Experimental accident..
17. Blotches…
She ran quickly past the statue, taking a sharp turn at the bend in the corridor. She was running barefoot, and the floor was dusty.. the poor lighting did not help. She reached the end of the passage and saw two doors, one on her left, the other on her right. She looked over her shoulder… he had not yet caught up… she went left, and ran to the window… she looked down, the fall would be at least 10 feet, could she make it? She heard his steps grow louder, there was no time to think. She bent over and got her legs over the ledge of the window… and jumped!...
Maliha woke up with a start! She found herself on a hospital bed… and could not remember what had happened to her that got her there.
She saw two people sitting at the foot of her bed. They were on two plastic chairs, and her eyes were blurry so she could not make out who they were…she brought up her arm to squeeze her eyes… only to be restricted by the tubes sticking out of them. The sight of blood, her own blood, made her slightly dizzy, and she took a deep breath. She summoned up all her energy…”Hheelloo..”.
Kirtana was the first to jump. She had been sleeping. Long hours of waiting and watching had been exhausting. And as such she not had any proper sleep… She rushed to Mali’s side..”Maliha..you are awake! I’m so happy.. wait let me get your doctor..and Raghav? Raghav.. wake up!!!! She’s awake!”
Raghav came to Mali’s side as Kirtana ran off to get the doctor. She returned with Manu, looking equally sleepy and heavily bearded.
The doctor cleared everyone out, to make some quick checks on Mali. The three of them waited in the hall outside, and mixed with feelings of relief were also those of fear and anxiety. Would she be okay?
The doctor came out… She was everything one would want in a doctor, so as it turned out Kit got what she had asked for. “ Your friend has survived a bad fall, and lucky for her she has only a few broken bones and bruises. What did worry me was the swelling in her brain, which is why we induced the coma. I believe she is out of the woods, but I would like to keep her in the hospital for a few days for observation. I want to make sure she has not suffered any serious injury to her brain. Maliha has no recollection of the events of her fall, and it is possible that she may have some lapses in memory, but you should know that it is normal, as she has suffered some brain trauma. Please go in to speak with her, but not too long, as she needs her rest. I hope you will understand.”
They took in the doctor-speak, and painted smiles on their faces before they entered Mali’s room. She looked tired but under those bandages and hospital clothes was the resilient Mali, rearing to find out what had been going on. “ So…guys…What exactly am I doing here?”
Kirtana began the story as she had heard it from Raghav. The story was still not making any sense to anyone… but it was what had happened…
Raghav and Maliha had been talking.. They were having a serious conversation. They had spent all day talking and catching up on everything they had been doing the past few years. But now they were talking serious..and not about Raghav…about Maliha. Maliha’s life was a patchwork blanket of experiences. But there had been some dark patches. She rarely spoke of them…but they were there. Not just her parents death…but other experiences too.
They had moved to the balcony at this point to enjoy the cool breeze, but also ease the tension that had built up from discussing some not so pleasant topics.
Raghav decided this would be a good time to digress. He started to talk about some experimental technique for psycho analysis that he and his professor had been working on. It was something they were currently referring to as ‘Blotches’… it was a technique that would help people remember the raw emotion behind a traumatic event or experience and use that to help them uncover the basis for manifestation of a certain ‘psychosis’ or ‘physical illness’. It would hold a space in psychotherapy between hypnosis and ‘past life transgression’… as it would be done to a conscious person, while only going into the events of the ‘current’ life.
The technique was highly experimental, and they had been working with some volunteers to document the method and its progress. It was in its rough state, but looked promising and involved some methods that could be regarded as suggestive, rather than interpretative. That is to say that a lot was suggested to a patient about how they felt during a session, rather than leaving it to them to articulate. The only condition here is the therapist would have no prior knowledge about the situation the patient was looking at. He would however have a good knowledge of the patient’s personality from previous sessions. It allowed a patient to put themselves in a few situations from their lives that had been pulled from their memory and explore those, while the therapist provided blotches…small emotional blasts, suggesting how they felt or could have felt, and asking them to react to that blotch memory at the present moment…all while consciously visualizing that situation. It would be as though they were reliving the experience not revisiting as a spectator like in hypnosis, but all in their mind.
Maliha was amazed… she was impressed, and of course she decided she wanted to experiment. Raghav was weary at first. He knew Maliha, but would he be able to see small changes in her expression? Besides he had never worked alone with a subject. He had always been with help. He decided to give in, after her pestering, and asked that she make herself comfortable before they began…
Ten minutes later, Mali had picked an awful memory from her past…one that had sent her running.. maybe even running all her life! Manu gave her the first blotch… “act on instinct…what would you do?”…. what he did not see is her slowly rise…she began to physically act out what she was seeing… she got up from her seat…all the while acting on Raghav’s ‘blotchy’ commands… and she spent the next ten minutes acting out things Raghav was ‘suggesting’. She was running, looking over her shoulder, and running some more, till finally, she did what she had not done the last time…”what do I do Raghav? Do I jump, or surrender?”…”JUMP Mali..” he said emphatically , to him he was making a breakthrough…
But for her, so was she! And then there was silence…Mali had jumped alright… jumped four floors! The only thing that broke her fall was the ledge on the second floor!
3 comments:
Awesome .
Oh My! :O Wow..
I must say, u seem to be outdoing yourself with each and every chapter!!! this is brilliant!!!
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