We lost dozens

Morning, 26 December 2004. I was in Madurai on holiday with my parents and well away from the eastern coast of India when the tsunami struck. As each hour passed bringing more and more bad news, I was frantically calling my friends and relatives in Chennai, where we lived, hoping that the scale of the disaster was not as bad as the local media portrayed it. I was to understand otherwise.

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By evening, when the scale of the devastation had become clearer, I expressed my desire to leave for Chennai the next day. My parents firmly refused. Being an only child in an Indian family is, more often than not, a curse.

Outwardly, the arguments with my parents continued. However, I was debating within myself if I could be of any genuine help. After all, I was just a second year medical student. My clinical rotations had started only two months earlier. Besides, I might earn the wrath of my professors and interns for having the audacity to presume I might be of any help to them. I decided to stay.

We returned to Chennai on New Year's Eve. The government General Hospital, to which my college is attached, is close to the railway station. After reaching Chennai, I asked my parents to go home, and I took a bus to the hospital. Contrary to my expectations, the hospital looked quite normal when I arrived.

I walked into the perennially crowded outpatient building, with its usual muck, intolerable smell, desperate moans, and relentless cries. Several doctors and nurses seemed to be missing-I was told they had been shipped off to the worst affected parts of the country.

I wandered around the hospital for some time, unable to imagine what the hospital must have seemed like just a few days earlier. And as I began to realise that I was moving with the express aim of going nowhere-an excuse, perhaps to feel the sorrow-a voice shouted from behind. A familiar intern. "Where the hell have you been? I tried to call you so many times." "For what?" I asked, somewhat bewildered. "The hospital was overwhelmed until the day before yesterday. The emergency department was full. Several doctors had to be sent off to the southern districts immediately. It was downright unmanageable. We could have used some help. We lost dozens of victims here."

"But, I'm just in my second year," I retorted, quite taken aback. "What, you thought we were going to ask you to perform a coronary bypass? We needed someone to measure the vital signs, to give CPR [cardiopulmonary resuscitation] and injections, to carry instructions, and write down the prescriptions. That's all. Why, you won't do such small jobs?"

Before I could protest, the intern went to attend to the other patients in the unit, as I sat down on a blood stained, urine smelling mattress of that empty hospital bed.

The words "we lost dozens" kept on ringing in my ears. Time must have passed, for it was the silence after the arrival of a senior doctor that brought me to my senses.

The intern came back and asked me in a whisper whether I minded staying and helping him out. My mouth opened to say that I was tired after the long and uncomfortable train journey. Instead, I asked for a spare coat, then borrowed his mobile phone and dialled home.