BOMB BLAST BABA

In the early hours of one emergency duty morning, a ‘BabaJi’ rolled into our midst. ‘Babaji’ is a blanket term for the long haired, thickly bearded old street dwellers who land up in our hospital mostly with rotting legs and a host of other medical problems. This one was no different. He had a badly necrosed left foot with maggots in it. We cleaned it, cut off the necrosed parts, removed the worms and dressed it up nice and good. It isn’t the best part of our work, specially that early in the morning, but it is very much a part of our work. We thought we’d keep the Baba overnight, give him a somewhat decent bed to sleep in for once, and then he would be on his way in the morning, to wherever he came from. My God, we were wrong!

The next morning, he refused to go. He just lay there semi naked, on the bed. And because he was so disheveled, no one else wanted to sit or lie on the same bed as him. So even when there were two, even three patients on each bed in the emergency, he lay alone and comfy on his own. We gave it up trying to convince him after a few minutes. Besides, there was no one to take him anywhere anyway. He had just walked into the hospital with that leg. The day after an emergency is quite hectic. We got busy handling our OPD and the critical patients that had been operated the previous night. Besides, he wasn’t hurting anyone just by lying there.

That evening we got a call from the nurse at the emergency. The ‘Babaji’ was still there and they were getting angry. They needed the bed for new patients that were coming in. We requested them to keep him the night. We dressed his leg again. It was obviously better. All he had to do was come in once a day for the dressing, but he just wouldn’t leave. We aren’t in the business of throwing people out of our hospital. We’d talk to the consultants about it the next morning we thought.

The next day, our consultants got pretty busy in the operation theatre doing a complicated laparoscopic operation. And then we got the news. There had been a bomb blast at the High Court in Delhi. There were orders to cancel all pending elective surgeries. Soon, the OT would be flooded with Bomb Blast victims.

We all got pretty involved with handling the Bomb blast casualties soon. The consultants started operating, the senior residents inserted chest tubes, classified and prepped patients. Us junior residents started stitching, cleaning, removing shards and debris and managing burns. By that afternoon, the situation had been controlled and things had settled down. That’s when there was an alert from the hospital police post. A line of white and black government vehicles with flashing red lights were arriving. There was a lot of press around, and soon the emergency was surrounded by cops and kurta klad politicos.

We were cleared from the emergency, and I decided to get a snack since I hadn’t eaten the whole day. I met one of my interns in the canteen. He was excited. He told me to come to the T.V room. Rahul Gandhi-yup THE Rahul Gandhi- at the time the president of the Youth wing of the Congress (and heir apparent to the political legacy of the Gandhi Family), was in the Surgical Emergency ward, meeting the bomb blast victims and assessing the situation. He looked at all the patients there, and then stood right beside one of them. This was an old shaggy ‘Babaji’, who had been covered by a blue gown by our nurses to hide his semi-nudity. It was our Babaji. Bur hold on just a minute. He wasn’t a Bomb Blast victim. And here was Rahul Gandhi promising him adequate compensation for his pains, pointing to his bandaged leg, and calling it an attack on our integrity. Babaji had made national television, although for the wrong reasons!

The next morning when the nurse told him to go back home, he said very rudely “Why? I haven’t even had Breakfast yet”. We got a call immediately. That evening, we had a discussion with one of the smartest sisters in the emergency- although some people might have called it a scolding and not a discussion. “This is not a hotel doctor. I wont have the nurses here being treated like waitresses. I won’t have our critical patients lie on the floor because that man stinks so much that you can’t stand near him.” She understood that we were all but helpless about it. She just asked us to go and be on our way. “I’ll handle it”, she said.

We got a call at 8 AM the next morning. “Just come and dress his leg nice and good”, said the sister to my colleague. When I met my colleague for lunch that day, he seemed visibly impressed. He had gone to the emergency expecting another scolding. Instead, he found a nice and clean ‘Babaji’, with some fresh clothes. He dressed his leg and made it look peachy. An hour later, some people arrived from an NGO which helped old street dwellers. She had convinced them that all he needed was daily dressing from a local dispensary and he’d be well. The national attention he had gotten had probably helped their decision to take him. Half an hour later, he was in a van to an institution with three meals a day and probably better than the street where he came from.

Where we failed, the sister came through. It happens much more often than we doctors would like to accept. This time, the effort was undeniable. I wonder sometimes what became of Bomb blast Baba, and everytime another Babaji walks into our emergency, I still can’t believe the series of events that happened with that Babaji that week.