Little Steps

He could hear her. She was crying. Just sitting beside his bed and crying her heart out. Like it was the last day of the summer and they’d just buried Jack, her cocker spaniel, back when they were kids. 

That’s when they met, when they were kids. He was the school golden boy, a shoo-in for the prefect. He has just placed in the nationals and they were already talking about an Olympic medal. And he, he just wanted to swim. She had just transferred in, all coltish grace and prickly beauty. And he had seen her and realized that there was a greater goal than anything else.

They had married young. It had just seemed so natural. Nothing else would have really fit. Her parents had thrown a fit and they had run away for a court marriage. She quit medical school midway and then traveled the world with him. The championships. The Asian golds in 1998. And then Sydney in 2000. And then he quit. At the top of his game and no questions asked. They had Sumon in 2001. And she was the best mother. And then she went back to college – she had other souls to save. He was the stay at home husband-father, with the non-demanding job at the coaching academy. And it was perfect.

It was 2005, when he first started noticing the tremors. They had just come back from celebrating his 31^st birthday. And the newspapers were calling for him to finally get the Khel Ratna. It was high time. And he had gotten the teensiest bit drunk on his pint and a half. He just couldn’t hold his liquor apparently. And she was there beside him and her lips were red from the merlot. It was her drink, her only drink. He had brought back a bottle the first time he had gone abroad and they had gotten drunk together. A first time for them both. And now he was the teensiest bit drunk and he wanted so much to hold her and frame her face and kiss her on her red lips. But he could not find the words and his fingers were not quite his, strung as if on an invisible master’s strings.

Dr. Alok was in his mid-forties and was everyone’s description of the family doctor with his warm smile and comfortable manner. However, he was actually the foremost neuropathologist in the country and he wasn’t smiling this time.

I’m really sorry. Your test results came back. It is early-onset ALS. It is very rare.

Okay. How do we get past this?

He clutched her hand.  Sumon was at his grandparents’ like for most weekends. Instead of their usual drive down to Lonavala, they had booked an appointment with the doctor.

You do not. I’m really sorry but I feel that you would be better served if you knew all the facts beforehand. Obviously we can prescribe medication but you are looking at 3, 4 years at the most and with the kind of numbers I see, I think the disease could be progressing fast.

And he couldn’t find anything to say.

At first he got scared and then he got angry. Then he turned inwards and shut everyone out. She cried, hit him and shouted at him. But he just needed to turn off. And then he couldn’t. She was everything and without her, he was dead anyway.

And like a river running wild, the disease took away chunks of him. There were days when pretending was easy and they laughed and talked and snuggled together. But most days it was difficult to pick Sumon up and roughhouse just like they used to do. It killed him to be less then than that, less than the perfect father he had always wanted to be, less than what he thought he’d be.

And now she was crying. The meds Dr. Alok had prescribed him made him groggy and the lights were dim and he wondered vaguely if it was evening yet. Though it didn’t quite matter. Time was nothing, meant nothing and he didn’t have much of it anyway. He didn’t stir. She was talking to herself, talking to him.

Why did you choose me? (I didn’t have a choice.)

The fear is killing me. Sumon is so young. Will he not know his father? (You’ll tell him about me.)

I don’t know how long I can keep on being strong. This is so unfair. We had the best time and then you gave up on me, on us. You know we had our deal and you are just not sticking to your end of it. (I know and I’m damn sorry. Just believe me when I say that if there was a way for us to be together, for me to stay, I’d find that way.)

I can’t take it anymore. I had a dream and you gave me the dream. And now it’s a nightmare.

That night (or maybe it was very early morning) he woke up. He had never felt better. He had not taken the meds the previous night. She usually insisted and he had just pretended to be asleep. His head was clear and there was a glow in the window. There was the faintest chill in the air as he stepped up to the floor-length window and just stood there for a while. The view was usually spectacular from the 12^th floor. The rain started in the slow manner of most rains. He reached out a hand to collect some drops. And it shook. Just a bit.

It was funny. And sad. And it was the best dive he had ever done.