His body was wracked with an involuntary tremor. He realized he was shivering. It was freezing cold. He tried moving his arms but his body seemed to be confined within a tightly restricted place.
He tried to wiggle his feet. He was able to but just for a few inches in either direction. His back felt frozen solid. It seemed to be resting on cold metal. He desperately wanted to curl up into a fetal position but there simply wasn’t any space to do that. The realization suddenly hit him: I’m in a morgue.
Santosh attempted to calculate how much time he could survive inside the refrigerated coffin. He remembered reading somewhere that body heat is lost twenty-five times faster in cold water than in cold air. Most morgues are kept at around four degrees Celsius. At that temperature in water, a person would survive around an hour. Theoretically, he had several hours left provided he remained conscious and kept some movement going.
He succeeded in lifting an arm but there was simply no way to bend it. There was a metal ceiling above him that was only a few inches above his nose. He touched it with the back of his hand. It was just as cold as the floor on which he lay. He touched his thigh with his hand. He was pretty certain he was naked even though the freezing temperature had reduced the sensation in his body. Then the panic attack set in.
He suddenly felt a hot flash in his toes. Then his fingers. To shut down the loss of heat from the extremities, his body was inducing vasoconstriction—a reflexive contraction of blood vessels. But the muscles required to induce vasoconstriction had failed. It was causing warm blood to rush from the core to his extremities.
Santosh tried screaming but couldn’t be sure whether any sound was emerging from within him at all. His body seemed to have slowed down to a point where no physical activity was possible. The sounds that did emerge were slurred, almost as though he were under the influence of drugs or alcohol. He felt dazed. Disoriented. Confused. The effects of hypothermia had begun to set in.
He tried getting his mind to remain focused. He knew that if the hypothermia became severe, it would eventually slow down his respiration and heart rate, making him lose consciousness before the onset of death.
He attempted to recall what had happened before he’d passed out. He had met Ibrahim and had then received a blow behind his head. They had obviously brought him here later. But why was he in a morgue? Had he been assumed dead? Or were they trying to kill him by freezing him? Which morgue was he in? Did Nisha or Neel know he was in trouble?
Santosh felt suffocated. It wasn’t claustrophobia—it was his lungs giving up. He felt himself slipping out of consciousness. He imagined he was back in the hospital after the car accident in which he had lost his wife and son. Then he was back inside the Tower of Silence, battling Assistant Commissioner of Police Rupesh Desai, with the vultures circling overhead. The scene quickly changed. Santosh imagined he was at an Alcoholics Anonomous meeting. The members had surrounded him and pinned him down to the floor. They were attempting to forcibly pour whisky down his throat.
Santosh sensed his pulse slowing as he slipped into an abyss of darkness.
Finally, there was no pulse at all.
Chapter 65
“HELLO.”
Maya Gandhe stood at the school gates, her school bag slung over her shoulder, a copy of her essay in one hand and her prize, an iPad, in the other. Heena was late but let’s face it, Heena was always late and, on this occasion at least, Maya didn’t really care. Friends filed past her on their way to school busses or for lifts home, teachers inched past in their cars, and every single one of them gave her a wave and a smile.
This is what it’s like to be famous, thought Maya. Being new at school had been hard—she and her mother had only lived in Delhi for three months—but now it was as though everybody knew who she was; as though she were a friend to them all.
And that, decided Maya Gandhe, was a great feeling, especially when it was earned—a result of her essay proposing, or at least arguing in favor of, a fairer health care system for all. People didn’t know her name because she was good at sports or pretty or any of the normal, boring reasons. They knew her name because she’d used her brain.
Mom would be proud, she knew. Very proud. And Dad? Well, wasn’t that funny. It wasn’t as if she’d stopped thinking about Dad. More that the thought of him had temporarily changed. Instead of his absence being like a darkness, it was as though he was looking down on her.
Looking down on her and smiling. Proud.
And now Mr. Roy, the Principal Secretary, the very man who had commended her on her essay and presented her with her iPad, had drawn up in his Audi, the window purring down.
“Hello, Maya.”
He didn’t have a very nice face. It was as though the smile he wore didn’t quite fit, but even so, it was Amit Roy, and he was…well, he was important.
“Are you waiting for a lift?” he said brightly, like someone trying really hard to be friendly.
“My nanny’s coming.”
He looked around. The crowds had thinned out. They were now the only people at the school gates. “It doesn’t look like she’s here.”
“Oh, she’s always late,” shrugged Maya.
“Why don’t I give you a lift?”
“Oh…” faltered Maya, “I’m not allowed…”
“Of course. Of course not, Maya.” He smiled his awkward smile. “Very sensible indeed. But you see, that puts me in a very difficult position, because I can’t in all good conscience leave you standing here. And besides, I was rather hoping you could read me your essay.”
“But haven’t you read it?”
His smile faltered a little, and later she would remember that moment, and think it was the moment his mask slipped. But for the time being nothing could ruin her sunny mood, and in a blink his smile had returned. “Ah, but I’d like a personal reading from the author, especially one whose ideals are so close to my heart.”
And so it was flattery that compelled Maya to get into the passenger seat of the Audi. That and the assurance that they would encounter Heena on the way.
He drove, taking directions from Maya and talking at the same time. “Remind me of the title of your essay?” he said.
“?‘Health Care, Fair and Square?’?” she answered proudly.
“Exactly. I was impressed to read such an egalitarian treatise from such a young mind.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what egalitarian means. Or treatise,” she said.
“It means you have a very fair mind,” he explained. “It means you believe everybody should have equal rights, regardless of their status in society, young or old, rich or poor.”
“I do,” she said boldly.
“And you get that from your parents, do you?”
“Yes,” she said, and pictured them together, Mama and Papa, feeling a great rush of love for them that threatened to bring her to tears right then and there.
“They must be very proud. What a shame they couldn’t make the prizegiving. Perhaps they will be at home, will they?”
“Later on, my mom will get home. Not my dad.”