A Nightmare
With an uneasy spasm , a kind of choking suffocation ,Rajesh abruptly awoke from his unusual ,rather deep sleep,
Something had struck at the mid -night and disturbed his sleep .His first reaction was to check himself up-where he was ,and what had happened to him.
He stretched his left hand to the glass jar of water and drank a few gulps .A certain relief now appeared to cover him up.Evidently , he had a a nightmare, a few minutes ago.
It was shocking,dreary and unpleasant .Now relaxing his body muscles and mopping his forehead and face he found that he had perspired amply .
Looking briskly at his surroundings, he got a certain recouping satisfaction and a kind of consolation that, after all it was a dream- a bad or an ugly one.
He sat with his back to the bulwark of the couch and stretched his legs along the bed as he felt relieved completely.
But his mind began to hover about and get the flash-back of what he had dreamt.
It was a vague reconstruction and was not clear.Things began to appear in a patch work and he took a few minutes to form a virtual collage of all broken things in the dream sequence.He began to analyse what had caused him to wake up and exude .
One of the scenes he could recollect was a mortuary with shrouded dead bodies on stretchers all around. There was only one small ventilator on the obverse ,through which a strong beam of light peeped in .
The other picture Rajesh could recollect was a vast,wide green field and thick vegetation .
A bifurcating long road seemed to reach a distant hill and even beyond .
Rajesh tried to put the two pictures together ; but he could not relate them .
After much recollection which was a real good cerebration ,he could remember other things in patches and a broken sequence .
He now clearly could reconstruct the dream .It was something like a surgery sequence .He was in the operation theatre trying to perform some rectification surgery on a man,whose face he hardly could reconstruct, despite his hard attempts at it .
He had seen himself handling ceratin surgical instruments such as the incision knife,forceps and even the pair of curved scissors.
What had shocked him hard and disturbed his sleep was the dream sequence in which he had severed and pulled out the guts of the patient,involuntarily.
He had unwillingly and impulsively done it in his dream ,as a swarm of bees had begun to invade his eyes and the whole face and had incessantly stung .
He had been so helpless and had become an invalid in the dream sequence.
As he woke up he could not put together things.
He was know a full-fledged surgeon in his early thirties .As a medico and even sometimes now he chose to browse through the volumes of several authors on psychology .He had even read Freud's Dream Analysis .
But true enough , he now felt that dreams could be so horrible ,perspiring and uneasy .
Rajesh hailed from a moderate family and a sub-urban city. During his early school and college days, he was shy natured and diffident.
He chose not to mingle with people, unknown to him. He would quite often stand in front of a mirror in his room and observe his obverse reflections with a kind of perusal. He would study with concern, the curve of his lips, the thick eyebrows and the recent growth of moustaches and the goatee .
He had learnt to appreciate his own looks. Besides he was particular to put on clothes of a chosen design and of only a few shades of colour.
As a medico he didn't like the other students in the hostel. He was choosy about making friends and had befriended only some four or five in the whole college.
His gingerly nature had made him go nervous and feel uneasy in the presence of all females, though from within, he enjoyed their company.
In the sub-urban college, where he studied, the number of girls out-numbered that of the boys.
One particular girl whose name he soon came to know was Leena, a fair girl, tall, bright blue eyed rather with a neat long nose, and who always carried her thick, long hair- braid dancing on her back, had impressed him most.
To see her often he would somehow manage to move around her and her friends. But being a diffident introvert at that early stage , he could not bring himself up to smile at her or greet her, though both were from the same class.
As the year closed and the course was over, during which Rajesh althrough remained only a kind of fanatic admirer of the girl. It was a kind of, what others thought to be , calf love, one- sided.
During the holidays, that followed the examination, he had been zealously wandering around her house just to get a glimpse of her face.
A few months passed as he joined the medical college, and he came to know that Leena, his dream girl, whom he loved whole-heartedly, got married to some one from a distant town.
He felt disappointed, dejected and crest -fallen. It took him several months to recover from the depressive condition, in which he had found himself.
At an early stage this incident had turned Rajesh into a misogynis; and a depressed introvert with the unshaven face of a typical lost lover.
He was fortunate to find a mentor and teacher in the college who learnt about Rajesh's erroneous involvement and first experience in love .
The mentor cleared his mind without affecting his ego and told him that he was at fault and there was no cause for any misogyny.
He was convinced and soon had changed his attitude in general.
It was a stage in his life as a teenager. Soon he got over his negative complexes and turned into a sane, intelligent youth. As a medico and even as a surgeon,
he was neat and committed to his profession and dignity.
But a certain stinging guilt always haunted his mind; and when he tried to be cool and complacent, an old clipping from his life often bothered him and he still felt shaken and guilty.
As a well -qualified and experienced surgeon ,Rajesh earned great reputation and was very popular.
In the city where he had been working as a surgeon and consultant. There were no other hospitals within a radius of some 30 miles ,which could offer such prompt and efficient service. It was the only big , well equipped hospital there about.
Rajesh enjoyed his work whole -heartedly and it gave him complete satisfaction.
Two weeks before his nightmare, Rajesh was in for a dramatic shock.
Leena had come to the hospital in the afternoon, with her wounded and bleeding husband on the stretcher,seeking immediate medical care and help following an accident they had met with on the way back to their home-town.
She was frantically crying and appealing for help. She appealed to everyone in white over -coat and crying ,requested them all to save her bleeding husband.
That was the moment when she was completely broken down.
Instantly Rajesh could recognise her. When approached for help he was in two minds. He could not figure out what exactly was going on in his mind.
It took nearly ten minutes during which the victim was gasping and bleeding profusely.
He was taken into the theatre and a team of six doctors including Rajesh began working on the case.
The moment found Rajesh most shaken and restless. Despite his rich experience and knowledge, he felt insecure and weak. He could not discern what was failing him.
Together the doctors did the best they could, to save the patient. It had already been monitored as a sinking case owing to incessant internal bleeding and the punctured lungs.
Needless to say that despite the genuine and committed efforts of the doctors, the victim succumbed .
For the first time in his life , Rajesh felt that he had also been professionally defeated. He was not quite sure of the extent to which he was to blame.
But he felt sure that he was guilty . In fact he had honestly tried every possible way to save the victim.
The incident stung him badly.
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