By Mahim Hussain
“Amma[1], it . . . it feels like fire is running through my veins!”
These were the words Abir uttered sitting on the rear seat of their car. His mother, a fifty-five-year-old woman, was sitting right beside him. She was trying to help her son any way she could to relieve him of his suffering. With moist eyes, she kept massaging Abir’s hands and neck constantly.
“Everything is going to be all right, abba[2]. Try to relax,” she said to her son.
Leaving other cars behind, the white Toyota sped through the street – piercing the thickness of the night. Their deft driver devoted all his attention to dodging and overtaking other cars on the road. The car had headed to the Labaid Hospital, situated in the Dhanmondi area of the bustling city of Dhaka.
Abir’s older brother, Rafique, was sitting in the front seat next to the driver. He kept turning back frequently to see how his younger brother was doing.
“Amma . . . I can’t breathe . . . I can’t breathe amma!” Abir cried out to his mother.
Abir’s mother pleaded with Rafique to lower the wind shield on his side. Without being asked, the driver flicked a switch swiftly, and the windshield came down with a whirring sound. Abir, with the help of his mother, managed to get his head out of the window to breathe fresh air. With his head sticking outside the car, he could see the taillights of the passing cars growing faint in the distance. To the boy, it seemed like red and yellow fairies were flying in the darkness. Soon, Abir slid back on his mom’s lap, as he could no longer bear the weight of his head.
“Don’t worry, amma. We will get their soon,” Rafique tried to console his anxious mother.
About forty minutes later, the car entered through the lofty gate of the hospital – battling an abysmal traffic jam. They were lucky it was a weekend. On any other night of the week, it would have taken them at least an hour and a half to get there from the Mirpur area. By the time they arrived at the emergency entrance, Abir had already lost his consciousness. He could not move any of his limbs or open his eyes.
A door man and two female nurses came out of the emergency department running. They carefully hauled Abir out of the car. Then, putting him on a stretcher, they hastily took the boy inside the emergency department. Rafique and his mother ran after them, frantically.
Passing a long corridor, they entered a ward. The nurses again lifted Abir gently off the stretcher and laid him on one of the empty beds. At ten-thirty of the night, the whole ward was empty and quiet. The nurses started to commence their usual protocol. One nurse put a clip of a pulse meter on the boy’s index finger of his right hand. It was attached to a screen above the bed with a cord. Another nurse tied the strap of a blood pressure machine, connected to the same screen. While Abir’s family was worried to see him unconscious, one of the nurses tried to calm them down. She told Rafique to accompany her to the information desk and fill out some forms. The other nurse kept her eyes on the screen, monitoring the patient’s vitals.
After observing the patient for about ten minutes, the nurse blurted out: “His pulse is too weak. I am calling the duty doctor.”
“Ha! What happened nurse? What’s wrong with my son?” cried out the mother.
Without responding to her, the nurse ran out of the ward in a hurry. Abir’s mother was in tears. She started rubbing Abir’s chest incessantly, overwhelmed by apprehension.
Before long, the nurse came running with the duty doctor. After glancing at the monitor for a moment, the doctor turned around and said to the nurse: “The pulse and pressure rates are too low. We can’t treat him here.”
By this time, Rafique was back. The female doctor told him that they didn’t have all the equipments in the emergency ward to treat a critical patient like his brother.
While the doctor and Rafique were engaged in a discussion, suddenly, Abir started having convulsion.
“Nurse, call the ICU upstairs. Tell them that we are bringing a patient, quickly!” the doctor passed the order.
As the hospital staff pushed the movable bed and took the boy inside an elevator, Abir’s mother started to lament.
“What’s happened to my little boy, Rafique? Bring my Abir back to me . . . bring him back!”
Rafique took his mother in his arms and held her tightly. He too was on the verge of falling apart. But he bit his lips and managed to keep his poise. Rafique was the eldest son. If he had broken down, who was going to take care of his family? With glistening eyes, Rafique recalled the fateful day when it all started.
Rafique entered their apartment of a three-storied building with a heavy, black briefcase in his hand. Their family doctor walked behind him with brisk steps. Going past the dining room, they walked straight inside Abir’s bedroom.
As soon as they entered, Rafique felt a piece of glass getting crushed under his left shoe. Raising his head, he saw broken pieces of a plate and some food were strewn all over the floor. His mother was cleaning up the mess with a sweep and a scraper. His father, seated on Abir’s bed, stood up seeing the doctor.
“Look, doctor, what he has done to himself this time,” said Abir’s father, pointing at his son in the bed.
The doctor looked at the boy over his reading glasses.
Sixteen-year-old Abir was lying in the bed quietly. But his chest was rising and falling in quick succession. He had his face covered with his forearms. A white bandage was wrapped around his left wrist. On one side of the bandage, blood had seeped through and had left a big stain.
“Some time last night, he tried to cut the veins of his wrist with a blade,” Abir’s father related with a distressed tone. “This morning we found him in the bed with blood all over the bed sheet.”
The doctor kept his gaze fixed on the boy and listened to Abir’s father intently.
“Moreover, he has not eaten anything in two days. A few minutes ago, his mother brought some food for him. But as soon as she got close to him, he took the plate off her hand and smashed it on the floor. He has been having angry outbursts quite frequently these last few days,” added the father.
The doctor slowly walked to the bed and sat beside the boy warily.
“Well, dear boy. Let uncle see your hand,” saying this, he gently picked up Abir’s wounded hand. The doctor examined his wrist from different angles and tried checking his pulse.
Only a few moments had passed, when suddenly, Abir sat up and pulled his arm out of the doctor’s hand with a savage jerk.
“Let go of my hand, you devil!” screamed the boy.
The doctor jumped off the bed, and Abir’s parents lunged to restrain the boy. Rafique kept the doctor from losing balance, and quickly took him in the dining room.
He sat the doctor at the table and poured him a glass of water.
Glug, glug, glug, ahh . . .
“Rafique, I don’t think Abir was able to cut any of his major veins. If he did, he would have bled out over the night and have been unconscious by now. The bandage on his wrist was done nicely and the bleeding has stopped.” confirmed the doctor. “However, as you have shared with me earlier, Abir has been showing such erratic behavior for several months now. So, his problem is actually psychiatric rather than physical.”
“Yes, doctor. We have taken him to a psychiatrist named Samsul Huq, twice. But during the last session, he suddenly got violent and hurled a glass of water at the doctor. Thankfully no one got hurt. But after that, we could not take him to the doctor again,” shared Rafique.
“Humn . . . At this moment, he is not in the condition to be taken anywhere. So, I suggest you go back to the psychiatrist and tell him about Abir’s present condition,” concluded the doctor.
*
Doctor Huq’s chamber was in a mental health rehabilitation center in the affluent neighbourhood of Gulshan. Rafique had been sitting outside his chamber with other visitors. It was a big lobby under a wooden shed. There were about thirty people outside the chamber, waiting for their turn. A middle-aged man was sitting behind a small table facing the visitors. As patients were coming out of the room, the assistant was calling the next person in serial. Rafique had been waiting there for about two hours now. Feeling bored and exhausted, he was snoozing sitting on his cozy little chair.
“Mr. Rafique Ahmed . . . who is Rafique Ahmed?” inquired the assistant sternly.
When his name was called loudly a second time, Rafique woke with a shudder. In frenetic motion, he got off the chair and almost dashed inside the chamber.
It was a spacious, soundproof room with a gigantic air-cooler hanging above the door. On the far end of the room, there was a big mahogany desk. In the middle of the desk, there was a plastic dummy head with an open brain coming out of it. Beside it, there was a pile of big, thick medical books and journals on one side of the desk. On the other side were two pen holders containing pens of different colors and design. In the front of the desk, there were two cane-made chairs for the visitors to sit on. A few feet from them lay a big, comfortable couch on which a patient could easily lie down. The doctor was sitting on the other side of the desk on a reclining chair the size of a throne.
Professor Huq was an elderly man with long, cotton-like beard and hair. He always wore a fatua[3] and loose pajamas and a big smile on his face. As soon as Rafique entered, the doctor recognised him. It was Rafique who had accompanied Abir to his clinic a week ago. The doctor nodded and made a gestured with his hand, telling him to take a sit.
“How are you doing? Didn’t you bring your brother today?” asked the doctor.
“No, doctor, Abir is not doing too well. He is having mood swings again. Two days ago, he tried to kill himself by slashing his wrist. We don’t understand what is going on with him. Why is he acting like this, doctor?” exclaimed Rafique in a tensed voice.
“Well, Mr. Rafique, I’ve told you on the first day that Abir is showing symptoms of bi-polar disorder. A typical bi-polar person has periods of energetic activities followed by bouts of severe depression. But some of these symptoms may vary from person to person. In your brother’s case, he has moments of angry outbursts followed by long periods of depression. And it’s not uncommon for bi-polars to have suicidal thoughts,” informed the doctor.
“But, doctor, how are we supposed to thwart him from harming himself?” inquired Rafique.
“The condition he is in right now, he needs to take some medications. Here, I am writing down the name of a medicine called Lithosun SR, which contains the chemical lithium. Across the world, lithium has been proven to prevent suicidal thoughts. But there is a catch. Too much of lithium can cause toxicity in the blood, which could be fatal. Therefore, he should take exactly 400 mg per day, and not more than that. In addition, Abir needs to have his blood tested every fortnight to check the level of lithium in his body,” enlightened the doctor.
After that, he tore a page from his pad and handed it to Rafique.
*
At six in the evening on the Friday night, Abir was sitting on his study table. It was a medium sized table with a bookshelf attached on one side. The shelf was laden with books, copies and note papers. A history book was open in front of him. Because of his illness, the boy had not been able to attend his school for two months. His final term exam was in two weeks. After taking the prescribed medication for a month, his thoughts of self-harm started to subside.
It had been an hour. The boy was struggling to focus on the book. But so far, he had not been able to read a single line. He was having difficulty concentrating. All kinds of negative thoughts were churning inside his fragile mind. Soon, fat tears started trickling down his cheeks. Abir could not fathom, why was he unable to control his emotions? Why did he feel so gloomy and miserable all the time?
Unable to bear the frustration anymore, suddenly he stood up with a grunt and tore the book into small pieces. Then, he picked up other books from the bookshelf and started throwing them in the air. This rampage lasted a few minutes. Then, he dashed away from the table, crashed on his bed and started to sob burying his face in the pillow.
After lying there motionless for a while, the boy raised his head for a moment. Incidentally, his eyes fell on the side table attached to his bed. He saw the container of his medication lying on the table, beside his bottle of water.
If I took some extra pills, it should help me get rid of the melancholic thoughts.
Slowly, he clambered on the side of the bed and picked up the container. Popping it open in a fit of impulse, her started pushing several pills down his throat at once and drank a lot of water. Afterward, he lay in the bed, still struggling to harness his emotions.
Around 08:00 p.m., Abir’s mother knocked on his door.
“Baba[4] Abir? Come out, son. Dinner has been served.”
Not getting any response for a while, she opened the door which was unlocked from inside. Walking in, she was flabbergasted to find torn books and papers scattered on the floor. Facing the other way, her son was lying in the bed and seemed to be asleep.
The mother walked to the bed and sat next to him.
“Abir? What’s wrong, abba?”
There was no response. His mother got little concerned. She held his shoulder and turned his torso toward her.
“Wake up, sweetheart. The dinner is getting cold.”
After calling him several times, the boy lifted his heavy eyelids gradually.
“Amma . . . I am not feeling so well. My . . . my head is throbbing in pain.”
Saying these words, the boy closed his eyes again. His mother nudged his shoulder several times, trying to keep him awake. But the boy slowly succumbed deeper and deeper to the side effect of the medicine.
“Mr. Rafque . . . Mr. Rafique!”
The voice of the duty doctor brought the man back to present time.
“What’s going on, doctor? How is my little brother doing,” asked Rafique agitatedly.
“Your brother has been shifted to the ICU. The overdose of the medicine has rendered him unconscious. We are trying to separate the toxic substance in his blood with some medicines and saline. But his pulse rate is still low. Nothing can be said until few hours pass,” reported the doctor and walked away.
Hearing this news, Abir’s mother started wailing and was at the brink of losing her senses. Rafique laid his mother on a bed and tried to pacify her.
Meanwhile, Abir lay in one corner of the ICU with all kinds of tubes and electric wires attached to his body – battling with death.
.
[1] Mother
[2] Father
[3] A short, kameez-like collarless shirt worn by people of South Asia
[4] Father
Mahim Hussain is a 38-year-old man and lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He couldn’t finish high school diploma. However, that did not deter him from reading and learning on his own.
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