I am a master in India

Chapter 462 Private Hospital
The man who got out of the car walked to the stretcher and together with the young man, lifted his mother up.

They tried to put her in the back seat of the car, but she was too big and the car was too small.

The two distressed men were unable to bend her legs; they could not force her in.

This was a truly unacceptable scene, and passersby frowned.

Just then, another relative of theirs drove up.

He hurriedly hugged the two men, then, reflecting on the scene before him, felt extremely angry.

He rushed into the hospital and then came out with two hospital staff members.

They got into a big argument, during which the hospital representative repeatedly said, "She is not a patient of the hospital, and we cannot be responsible for her."

"Their mother just died!" the relative shouted. "They need your help! How are they supposed to move this?"

As more and more people gathered, the situation became very unfavorable for the hospital staff, who had no choice but to concede defeat.

A few minutes later, an ambulance arrived, the dead woman was put inside, and a small group of people left for the crematorium.

The crowd dispersed, and Ron saw the person he was looking for.

She was wearing a sari and large glasses.

"Arty, I'm sorry about what happened to Lanant."

"No, thank you, he has simply returned to the embrace of Shiva."

Artie, her eyes red, hugged Ron; her husband had just passed away a few days earlier.

There were two young people with her, whom Arti only said were friends she met at the hospital.

The group sat down in the coffee shop, and Ron began to talk to them about the hospital.

"You two met here, right?"

“In the intensive care unit,” Arti said, “we were there every day, sharing our stories.”

Arti looked to be almost sixty years old. She was a wealthy Punjabi elite in Delhi, and spoke in a loud, confident voice.

Compared to her, the other two spoke as softly as mice.

“I hate it here,” the young man said.

"what happened?"

“His mother passed away, and he was devastated,” said the girl next to him; the two appeared to be a couple.

The young man's name is Amit. A few months ago, his mother, who was in her forties, started having difficulty swallowing, so he took her to a large private hospital in Delhi.

They underwent various tests during their two months there, but still couldn't find the problem.

The doctor suggested taking her to see a specialist at the All India Academy of Medical Sciences, but there were no rooms available there.

Moreover, specialists don't have time either, because half of the specialists have resigned to go to a private hospital, which is the one they are sitting in now.

A specialist doctor told Amit to come to this hospital to make an appointment with him, and Amit did so.

The doctor spent three days conducting various tests and diagnosed his mother with polymyositis, an inflammatory muscle disease.

Amit, dressed in a shirt and jeans, silently pulled out a photograph of his mother. The woman in the photo was wearing a sari, plump, and smiling.

“That was before she got sick,” Amit said. “The doctor told us we needed to give her an injection right away, which would cost 40 rupees. I said I didn’t have that much money, so I called my uncle and asked if I could borrow some.”

The doctor said that injecting this medication could help my mother regain her muscles, and there was no other way, so we had no choice but to agree.

After the injection, the doctor sent Amit's mother home and told Amit to feed her protein powder through a nasogastric tube.

But when she got home, her lungs were full of saliva, which she could neither swallow nor cough up.

Fearing she would choke, they rushed her back to the hospital in the middle of the night.

The doctor put an oxygen mask on her and diagnosed her with pneumonia.

The next day, further tests revealed that her kidneys were also infected, and she was immediately transferred to the intensive care unit.

“The doctor remained very calm. He said, ‘I knew this would happen, but if I told you all the side effects of these immunoglobulins, you wouldn’t do it.’”

He performed kidney dialysis on Amit's mother, and eventually a temporary tube in her arm was replaced by a permanent tube in her chest.

Then the doctor began to process the saliva from her respiratory system. He also gave her an injection of immunoglobulin to enhance the immune function of her lungs, and then cut open her trachea to suction out the saliva.

“They said it would only take fifteen days of treatment,” Amit said, “but two weeks later, they said she needed a permanent tube, which was only temporary, and the permanent one would cost another 7.5 rupees.”

"Wait, I remember your mother initially only had difficulty swallowing?"

"Yes."

"But they want to give her kidney dialysis?"

“That’s right.” Amit nodded.

"How did the illness progress to this point?" Ron asked, somewhat confused.

“Nobody knows,” Arti shook his head with a wry smile. “Let him continue.” Amit continued, “We’ve spent a lot of money. The intensive care unit costs 1.6 rupees a day, and oxygen and dialysis cost 4.5 rupees a day. Every night, I have to borrow money from all my relatives in Delhi. Some of them even lent us the money they had saved for their weddings.”

“You don’t know what to do. When the loved one who raised you is lying in a hospital bed, you’ll be so agitated that you can’t think straight. That’s how they got away with it.”

“For weeks on end, they said every day, ‘Your mother is getting better.’ We were filled with hope, and then they would say, ‘She is not getting better.’”

Ron and the others were very quiet. Amit's voice was deep and somber, and they all gathered around to listen to him.

Arti took a sip of coffee and looked up at the hot morning and the manicured garden outside.

"At the same time, her platelet level dropped to a very dangerous level, and she couldn't control her saliva production, so she could no longer speak, let alone eat."

The doctor recommended another medication, costing 17 rupees, which was said to restore her bodily systems and control saliva production.

But after using the medication, it still had no effect. The doctor said, "Of course it's useless; all the medication was washed away by dialysis."

“It was like hell there. The mortality rate in the intensive care unit was very high. It was chaotic all the time, and no one was taking care of my mother.”

The doctors never visited her; they had no contact with their patients. We couldn't go in to see her either. They never told me anything, only saying, 'She needs more medication.'

There's nothing we can do except pay the bills. Every night, we receive the day's bills and then pay them off with cash borrowed from relatives.

When you go to the hospital's accounting department, you'll see huge amounts of 1000 and 500 rupee notes being sent to the bank.

Arti suddenly chuckled, a mocking laugh, while Amit continued his story.

"We asked to be moved out of the intensive care unit because it was too expensive. So they moved her to a regular ward, and we can finally be with her again."

But her condition was very bad; she had bedsores. She kept crying, and the only thing she said was, "Take me away!"

“We asked the doctors what to do, and they said: She’s not eating, so we need to make a hole in her stomach so we can feed her.”

Just as we were discussing the matter with the doctor, a nurse came in and told us that my mother had passed away.

Recalling this period, Amit burst into tears.

"And then do you know what the doctor said? He said: Maybe if we take her back to the intensive care unit and put her on a ventilator, she will come back to life. We can try."

Then I said, there's one condition: I have to stay by her side and watch over her the whole time.

The doctor said that family members are not allowed to enter the intensive care unit.

So we said, "Then we won't do it."

The doctor said, "No problem, if you don't want your mother to live... I mean, she has a 1% chance of surviving. Who are you to decide she shouldn't live? But if you don't have the money..."

“But we stopped, it was all over. We told the doctor that, and he left.”

“We went in to see my mother, and immediately someone came to collect the remaining medical fees. They said to us through her body: You still have 20 rupees to pay, please settle the balance.”

They showed no respect whatsoever as they spoke to her body.

In India, we respect the dead. You know what? They're very rude.

“During the cremation, the priest told us that her bones had already rotted, even while she was in the hospital,” Amit’s girlfriend interjected.

“People die for no reason,” she said. “At least we have some money. We’ve seen people run out of insurance money and be kicked out of the hospital on the operating table, with doctors not even bothering to stitch up their incisions. Of course, people who have no money don’t even have those opportunities.”

Ron was speechless. This was supposed to be a high-end private hospital in Delhi, yet they were completely disregarding human life.

He suspected that the doctors hadn't even diagnosed what illness Amit's mother actually had.

Or perhaps they knew it, but deliberately used every possible treatment.

In short, the person eventually died, but the money was still made.

Those who come to this hospital are mostly middle-class or elites; it's even harder to say what the situation is like when poor people get sick.

"Is this the hospital?" Ron looked up and around.

"Yes, they were referred by experts from the All India Academy of Medical Sciences."

To be honest, from the outside, this hospital looks quite nice.

There was a sign at the entrance, the kind that appears in every Indian hospital: Prenatal sex determination is illegal.

Nobody knows if it will work, but we need to have the necessary slogans.

"Since they are experts from a public medical school, how could they be so negligent towards their patients? They should be highly experienced."

“Things are not what they used to be,” Arti began. “Hospitals have become a business.”

“They’re capable of anything, things you can’t even imagine,” Amit emphasized.

"How to say?"

“Let me tell you,” Arti began, “I’ve experienced it myself.”

"Huh?" Ron looked at her with some surprise.

“Yes, my husband, Lanant, also died in this hospital.”

(End of this chapter)