Burnout Room is a work of fiction drawn from the shared experiences of residents in Pakistan. Ravi General Hospital, its staff, patients and events are invented, and any resemblance to real persons, hospitals or incidents is coincidental. Real organisations appear only as public background. Some characters make choices that breach professional standards; the series portrays these to examine them, not to endorse them.
The roster had me off on Sunday. It also had me on call on Saturday, which meant that Sunday began at eleven in the morning, when I finally walked out of the ward, and not at midnight like it did for everyone else.
Ammi had been messaging since Fajr. Kab tak aao gi. Woh log chaar bajay aa rahe hain. Raste se dahi le aana. Aur kuch khaa lena, chehra utra hua lagta hai tasveeron mein. I did not know which pictures she meant. Probably the video.
I bought the dahi from the shop at the corner of our street in Samanabad, and two packets of nimko because Ammi had not mentioned nimko but would ask about it. At home the drawing room had been opened, which happened only for guests and for Eid. The sofa covers had been taken off. The good tea set, the one from Abbu’s side of the family with the gold rim, was out on the trolley. My brother Hamid was lying on the carpet with his chemistry book open on his chest, pretending to study.
“Doctor sahiba aa gayin,” he said without opening his eyes. “Mareez ka kya haal hai?”
“Tumhara paper kab hai?”
“Do hafte baad. Academy waale fees maang rahe hain. Ammi ne kaha tum se poochun.”
I said I would see, and went to sleep. Ammi woke me at a quarter past two. I had slept for two and a half hours and it felt like ten minutes. She stood at the door with a pressed shalwar kameez over her arm, the peach one Khala Nusrat had given me last Eid.
“Yeh pehen lo. Aur aankhon ke neeche kuch laga lo. Itni kaali ho rahi hain.”
I stood in front of the bathroom mirror putting concealer under my eyes, and then more concealer, and then I gave up. In the light of the bathroom I looked exactly like the woman in the video.
They came at twenty to five, which in our family is on time. Khala Nusrat came first, then the boy’s mother, Mrs. Javed, in a heavy shawl although it was not cold, then his younger sister, and then the boy himself. His name was Fahad. He worked in a private bank on Mall Road. He was taller than in the photograph and looked like he wanted to be somewhere else, which made me like him a little.
For the first twenty minutes nobody said anything important. Traffic on Canal Road. The price of petrol. Mrs. Javed’s knees. Khala Nusrat’s son in Toronto. I passed the tea and the nimko and the shami kebabs Ammi had made at seven in the morning, and smiled at the right times. Then Mrs. Javed put her cup down and turned to me.
“To beta, aap ki job timings kya hain?”
“Subah aath bajay se, Aunty. Aur hafte mein do ya teen dafa call hoti hai.”
“Call?”
“Raat ki duty. Agle din dopahar tak.”
There was a small silence. Fahad’s sister looked at her phone. Mrs. Javed adjusted her shawl.
“Sarkari hospital mein? Raat ko? Hamare khaandaan mein na, ladies ka raat ko bahar rehna… hum logon ne kabhi dekha nahi.” She smiled at Ammi. “Aap to samajhti hain.”
And Ammi said, quickly, in the voice she uses with relatives and shopkeepers, “Nahi, nahi, yeh to bas training hai. Chaar saal ki baat hai. Baad mein to ghar ke paas clinic khol le gi. Bilkul. Aur shaadi ke baad to waise bhi…”
She did not finish the sentence. She did not need to. Mrs. Javed nodded as if a deal had been signed. I looked at Ammi and Ammi did not look at me. She picked up the plate of kebabs and offered it to Fahad, who had already said no twice.
I had never once in my life said anything about a clinic near the house.
Then Mrs. Javed said, lightly, as if asking about the weather, “Woh video wali baat bhi humne suni thi.”
Khala Nusrat coughed. Ammi said, “Arey woh to family walon ne bas ghalat fehmi…” and Khala Nusrat said, “Aaj kal to har cheez ki video ban jaati hai,” and Mrs. Javed said, “Haan, haan, bilkul,” and nobody asked me what had happened. It was discussed in front of me for almost a minute, the way they had discussed petrol prices.
My phone vibrated on the table. Ward number. Every head turned to it.
“Excuse me,” I said, and went to the kitchen.
It was Sister Rubina. The woman in bed 17, whom I had admitted the night before, had a culture report back, and the evening doctor did not know the plan. I explained the plan. It took four minutes. When I came back, Mrs. Javed was looking at me with an expression I could not read, and Ammi’s smile had become a little too wide.
Near the end, Khala Nusrat said, in the special voice of aunties arranging things, “Bachay aapas mein do minute baat kar lein, balcony pe.” Fahad’s sister came with us and stood at the far end looking at her phone, which in our world is called privacy.
Our balcony looked out on the neighbour’s water tank and an electricity pole with a hundred wires. Fahad put his hands in his pockets.
“Sorry,” he said. “Ammi ka andaaz thora… aap samajh gayi hon gi.”
“Koi baat nahi.”
He thought for a moment. “Aap ko yeh kaam pasand hai?”
Nobody had asked me that since the first day of house job. I had a ready answer then, about serving humanity. I opened my mouth to give some version of it, and what came out was, “Pata nahi.”
He laughed, quietly, not at me. “Bank ke baare mein main bhi yahi kehta hun.”
That was the whole conversation. His sister said, “Bhai, Ammi bula rahi hain,” and we went back in.
After they left, Ammi was happy in the way she had not been for a long time. She folded the sofa covers back on, humming. “Achay log hain. Larka shareef hai. Apna ghar hai, DHA phase five mein. Nusrat ne bataya maa thori sakht hai lekin dil ki achi hai.”
“Ammi, aap ne kyun kaha main job chhor dun gi?”
“Main ne kab kaha chhor do gi?”
“Clinic. Ghar ke paas. Shaadi ke baad.”
She stopped folding. “Kehne mein kya jaata hai, Sana? Baad mein dekh lain ge.”
Baad mein dekh lain ge. Next week dekh lain ge. I wanted to tell her that I had heard that sentence before, from a man who never looked back at it. Instead I picked up the gold-rimmed cups and took them to the kitchen and washed them carefully, one by one, because they were Abbu’s family’s and Ammi would notice a chip.
Hamid came in while I was drying them. “Fees ka kya bana?”
“Kitni hai?”
“Atharah hazaar. Dus tareekh tak.”
Stipend for August and September was still “after budget approval”. I said I would manage.
I was in bed by ten, with the alarm set for half past six. I was almost asleep when the phone rang. Usman. He never called. He sent voice notes, memes, the occasional reel of a cat falling off a table, but he did not call.
“Haan, Usman?”
“So rahi thi? Sorry yaar.” A pause. Behind him I could hear the hostel: someone’s speaker playing a Punjabi song, a door banging, a man shouting for someone called Shani. “Kaisa raha? Rishta wala scene?”
“Theek. Tum ne is liye call ki?”
Another pause, longer. “Nahi. Ek baat karni thi.” I heard him breathe out. “Tumhare paas pachaas hazaar hain? Do mahine mein wapas kar dun ga. Pakka.”
I sat up. “Kya hua? Ghar mein sab theek hai? Uncle…”
“Haan, haan, ghar mein sab theek hai.” Too fast. Then, slower: “Ghar ka masla nahi hai. Bas… zaroorat hai. Main abhi bata nahi sakta.”
“Usman, stipend do mahine se nahi aaya. Tumhe pata hai.”
“Pata hai. Isi liye tum se maang raha hun. Kisi aur se nahi maang sakta.” He laughed, but it was not his usual laugh. “Bilal sir se maangun?”
I looked at the ceiling. Atharah hazaar for Hamid. Petrol. My savings from house job, which I had promised myself I would not touch until something real happened.
“Sochti hun,” I said.
“Theek hai. Thanks. Aur Sana…” The Punjabi song behind him got louder, then a door shut and it was quiet. “Kisi ko mat batana. Please.”
He hung up before I could ask him anything else. It was the first secret anyone gave me that year. It was not the last.
Next in Burnout Room, Part 4: Rs 3,240. Three months without a stipend, a brother’s academy fee, and fifty thousand rupees sent to Usman without a reason.
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