Dr. House- A Love Short Story
I believe that one could safely say that anyone who has lived 20 years of would have fallen in love at least once, if not more than once, in the journey. If they say they haven’t, there’s only one way to justify the statement…they are LYING. I, my reader, am no exception to this, for I too have a love story.
Who am i?
Well that doesn’t matter now, what does matter is I am now here to relay to you that singular event that made my life complete. Yes I use the word complete, for I do believe that one’s life is not complete if one hasn’t experienced love in at least one of its varying forms…..the bliss of being loved, the pain caused by the lack of it, or the contentment of loving and being loved.
Ere long I implore you not to say ‘my mom loves me. It’s all I want’ for I shall definitely hang myself if you do, we all know that’s not the love I am talking about. I shall honestly confide to you now that my experience in this front is disgustingly scarce. Yes I’ve had my share of proposals in school, six to be precise, one of the perks of being part of a hype gang In school. Even with the prospect of being ‘cool by association’ by dating a member of a hype gang ,I never understood what would provoke these wannabe ‘cool dudes’ ( mind you they were all good looking, which perplexed me even more) to take such a drastic measure as to venture to date me.
Let me be honest here reader, and describe myself….i am no beauty queen, as a matter of fact, I am a far cry from that, edging more close to ‘mirror cracking material’, have no particular talents nor an exquisite figure to compensate that lack of sweetness in features so appealing to the opposite sex. All in all I would not call myself a ‘chick’ or even venture to say I am ‘beautiful in my own ways’. That being said, though I was used to this trivial child play I myself had never ‘fallen’ or even ‘risen’ in love….not until I entered bmcri.
I am weird. Never in my life, and 18 years of it too, had I had real feelings, the kind that makes your heart squeeze and wrench against your chest, just wishing he would at least look at you, speak your name out. Not even a ’crush’ on someone. The first time I saw him was by pure coincidence. My beloved friend was twitching in pain, she was hurt and I was scared for her. What could I do? What could we do? We had no one to help us, and mere first years, no knowledge to benefit from.
So we hurried her off to the casualty at Victoria. Trousseau sign positive. Just seeing the things depicted in the text books right in front of us was enough to freak us out. Because there were no beds in the female ward we had to do with the male ward, we got a clean bed. She had a cannula put in and we were all waiting, fretting. That’s when I heard his voice,I shall never forget it,my back was turned towards him and my attention on my friend lying in front of m,but somewhere in the depths of my mind his voice struck joy, I don’t know why.
‘Are you guys comfortable with this arrangement?’ asked our mysterious young man
‘I’ll be with you in a minute’ footsteps going back.
The muffled tread of polished formal shoes and the swishing of apron announced his arrival, I felt his presence beside me…his apron ruffling. I took a step back letting him take a better look. He checked out her hand, called the nurse, gave her instructions.
‘Get her a paper bag and ask her to breathe in to it”.
He turns around and a wicked smile appears.
‘Why do we make her do that?’ hearing no answer, he went sweeping back out the ward. Here issued the frantic giggles and muffled whispers and excited trills from my friends( there was quite a crowd, the whole gang was there). One particular poor soul was helplessly smitten. For her atleast it was as if the the whole ward had turned in to a big ice skating ring the moment the tip of his high polished shoe touched it and she slipped and fell face down and was gliding around and around .
She stood there lost in thoughts swaying slightly, I bet in her mind’s eye she was in a pink frilly frock her hair down , pulling off graceful ballet movements and gliding around him as he miraculously eased the suffering of some poor soul with ‘You belong with me’ playing in the background and every single patient smiling and waving brightly coloured stoles in the air swaying to the tune.
Here came back our prince charming, he leaned across the door crossed his long legs and shoved his hands it to his pockets. Invariably every one collected around him in a loose semi circle, I stood rooted near the bed. As I said I am weird, I just don’t find guys attractive that easily, I have very high standards, at least when I am gaping, not so much when I fall in love though.
‘So you guys are students, B M Cites’ he spelled out each syllable.
‘The cream of the society, the brightest of the lot. I’m not as intelligent as you people, I studied in a private college’.
He was definitely mocking, the tone said its all, the words were lined with heavy sarcasm. A definite case of sour grapes and inferiority complex. What guts! He comes, ignores our sick friend, flirts with rest and smoothly mocks them and render them idiots! How dare he! Just listening to the conversation made me boil with indignation.
“Where’s the case sheet?” Now everyone was looking around, a bit confused as if hoping they’d find the case sheet walking in through the door any second.
“Ha!” an expulsion. Mocking again.
“Well get at least a BP apparatus!” in a fraction of a second everyone dispersed, few ran out to other wards, others to the corner of the same ward. Each desperate to find the BP apparatus first and gain his approval, while he watched the whole scene with a smile on his lips. With intensive searching leading to exhaustion of places to search ,the disheartened love birds returned to their subject of adoration empty handed.
“Not even one of you could find a BP apparatus” again with the sarcasm!
Of course he already knew they wouldn’t find one. That’s it! I couldn’t take it anymore!
“We are first termers”
I expelled, not bothering to conceal the irritation, anger or disgust in my voice or even bothering to smoothen it out with a ‘sir ‘in the end. That’s when I actually saw him. He wore a full sleeved sky blue shirt and black formal pants, his hands were shoved in his pocket pushing away the apron to reveal a vast expanse of chest muscles, too vast. His physique wasn’t perfect. He was tall, but his shoulders too broad for his frame, made him look unproportionate, and he stooped a little. His face wasn’t striking, his features were too sharp and prominent, his nose like vulture’s beak, but the dark intelligent eyes that now fixed on me were the most beautiful and captivating pair that I ever came across.
On a whole dear reader, I would not describe him as a handsome man. But his physical shortcomings were rendered dispensable by his utter sureity , confidence and demeanor . With a smooth tongue and captivating eyes, he made everyone hang on to every word of his, as I recognized him as not so handsome a man, I simultaneously acknowledged him as a force of nature. His eyes spitting arrogance now showed a light of something close to amusement, I spared him one last stare of contempt and reverted my eyes to my primary concern.
Though I must say I did have to endure many raised eyebrows and hostile glares at the slight I had aimed at our aforesaid secondary concern, I escaped with not much damage physically. He stayed to chit chat a bit longer and afterwards wandered off in search of fresh amusement elsewhere. The collective sigh that echoed through the ward at this occasion must have been audible even to those on the next floor.
Mine was that of relief, while the rest were united in grief. With the arrival of our friend’s brother , and her discharge, everyone made their way back to the hostel. In vain did seven pairs of eyes search for him, but he was nowhere to be found. The following days one could never sit down for the group breakfast, lunch or supper without being suffocated by the various presumptions, assumption and plans on tracing the mysterious pg who had charmed everyone’s heart out. Elaborate plans regarding his tracking were made. Never tiring feet wandered along the corridors of the casualty, and constant prayers, that one us should fall sick soon, rang in every lip.
At the slightest sign of distress, one was rushed to the casualty in a big fuss, but the charmer evaded all their efforts. Hopes were lost, and feet grew tired and soon in the mess of second term, the charmer with the bewitching eyes was forgotten. However speculations regarding him resurfaced from time to time. Sometimes after a particularly captivating episode of House M.D, or occasionally when he turns up unexpected in my ever so smitten friend’s dreams. Time flew by, soon first year was over, we moved in to the ‘honey moon’ period of mbbs. Dr. House as we grew accustomed to call him , was completely forgotten
First postings, I was supposed to be in medicine, I set out early in the morning, the new stethoscope safely in my bag with a copy of Hutchison’s, brand new within. The posting orders came. Victoria medicine unit III. The gang of eight including myself walked with a light spring towards the aforesaid destination. The smile on my lips faltered as my eyes focused on the tall figure clad in a swooping apron reclined on the bench, his right hand twirling a black pen while his left hand shuffled the sheets of papers on the clipboard in front of him, Dr. house on seeing the large shadow across the floor surveyed the group of young third termers from underneath his curly lashes, an amused smile touching his lips as he asked in his captivating voice ‘which term?’.
I swear my heart stopped for one whole minute! ‘Karma’ that’s what this is! A year of searching, and he had to show up after almost a year and a half, here? That too now? Talk about killer luck! My first postings ,that too under the only senior I had ever shouted at! Gone, my life will be ruined now. I devoted the next few minutes to praying hard that he may not recognize me, and thankfully he did not. Maybe I hadn’t been as harsh as I had intended to be all those days back, or maybe he was used to getting slighted by girls, whatever the reason might be, I was saved.
The subsequent weeks that I spent in his ward presented to me a whole new aspect of him I never would have thought existed. He was fun to be around, adored having an audience to blabber to, had a great sense of humor. He seldom chided, was always free, and I realized that his arrogance though still widely prevalent was more like a shield he wore to protect himself ,than a weapon to flatten others. I also realized that he was not a flirt, and that he spoke thus with every one, let it be a bunch of rather pretty first years, a group of clueless blabbering third term guys, or the professors who stop by once in a blue moon.
Slowly the intense hatred began to wane off and a liking started taking its place, a liking that soon grew in to an unexplainable love. I would rather miss 10 days of theory class than miss the ten minutes he spends with us each day taking our attendance. Thus my heart began to sprout wings, and every day I nourished it unknowingly with his presence and my hopes. I wished to know more about him and thus geared up for the first step.
FACEBOOK. After intensive googleing for a day and a half (no one addressed him by his official name) I finally sent him a request in facebook. I was restless the whole day, I couldn’t read, couldn’t study…..and when my phone vibrated at 11 in the night I grabbed it- u have one notification! I waited patiently for the page to open. And when it did, I was rewarded for my patience for my notification bar read ‘dr.house has accepted your friend request. Click here to write on house’s wall’( I shall continue to refer to him as dr.house for apparent reasons. I hope the reader would sympathize with my concerns)
It took me all my will power to not jump up and down on the spot. I composed my face put my cell down and carried out my normal activities. But to those who enquired as to why I was smiling like an idiot without any apparent reason, I had no answer to offer. The entire night I spent closely scrutinizing his profile. Post by post, notification by notification. Trying to gather from them as much information as I could. His likes, his dislikes, his hobbies. All the while grinning to myself.
‘So he does know I exist’.
Once I was satisfied with my research, I proceeded to check out his pictures . He had a total of twelve albums. I browsed through the first few pictures and the smile slipped off my face, for every picture of his had HER, wrapped snuggly around him, apparently she just couldn’t stand without being in contact with his body one way or the other. Heat boiled in the pit of my stomach, my hands reflexively tightened on the mobile, my breath became hard and my mouth compressed, I recognized the sensation coursing through my veins, the boiling in my blood, the hostility emanating from me as I looked at her smiling back at me, one hand casually tossed across his shoulder….jealousy.
Have I not read about this before, in various books in different forms, portrayed by different characters, Rhette Butler, Jane Eyre, Fritzwilliam Darcy, Edward Cullen, or Heathcliff , Edgar and Catherine. I thought I had that emotion well understood , but I was wrong, for nothing could prepare me for the harshness of felling that were now directed towards this woman I have never set my eyes on before. I wait for him online every night, I watch his every move now, I know I can never have him because his heart has been claimed long ago.
Oh! Why him! Why now! Why couldn’t I be like others and fall for some one like óssama’ sir or ‘kuttappa’sir ( names changed, are two of the most handsome guys in bmcri(cruciates) like the thousands of juniors, every year, just contented to watch them play basketball and walk by, and forgetting them as soon as they are out of sight. Why am I not able to forget, to cut my wings off. I try every day, oh! How I hate what I used to long for every day, going back every morning and seeing his face again.
It has been a long time since I have been hurting thus, that anger has long since faded, you did nothing wrong, neither did she, the grief that came next was driven away by endless pining. Now I am at peace. I realize you will never be mine. I will not ask that of you, but love you I shall for as long as I can. I still have hope. Someday I shall find my own, somebody like you whose heart I shall claim. My time with you is almost ending, four weeks have come to an end, I need to move on with life, the endless struggle that mbbs is. I bid farewell now, wishing you nothing but the best, with a heart full of love and eyes full of hope, I move on taking my first step…for move on I must, wish me all the best, and know that I shall always love you, but from you, nothing I expect.
__END__
