Neurology.
Morning, operation theatre lights on in the distance. “Silence,” they proclaim. “operation in progress.”
Everyone walks around so briskly.

But the lights are not on in the wards. It is dark today; and clouds are pregnant with unshed rain.
The sheets are a dark antiseptic green. The steel beds are blue, and in some places, where the thin veneer of paint has been rubbed off by a thousand anxious hands, you can see the rust underneath.

K is the only other person to turn up for wards today.

Bed 46, we’re told.
Bulbar palsy. Examine very carefully.
So, we do.

The professor comes around, and we talk in great detail about his hyperreflexia, and fasciculations of his tongue, and his defective articulation.
‘Dysarthria’ I say, in response to the professor’s question, ‘probably secondary to the involvement of cranial nerve nuclei.’
And then he gives us a rather lengthy lecture.

The class is over, and we are almost done, and K is rooting through her bag for her hammer so she can test his reflexes again. I am peering at him from behind my shield of glasses, stethoscope and crossed arms.

‘Daktarbabu?’ he says. He doesn’t know we aren’t doctors yet.
‘hmmmmm?’ I ask.
He tells me that for the last few weeks he has been laughing all the time. And crying.
His speech is ever so slightly slurred.
‘Laughing?’ I ask.
Now that I am looking at him, I see that his lips are quivering. The corners are continually twitching upward. It is like he is always on the verge of a nervous smile.
I haven’t noticed it at all in my ten minutes with him. The scary thing is, neither has anyone else.
He looks happy.
I call the professor back and tell him.

After another bout of protracted questioning, the professor turns to me.
“Emotional lability. So we actually have..."
"Pseudo-bulbar palsy" I complete.
"Right. The cortex is also affected. Good. Well done. This is why one must take a detailed history.”

And over the next few days a lot of people go to him. Everyone asks him how he is feeling. Sometimes he laughs. Sometimes he even cries.
They like that. Emotional lability, they say, sententiously, to one another.

Poor little man, trapped in his happiness of trivialities, punctuated by frightening descents into despair.

I will avoid neurology till he is gone.
Or until I find a way to expiate.