Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan

Author:V. V. Ganeshananthan [Ganeshananthan, V. V.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2023-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

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Although I had seen Seelan sleeping, it was his pain that stayed with me as I cycled to campus. When I tried to summon his peaceful face, only Niranjan emerged. Around and around my pedals went; around and around my brain whirred. It was a quarter of an hour’s journey, short enough for me to make it in time and long enough to push me past exhaustion. He was all right, I told myself, but my body was caught in the long minutes—seconds?—of hunting for the wound, of not knowing how serious it might be. My eyes went from my wristwatch to the road and back again. The time and the distance both felt wrong. I felt wrong, as though I were vibrating inside myself, moving without going anywhere. Despite going nowhere, to my confusion, I arrived. Mechanically, I dismounted. Before me, the buildings of the medical campus were enormous, disproportionate and strange.

It was the end of my second term, and my body partner Josie and I had eagerly anticipated our second rehearsal. That term we had studied the head, neck, and face. When Anjali Acca entered and found us preparing, she looked at me with an expression of some concern.

“Are you well?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” I said. Josie, too, watched me with dismay. She was decent enough to be genuinely worried, but it was also true that if I conducted myself poorly it would reflect on her, and vice versa. Our fates were tied together. I resolved to perform with my usual energy, as though I had not spent the morning treating my own brother at the field clinic instead of studying. We approached the table. My head rang. In the wake of ebbing adrenalin a terrible fatigue swept over me. Josie lifted the cloth covering the body and laid it aside.

“You may begin,” Anjali Acca said.

Josie started with the left half of the face, peeling back where we had cut to reveal the architecture of bones and nerves and muscle. The face! What a miracle, Sir would have said. “Stop,” Anjali said. “Describe the nasal cavity.” Josie swallowed nervously and then spoke. I tried to listen but could not focus. My mouth was dry and my palms were damp. I linked my hands behind my back to prevent myself from fidgeting. “Very well done, Josie,” Anjali said, and Josie blushed slightly, as she always did for even the smallest bit of praise. Would Anjali Acca’s words be repeated to the Tiger sweetheart later? She had never given any sign that she knew who Josie was. I would be just as detached and professional.

“Your turn, Sashi. Tell me about the facial nerve. There are twelve pairs of cranial nerves, of which the facial nerve is the seventh,” Anjali said, prompting me.

“Like the vestibulocochlear nerve, the facial nerve enters the auditory canal via the temporal bone,” I said. Seelan’s face presented itself distractingly in my mind’s eye once again, and I paused, hunting for the words that applied to this case instead of that one.

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