Rain on the Highway
by Shuvayon Mukherjee
Once, I met a young man who helped me understand, finally, what Ma meant all along: there’s no wrong time to be kind.
At one time, the days would slip through my fingers thick and fast. The mornings were dark, the coffee darker. Back then, I used to wash the bitterness away with sterile scents from the operating theatre. Once, the surgical mask was reassuring; not just comfortable but warm, as if it were made for me. And I would never glance backwards to see who was slotting the tools so neatly into my grasp.
I went home whenever I could, though Ma never asked about my surgeries. I don’t think she understood what a Fellowship was. I’d tell her anyway, of course, and she would listen as she always did, with her head cocked slightly to the side. But afterwards she’d raise her eyebrows at me, in the way she’d done when I was a gangly child with grass-stains on my knees, and pierce through it all. “Yes, but were you kind, honey?”
And I’d say: “Yes, Ma, I was kind. I’m a doctor. Doctors are kind.” She’d smile at first, but then she’d always frown right after. Looking back now, I think she had her doubts.
She never stopped working, my ma. Back then, I used to send her money every week — more than she ever needed — but she insisted on pushing that cleaning trolley around the hotel until her ginger curls had long since faded to grey. She’d joke that when she eventually found my father, they’d never solve his murder because the crime scene would be spotless. That was her kind of humour, my ma.
Once, she’d scrimped and saved and sacrificed towards owning her own little slice of the Earth. “I don’t need no white picket fence,” she’d say, her eyes floating on clouds. “Just a little place, a small place, for you and me, the way it’s always been.” Then she’d poke a bony elbow into my ribs. “With an extra room for my grandkids!”
I still don’t remember the surgeons who removed my appendix. Beforehand was a blur of pain, Ma’s steady hand on my arm, and sleep in fitful starts. But I awoke the next morning cured. I saw them briefly: a tightly-knit formation of white coats, furrowed brows, businesslike demeanours. And then they were gone, taking Ma’s dream with a practised, elegant sweep of the hospital curtain.
“I want to be like them, Ma,” I said. “I want to be a doctor.”
She looked away from the hospital bill, then, crumpling it in her hands. “Then go for it, honey,” she replied. Slow, fat tears rolled out of the clouds. “But be kind to your patients. Always be kind.”
And I was, in my way.
One of the youngest trainees in years. Lowest post-op complication rate, at my level, in the state. I’d been offered my pick of Vascular, Urology, Cardiothoracics, Plastics. What was kindness if not a successful operation? My patients always left satisfied.
Not Ma, though. “Do you talk to them?” she said once.
“Of course. I always explain the procedure beforehand. And afterwards, they get better.”
“But did you ask how they felt?”
“Yes, Ma, I did.” Under her green gaze, I was a stuttering teenager again. “They’re always fine. Hardly any pain, moving their bowels, passing urine, walking around.”
“I mean how did they feel, dear?”
“I don’t know. There’s no time to ask that. And I’m not a psychiatrist!” I snapped.
All I’d gotten back was silence and a frown.
Once, I wished I’d asked more often how Ma felt. I know now that blaming myself will only tear open poorly-sutured wounds, but back then, it felt like hers was the only diagnosis I wasn’t able to cure.
She’d smoked all her life, my ma did. I never counted her pack-years because I knew the answer would trouble me too much. Once, she let me drag her to the family doctor, and he held up a chart with three lines. The green one was her life if she’d never smoked. The red one was her at that moment, dwindling away to nothing at the bottom. And the blue one followed the red for some time, but then it paused, looked upwards, and started following the green. That line was if she stopped smoking that very day.
She wouldn’t, though. Not my ma. “It’s been this long, what’s a little longer gonna do?” she said.
“You saw the chart. Be kind, Ma,” I replied in desperation. “Be kind to yourself.”
Her eyes had flashed then. “You can’t say that, honey.”
Once, on a day when the chemo laid her especially low, Ma asked me if she could die. All of her hair, all of those curls she used to pride herself on arranging into all sorts of styles, that she was so proud she’d passed down to me, they were gone. They’d abandoned her like the rest.
Once, I did the unthinkable, and I left one of my patients on the table. Another surgeon could have finished that surgery, but there was no-one else to hold Ma’s hand when she was wheeled into the ER. Once, and only once, I cried at the bedside. It wasn’t cancer that took her, in the end.
So once, much later, it felt like rain on the highway fell against me every day. My knuckles would turn white on the steering wheel, and teardrops smeared into broad, arcing strokes on the windshield. The wipers seemed to squeak with exhaustion. I would sweat, despite the damp; it always seeped inside through the window, folding under my collar and into my nostrils, smelling like the laundry Ma once scolded me for leaving out in the rain.
I met that young man on one of those occasions; a time when the commute home stretched itself out to be almost unbearable. It was pouring that day. Peering through, I’d seen his car stranded on the side of the highway, its lights dimmed and a forlorn figure standing hunched against the rain.
I never stopped for them normally, but maybe it was Ma’s spirit urging me to help, to make her proud. To be kind. I pulled up behind him and got out gingerly; my suit was drenched in seconds.
“You alright?” I said.
The kid looked barely out of his teens and had a car to match. He looked up nervously. “Yeah,” he replied.
“Can I help? What’s wrong with your car?” I said.
He shrugged.
Let him go, a voice muttered in the back of my head. He doesn’t want to be helped.
Be kind, another voice whispered. It sounded like Ma.
I put a hand on his shoulder. “Come in out of the rain, kid.”
Belatedly, he straightened up from leaning on his car, and let me direct him into my passenger seat. His mop of dirty blond hair sent droplets scattering everywhere as he twisted his head up and around, left and right.
“Nice ride,” he said, not making eye contact.
“Thank you,” I replied. “Anyone coming to fix your car?”
He shook his head, wetting my leather even further.
“Alright,” I said. “Let me call someone.”
“No,” he said. “Don’t. Please. Can you take me somewhere?”
“What about your car?”
He shrugged. “I don’t care.”
I shook my head. Kids. “You can’t just leave it here, it’s not safe. Someone has to take it to the mechanic.”
“I don’t care,” he said to the carpet. He hesitated. “Fine, take me to the exit on 52nd. My friend’s a mechanic. His garage is near there.”
Deciding I didn’t care enough about why he was lying, I pulled back into traffic, surgery filling my mind again. The kid looked like a dozen others I’d taken appendixes out of. Heck, he wasn’t much older than I was when I got appendicitis, and I couldn’t remember driving at his age. Times must have changed.
“Where were you going?” I said.
“Nowhere,” he said quickly.
“Nowhere?” I replied. I’ve heard that once before. “Alright. Look, if your car’s broken down, someone will have to pay to tow it away. Do you have a phone? Do you want to tell your parents what happened?”
“No, don’t call anyone,” he said, twisting in his seat to scowl at me. “Can you just hurry up and drop me there?”
I frowned, choosing not to reply, and silence stretched for a time. Then I glanced over, and he was looking out into the driving rain. Everything was awash, tears swelling across my windows and onto the road and over the city ahead. My car was silent, but I recalled how Ma’s old Corolla used to hum and grunt to the rhythm of the wipers as she changed gears. Today the rhythm was a gallop, and the tears beat away at me like a drum.
“Why did you stop for me? You didn’t have to,” he said finally, still looking out the window.
“There’s no wrong time to be kind,” I replied. “So my ma used to say, at least.”
“Used to? She stopped saying it?”
I pressed my lips together. “No, she died,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry. She sounds like she was a good person.”
“The best,” I replied.
“How did she... if it’s okay to ask...” he stuttered, looking at me quickly and away again.
I took a deep breath. “She killed herself.” My eyes were on the road ahead, but everything was grey now. “Listen, kid. You need to call your parents — mum, dad, whoever — and tell them what happened. It’s getting late, it’s pouring down outside. They’ll be worried. No-one cares for you like they do.”
“You don’t know my parents,” he whispered.
“And you don’t know life,” I replied. “The good thing is, you have lots of time to learn. I didn’t call my ma enough, and Lord knows I’m paying for it now. The least you can do is ask them for help when you need it. Go on, kid. Do it. You might be surprised.”
He was still looking out the window as we pulled into the exit on 52nd. Another stretch of grey, but the tears fell away on each side. A bridge. And no mechanic in sight.
“You sure this is the right exit?” I said.
He didn’t say anything.
“Hey,” I put a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”
“No,” he said, turning away from the window. His eyes were wet. “I... I was going to...”
“I know,” I said, tightening my grip. “Call them. Please.”
Finally, he met my eyes. And nodded.
Once, before I lost my ma, I’d seen her constant talk of kindness as a form of weakness, of humbling myself to another. And after her death, being alone in the grey, I thought I’d lost my chance forever. But that day, even amidst the tears, the kid helped me realise what I’d missed all along; what I’d failed to do. There was no wrong time. I just had to reach out.
Copyright © 2021 by Shuvayon Mukherjee
