the door swung open and the man entered. He was huge, over six feet tall I guessed, with large white hands. A spotless white surgical mask covered his face from the nose down and he wore a high-collared white robe like a priest’s that flowed down and covered his feet. A patch of thick red neck with a web of bluish lines running all over it peeped out in-between where the robe ended and the mask began. His eyes were narrow slits like those of the female nurse who had dumped me here and they were almost closed as I looked at them. But what made me gasp were his thick hands exposed from the elbows down. The white mottled skin was covered with long neat scars that I recognized as deliberate. They looked like the ones I had become skilled in inflicting on myself over the years. There was not more than an inch of bare smooth skin anywhere from the elbows down to where his fingers began.

‘Please lie down.’ He said. ‘You have lost a lot of blood.’
‘Who are you?’ I mumbled suspiciously.
‘I am the doctor on duty.’ Despite his appearance the voice had a soothing effect on me because I was conditioned to trust doctors. I relaxed. At last here was someone who would wash and dress this damned wound and not neglect me any more. He reached out and put a hand on my forehead. The scars on his skin filled my vision. ‘What is this?’ I said weakly before I could stop myself. The narrow eyes pinned me and his mouth beneath the mask moved as if he were smiling. Removing the hand, he reached out one huge finger and pressed the bloody flesh on my thigh gently.

‘I too cut myself often like you.’ He said. His voice had a rasp like the male nurse. I cried out in fear though his finger pressing into the open cut was not hurting yet. ‘I did not cut myself!’ I managed to say. Now the smile became a low raspy chuckle like dry paper in the wind. The finger pressed down even more gently and deeper into the wound. ‘Don’t lie to me. It will be easier for you if you don’t.’

I let out a real cry of agony this time and tried to push the thick finger away but it seemed to have become lodged inside the flesh. The bony nurse who had come in behind him but whom I had not noticed till then walked up to us silently and tapped his shoulder with a finger. ‘All ready, Doctor.’ She said. There was an undertone of mockery in her words as if this whole scene was funny. He nodded at her, then turned the slit eyes to me again.

‘I am going to ask you some questions before we begin the treatment.’

I looked at him mute. The pain brought tears to my eyes and the room was beginning to spin around. I fought to stay conscious. Without warning the doctor jerked his finger away from my flesh. There was a sharp pain then fresh blood spurted from the clotting wound. He held the finger up to where the light from the low table fell on it. A small piece of white was sticking to the nail. I turned aside, retched once and vomited on the bare floor. No one noticed.

‘This is not an accident.’ He mused out loud speaking mostly to himself. ‘As I said, you have cut yourself deliberately with a razor. Do you agree?’

I stared at him with fear and hatred. ‘I want my mother. I will report this to the hospital authorities.’

‘Do you agree?’ He rasped.

‘Get me out of here! Right now!’

‘Do you agree or don’t you?’ The rasp set my teeth on edge. He was breathing faster now, Hraah, Hraah, Hraaah.

The nurse slunk up again. She was smiling. She held a narrow steel tray in her hands. It contained a few of the implements from the long table that I had been studying before they entered. Through a haze of tears I could make out some knives with serrated blades. ‘Excuse me doctor, do you want to administer a pain killer?’ This too she said as if it were a joke and the corners of her mouth twitched and the watery gray eyes danced. The doctor shook his head gravely. ‘No not now.’ Then he turned back to me. ‘Do you agree?’ His voice rasped again. The thought of a painkiller was more than I could bear. ‘Please give me a pain killer.’ I said trying not to beg. He ignored me and persisted with the question as if it were the most important thing in my treatment. The lump of white was still stuck to the edge of his thick finger. ‘Do you agree?’ He shook it at me. ‘Yes!’ I yelled staring at the white. ‘Yes! Yes! Yes! I agree!’ By now I didn’t know what I was agreeing to. It seemed to me that I had been yelling and talking and pleading much more than a patient in my condition should. I sank down on the stretcher and gave in to the dizziness. ‘Good’ I heard the doctor say. ‘I’ll be back.’ Then he was gone through the half open door, his heavy tread growing fainter in the corridor. I heard a faucet running and water splashing. Perhaps he was cleansing his finger of the white piece of flesh. The nurse walked around checking and arranging the implements on the table.

I spent the next fifteen minutes or so in a daze, drifting in and out of consciousness with pain and fatigue. The doctor re-entered and shut the door. Around me I could hear the murmur of low rasping voices, a rustle of papers and the tinkling of steel against steel.

Then I was being wheeled over to the low table on the far left of the hall. ‘Get down’ The doctor ordered harshly. He stepped up to me, put his huge hands under my armpits in a tight grip and almost lifted me off the stretcher and onto the floor as he said this. I staggered and fell into the folding chair nearest me. After I was seated he produced a thick black strap from somewhere in his hospital gown and bound me to the back of the chair with the belt running across my chest. ‘Give me your left hand’. I stretched out my hand without resisting in my newfound wisdom. He picked up the chain link cuffs I had seen lying on the table earlier and snapped one end around my thin hand. The other end he fastened to a ring of some metal fixed to the side of the low table. When all this was done he sat back satisfied and consulted a green spiral bound notebook the likes of which I had seen my family doctor use on several occasions.

‘For this kind of a case, we will begin with two quick small cuts on the exact spot of the initial wound or cut.’

He intoned in a dry voice to the nurse who had glided up to him. She nodded and placed the small steel tray she was still holding, at the center of the table. I peered into the tray in disbelief. Three shiny knives, each about five inches long, lay in a neat row. Two pairs of hospital gloves one smaller that the other lay next to the knives. The nurse picked up the smaller pair of gloves and put them on with care, taking time to adjust the thin rubber over each finger. Then with one gloved hand she handed the other pair to the doctor.

‘Thank you.’ He said ceremoniously and he too took a long time putting on and adjusting his gloves. My mind stretched and worked furiously to understand his words. Was he going to cut me? He selected a knife at random from the tray and advanced.

‘No!’ I screamed like the victim of a horror movie I had once seen but he kept advancing. The nurse stepped up close to me on the right and held my flailing right hand in fingers that would not let go. My legs were throbbing with pain and I could not move. The doctor adjusted his mask then cleared some softly oozing stuff from my left thigh with a swab and brought the knife up above the skin. Even in my petrified state I noticed the nurse was dribbling slightly from the corners of her thin pressed lips. Then the knife pierced skin on the same place where I’d made the first cut that afternoon. In all the years I had been cutting myself (and in a perverse way enjoying the pain in anticipation of the attention that would follow), I had never once imagined someone else cutting or even harming me. It was horrible. I screamed.

Hraaah Hraaah Hraaah, the nurse breathed hopping from one foot to the other in excitement, almost letting go of my right hand. The doctor’s breathing too became heavier as he removed the knife, laid it aside and picked up another one from the tray all with surprising swiftness. Another slice at my thigh and this time he missed the second cut I had made by a hairsbreadth. The white windowless walls echoed threw their combined Hraaahs back and forth until the air throbbed with sound and blood was all over the doctor’s gloved hands. When he held up the third knife to the naked bulb, I screamed and fainted.

I was lying in a bed. Beside the bed stood a small vase of real flowers. I looked up. The roof was done in pastel colors with swirls and more flowers. I was covered up to my neck with a white sheet. There was no sign of blood on it but at the sight of the pure white I let out a scream again. A nurse rushed up and as her cool hand fell on my forehead I struggled to move away. My efforts were slow and sluggish.

‘She’s still in a delirium’ the nurse said softly. This nurse was short and fat with a wide warm smile. Anxious familiar faces of the aunts, uncles, mother and dad crowded around the bed eager for a look. Among them I recognized my family doctor Dr. Green. ‘How are you dear?’ He said in his dear old kindly voice. I blinked, the nightmare of the past hour (or was it day?) rushing back. ‘Where are they? Where is the nurse and the doctor who cut me?’ I screamed hoarsely. The faces grew even more anxious and looked at each other and then at me, nodding and clucking as if they were all in a vast conspiracy.

‘There’s no one here my dear, you’ve been imagining things.’ Dr. green said softly.

‘No they were here!’ I insisted. I looked wildly about the small room trying to find something to prove myself but this room was totally unlike the hall I had been taken to. The long table had disappeared. flowered yellow wallpaper covered the walls. On the wall across from my bed hung a gold-framed picture by Thomas Kinkade of sunlight falling on a Victorian winter street. Dr. Green stood by the bed adjusting the sheets and murmuring something. He had ordered the others away I think because they had now moved to a far corner of the room, where they huddled holding a conference of some sort, fixing me all the while with sad and worried glances. The nurse came up again to take my temperature and I tried to hold still and not scream because the others were watching me.

‘A hundred and four.’ She announced gravely.

‘That explains her wild stories.’ Dr. Green said.

‘I tell you, the other doctor cut me.’ I snapped at him. ‘With a knife!’

‘There is no doctor who would cut a patient my dear.’ His voice was gentle and bland but now touched with exasperation.

‘But I can show you the room!’ I protested. ‘It’s at the end of the long corridor from the main reception area.’ ‘There is no such room. No such corridor. No such doctor. No such nurse. Do you understand?’ He put his hand on my shoulder and shook me a bit. Then he turned away to the nurse. ‘Stay here. I want her under supervision for twenty-four hours, give her painkillers if she wants and frequent light meals. No excitement, no visitors for the next few hours at least.’ He was turning away already looking at the chart of his next patient. Then I saw it. The very edge of it stuck out of his white coat along with a stethoscope and a torch. It looked familiar yet strange. I reached out and grazed it with my finger, lightly so Dr. Green wouldn’t know. My mind was tired and saturated and refused to acknowledge this so I peered inside the pocket as far as I could. It was a small hammer, just like the one I had seen laid out in the other room. This time when I screamed the nurse was ready with a syringe. She rushed to me and sank the needle into my upper left arm before I could say anything. Dr. Green left the room shaking his head and whispering to the group in the corner. He did not look at me as he went out.

Thus I was kept tranquilized and well fed and drugged by painkillers until I was discharged two days later and given a clean bill of health. Dr. Green came in on that day and shook my hand. I tried to tell Dad and even visited the hospital on a later occasion with a friend, but I was unable to find the long corridor or the brown unmarked door at the end of the shorter corridor and no one believed me not even my friends at school. I have never cut myself since.

View and Post comment on this article