Between Beeps and Raindrops

The south-western sky over Kakkanad was smudged lilac when Dr. Anand Menon finally peeled off his blood-flecked gloves. A Saturday that had begun with a factory fire, lurched into a bus collision and fizzled out with the usual parade of chest pains left him feeling like a dishrag wrung dry. At thirty-three he was already the unofficial lynch-pin of Lakeshore City Hospital's Emergency Department; solid, unflappable, and so often on call that his mother joked the automatic doors recognised his gait and whispered "Welcome home."

He stepped out of the staff gate, stethoscope coiled in a pocket like a tired snake. The air smelled of damp tar and jackfruit leaves; bus headlights cut silver across puddles. Anand was thinking only of the reheated avial waiting in his fridge when he noticed a powder-blue Scooty stalled beneath a fizzing streetlamp. Two women were stranded there. The rider wrestled a stubborn kick-start; the pillion, legs swung to one side, waved cars around with exaggerated traffic-police flair.

"Doctor-saare!" the pillion called when she spotted his green scrubs. "Free consultation? This patient's heart isn't beating."

Anand raised an eyebrow. "Try fluids," he dead-panned. "Petrol, specifically."

She hopped off and walked backwards in front of him like a roving TV reporter. Even in the weak sodium glow he caught flashes of restless humour-rain gleaming on a denim jacket, ponytail escaping its cloth tie, rubber chappals slapping the wet road.

"Fluids administered," she said, knocking on the tank. "Prognosis still poor. Drastic measures?"

"Push to ICU," he suggested. "Immediate crank-case massage."

Her friend snorted. Anand stooped, flicked the choke and kicked once. The engine coughed indignantly, then caught.

The girl saluted, dramatic. "Bill me, Doctor."

"Rate ithiri koodum! It have doubled," he called over his shoulder as he headed for the bus stand.

She cupped a hand to her ear. "Oho, inflation!" The scooter buzzed off, her laughter trailing behind like a kite tail. Anand was still smiling when the mobile in his pocket buzzed. 

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Fifteen minutes later the ED doors burst open with the metallic clatter that makes every nurse tense. Two casualties from an intersection pile-up-both helmeted, both conscious. One was a Scooty rider with a fractured wrist; the other, her pillion, lay easing herself off a stretcher, face drawn in a rictus of pain and disbelief. The mischievous eyes that had mocked him in the street met his now, pupils wide with painkillers and the shock of cosmic irony.

"BP 110 over 70, mid-shaft clavicle fracture, multiple abrasions," Nurse Soumya rattled off.

"Consultancy fees?" the girl whispered hoarsely as Anand adjusted her sling.

"Consider this an advance," he said, and forced himself into professional autopilot: neuro check, X-ray request, tetanus injection. All the while he clocked the details that would replay later in quieter hours-how she bit her lip to keep from crying, how her fingers trembled but didn't flinch when he cleaned gravel from her knee.

Her name, he learned, was Nila Mathew: twenty-nine, UX designer at an Infopark firm, collector of midnight bike rides and crumpled paper cups on which she sketched cartoons during yawning stand-ups. She lived alone in a rented flat with a fern she kept forgetting to water and a Spotify playlist named "Odd Hour Monsoon." She rode pillion, she said, because being a passenger helped her watch the movie outside.

Four days of observation followed. Every morning, after making the rounds, Anand drifted towards Bed 32 "just to confirm vitals..." Nila wielded teasing like antiseptic-brisk sting that comforted.

"Doctore," she asked one afternoon, eyes feigning seriousness, "do you stitch people's hearts as neatly as shirt pockets?"

"Planning a tear-and-repair experiment?"

"Only if you promise symmetrical sutures."

In return for her jokes he translated the ward’s gadgetry into Malayalam metaphors; in return for his metaphors she pointed out the hidden colours around them ("That screen is a perfect 'ECG green'; someone should name a paint shade after it"). The nurses exchanged knowing glances and quietly coined a call-sign for the ward chat: Doctor Romeo to cubicle four.

Nila was discharged with a sling, a sack of medication and a stern warning about scooters. At the exit she paused. "If I promise to keep all clavicles intact, will you show me a part of Kochi that isn't fluorescent green?"

It was the boldest prescription he'd ever received. He answered with a date.

 

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They strolled through Jew Town under a fine silver rain, pausing at antique shops where Nila wrote invented histories for brass candlesticks. Anand corrected her politely until she accused him of being a walking footnote. They shared pazham pori and black coffee drenched in cardamom, shoulders brushing when tourists surged by.

On the Vypeen chain ferry, wind whipped her hair across his cheek. She asked how he handled death; he described his first code-blue failure in residency, the sound of a flat line that seemed to echo long after paperwork was filed. She listened, no interruptions, only a steady gaze. When silence stretched, she touched his elbow-just once-and looked out at the water as if giving grief a horizon.

Sundays became ritual. Anand’s mother, Radhamani teacher, insisted on feeding Nila proper sadya "for calcium." Nila arrived with jackfruit halwa, charmed the older woman with fluent Malayalam idioms, then teased Anand about filing his nails "like a vain surgeon." Radhamani whispered to her librarian husband that evening, "This girl laughs from the diaphragm. Good for a boy who forgets he has one."

Kochi's monsoon makes headlines for newcomers, but locals treat it as an intimate scolding elder who always arrives with sweet plantains. One Tuesday night a deluge cut power city-wide. In the ED the generator hummed, fans staggered, phones died. Security rushed in: roads to Vyttila were flooded; staff stranded. Anand's thoughts leaped unbidden to a low-lying flat where water might already be nosing through the vents.

He borrowed a paramedic Jeep, siren-permission granted. He found Nila in ankle-deep water outside her building, ankle gashed, neighbours huddled on higher stairs. Once inside the Jeep she tried humour- "Repeat customers get volume discounts, right?"-but her voice shook as he disinfected the wound.

They reached the hospital at dawn, sun an underlit coin above drowned bus shelters. While he sutured her ankle she watched every movement.

"Doctors don't do house calls any more," she said quietly.

"I make exceptions for high-risk patients addicted to scooters and stairs."

The laughter between them dissolved whatever professional wall still stood.

Nila refused a ward bed-"I already know all the beep notes" - but offered nights at the patient-family desk, explaining charts to bewildered relatives. Anand would emerge from resus and find her drawing cartoon fish on medicine cups for a burn-scalded six-year-old, or smoothing panic from a mason's wife by translating GCS 14 (a brain injury level) into plain Malayalam. Watching her, he realised love can look like felt-tip ink on a paper cap and a hand steadying a stranger's breath.

Busy lives, though, still chafe. Three months in, Anand cancelled dinner twice in one week-once for an MVA pile-up, next for an audit meeting. Nila, waiting outside a shuttered kallummekkaya stall, typed and deleted a dozen messages before sending: "You treat emergencies; relationship is elective? :-)" The smiley couldn't hide the barb.

At 2 a.m. he called from an empty stairwell. "Come to the hospital entrance tomorrow morning. I left something with security." Then he hung up, fearing her answer.

Dawn found her collecting a shoebox labelled Wardrobe Protocol: one navy scrub top, size M; a black onyx stethoscope charm shaped like a guitar pick; and a Post-it: “If you wear this on alternate Sundays, you're on voluntary duty inside the ED with me-no cancellations possible.”

She turned up that Sunday at 09:00 sharp, scrub top a little loose, eyes gleaming mischief. "Clocking in, Doctor?"

He handed her a visitor badge that read Partner-in-Crime where 'Attendant' should be. The argument ended the way their story began: with practical solutions wrapped in gentle irreverence. 

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Late January, the hospital allowed a miniature pookalam in the lobby. Night-shift's tail-end found Nila and a posse of nurses cross-legged, arranging marigold petals. Anand walked in, rolled up coat sleeves and placed a single purple lotus at the centre.

"Breaking colour symmetry," she scolded.

"Adding focal point," he countered.

They worked silently, a choreography of shoulders and speckled fingertips. When the last Chrysanthemum settled, Nila leaned back to admire the pattern. Anand tugged at his collar, suddenly awkward, the weight of unspoken things thick as humidity between them.

"I've seen people at their first breath and their last," he said, voice pitched low so petals wouldn't overhear. "It teaches you life is mostly middle moments-like this." He gestured to the half-finished pookalam, the wet floor, the faint smell of dettol mingling with marigold. "I'd like as many middle moments with you as we're allowed."

She didn't answer immediately. Instead she reached into her tote, drew out an envelope and slid it into his scrub pocket before rising to guide an elderly couple toward Radiology, giving a slide glance and a smile.

After rounds he opened it: an application for a certificate course titled Patient Narrative & Human-Centred Design. Applicant: Nila Mathew. Reference: Dr Anand Menon. Beneath the signature line she had doodled two figures under an umbrella - one in scrubs, the other with a shoulder sling, both laughing. Raindrops above them formed tiny hearts, small enough to miss if you weren't looking closely.

Visitors streamed in, sandals squeaking on monsoon-damp tiles. Anand folded the paper, found her at the corridor's far end and slipped his hand into hers. Wheelchairs rolled by, alarms pinged, someone called "Doctor-saare!" but for that breath the Emergency Department spun on a gentler axis. Outside, sunlight burnished the last puddles into mirrors. Inside, two people who met in the worst five minutes of a rainy night stood ready; finally for all the ordinary days to come.