At dawn, the pharmacist strapped on a surgical mask and stepped into the eye-watering cloud of formaldehyde engulfing the clinic. She threw open every window, even set out small bowls of ammonia in each of the four rooms, but the fumes wouldn’t dissipate. She tried to switch on a fan.
The run back home left her too breathless to get her words out.
“Wake up, wake up. The clinic lights aren’t working. The fridge is warming up. Doctor Saheb will be so angry.”
Her husband looked barely conscious as she dragged him up the hillock, but the noxious fog at the top blew the sleep right out of him. She didn’t want to torture him like this, but who else in the village knew the clinic’s wiring?
“The fuses,” he said. “Third time this month.”
She let him grumble. With his red eyes, his uncombed hair, and the handkerchief tied across his nose and mouth, he could have been mistaken for a bandit. He pushed a ladder up against the door of the operating room and climbed to the electrical box. When he opened it, even she, from where she stood, could see black mustaches on either side of the fuse beds—remnants of repeated burnings.
“Give me the screwdriver. And that wire.”
She dug in the box. “Can’t you do something to stop it burning again?”
“I’ll talk to Saheb about this machine, a ‘surhjagard,’ they call it, I think. I’ve never seen one. It’s expensive. And I’ll have to change a lot of wiring to make it all go through one line.”
“Don’t talk about it today, then. It’s going to be a bad day, I know it.”
He unscrewed the wrong connection at first, then tightened it again, then coughed until she was afraid he would fall off the ladder. Every few minutes he leaned down, and she wiped his eyes with the same cloth with which she was wiping her own. Finally, he twisted the last copper wires together, and when he pressed the fuses into place and turned the switch, the lights, the fans, the refrigerator, all began to hum and creak.
As he was putting the ladder away, Saheb walked up the steps. “What happened? Why are you crying?”
“Not crying, Saheb. Just the fumigation.”
These fumes never seemed to bother Saheb. Maybe it was part of his training all those years ago. That, and the cutting open of corpses, the pharmacist had heard. Doctors were brave people. She would die if she ever had to watch something like that.
Saheb went to his chair. “Have the vaccines arrived?”
“No, not yet.” She tried to retie the straps on her mask, but it was too large for her face.
“What are those rascals doing? Did anyone call to explain the delay?”
“I tried, but no one picked up the phone.”
“Fine. If that’s the way it’s going to be, I don’t care. It’s not my vaccine drive anyway. What do I have to lose?”
Over the next hours, the mothers started arriving. They squatted on the grass at a distance, covered their faces and fanned their children. If it hadn’t been for the fumes, they would have crowded into the corridor and piled on the benches in twos and threes. Perhaps it was a blessing they weren’t doing that now. Not even a week had passed since the pharmacist’s husband had hammered the planks back together.
For the past few days, the tiny television in the village square had been broadcasting the same public service announcement on the Marathi channel—round-faced mothers in saris and burkhas smiling and holding hands while a deep, kind voice said, “Give your babies a gift. Protect their futures. Just two pink drops.” Then a child’s sweet face—one that always made the pharmacist’s eyes fill—would appear. She knew what would come next: the shrunken leg, the crutch in the armpit, the sunset. “Make sure you come,” she’d said to every woman she’d met. “Early in the morning. Tell everyone.”
Now it seemed that ten villages’ worth of mothers had taken her advice. And the vaccines seemed more likely to rain from the sky than be delivered.
She closed the pharmacy window and started rearranging shelves that didn’t really need her attention. When the day crept past noon, she avoided the eyes of the complaining crowd as she carried lunch and ice water to the surgeon.
He placed a tablet on his tongue and gulped it down. “Look, if the man doesn’t show up in another half an hour, send the women away. If they start yelling, tell them to march to the district office and set up a hunger strike there. Just tell them not to bother me. I don’t brew vaccines in my kitchen. Understood?”
“Yes, Saheb.”
“And tell them all to be quiet. My head is going to explode. Let me at least have a peaceful meal.”
“Yes, Saheb.”
The surgeon was polishing the last morsels off his plate when the pharmacist’s husband knocked.
“He’s here.”
The surgeon looked out the window. A corpulent shape in a faded blue safari jacket was puffing up the hillock. The man had an exuberant mustache and square glasses, and was carrying six large polystyrene boxes. The sea of squatting women parted to let him pass.
The surgeon washed his hands and stepped into the corridor, every ounce of his flesh already pickled with contempt. The visitor laid down his load.
“Here are the vaccines.”
“You were supposed to bring these yesterday.”
“I was delayed.”
“That’s it? You were delayed? And what about us? Are we beggars, waiting for you to throw us alms?”
The official looked at the women who had hurried into the corridor after him, and who were now tugging at the corners of their saris, veiling their faces against his eyes.
“It’s no business of yours why I’m late. I’m here now, am I not?”
“Not a shred of responsibility. Is this what you’re paid to do? Every other day is a vacation for you people. Who gives a damn about the doctor? For all you care, he can get holy water from the Ganga and drip it down his villagers’ throats.”
“Don’t raise your voice, Saheb. I’m not some peon.”
“You think I’m scared of you?”
“I’ve been placed in charge of this village, this clinic. I’m your supervisor. You don’t want to get into trouble with me.”
“Really? What kind of trouble?”
The official rubbed his mustache and then inspected his fingers as if afraid he’d find them stained with dye. “I didn’t want to bring this up here, in front of all these people, but there have been irregularities reported in this clinic. Questions about how your money is spent.”
The surgeon packed as much derision as he could into his laugh. “You mean the money that doesn’t even reach us? The money that turns to smoke the moment you and your comrades touch it?”
“Saheb, look, you have vaccines to give out. Why are you wasting time with this kind of talk?”
“Don’t teach me how to do my work. I would have been dispensing them since eight if you hadn’t been so lazy. But now that you’ve brought up irregularities, let’s talk about irregularities. Just wait. I’ll make sure you learn every financial detail about this clinic.”
He gripped the official’s arm, digging his thumb and fingers deep into the man’s biceps. The man’s eyes widened. The surgeon strode into the consultation room, dragging the official in with him, and then released him with enough force to make him fall into a chair. The glass door of the wall cabinet gave a piercing rasp as the surgeon slid it aside, and he yanked out his tattered moss-green ledger and slammed it on the desk.
“Here’s