Chapter 2 The Night The Lights Stayed On

Aya was sixteen when Meera Rao came to the clinic, and she remembered the rain better than she remembered her own face from that year.

It started a little after dusk. First it was a soft tapping on the tin roof, then a roar so loud that Sister Lata had to raise her voice to be heard from the other end of the corridor. Aya sat on the long wooden bench with her chemistry notebook open on her knees. She was not reading it. Amma had told her to stay close tonight because the lane behind their house flooded when it rained like this, and there was nobody home to carry her across.

At nine, the clinic door banged open and a family stumbled in out of the dark. Kabir Rao came first, holding a cloth bag in one hand and his wife's elbow in the other. Behind them walked a boy in a school shirt, wet through, gripping a broken umbrella as if someone might ask for it back.

Meera was large with the baby and out of breath, but she was laughing. She held the doorframe and laughed at the rain, at her husband's panic, at herself.

"Stop fussing, Kabir," she said. "I have done this before. Well, once."

Then she saw Aya on the bench. She came over slowly and pinched her cheek with a cold, damp hand.

"Doctor's daughter," Meera said. "Study hard. One day you will deliver my grandchildren, and I will tell everyone you were too shy to say hello."

Aya laughed in spite of herself. "Hello, aunty."

"Good girl."

Sister Lata took Meera's arm and led her through the swinging door. It flapped shut behind them. Kabir started pacing at once, six steps to the wall, six steps back.

The boy sat down at the far end of Aya's bench.

She knew him from school, the way you know anyone in a town that small. Shubham Rao, a year ahead of her, good at cricket, loud in the courtyard. He was not loud now. He pulled at the skin around his thumbnail and looked at the floor.

After a long while, Aya tore a page from the back of her notebook, folded it into a boat, and held it out. She did not know why. It was something to do with her hands.

He stared at it. "What is this?"

"A boat. My cousin taught me. It floats, I promise."

"It's paper."

"Paper floats if you fold it right."

His mouth moved, almost a smile. He took it and turned it over carefully. Then he asked, very quietly, "Is she going to be okay?"

"My mother is the best doctor in Brindle Cove," Aya said. "Everyone says so."

Shubham nodded slowly. He believed her. She saw it on his face, plain as a lamp being lit, and it was the last time anyone from his family looked at her without something sharp behind their eyes.

The hours dragged. The temple bell rang eleven. Kabir stopped pacing and sat down with his head in his hands. Shubham curled the paper boat into his fist.

Aya's throat was dry, so she got up to fill the steel tumbler at the water pot near the delivery room. The door there was not shut all the way. It had swung back an inch and stuck, the way it always did in damp weather.

She did not mean to listen. She just stood still with the tumbler halfway to her mouth, because she heard her mother's voice, and it was a voice Aya had never heard before. Low. Shaky. Almost pleading.

"...you should not be here tonight, Meera. I am telling you as a doctor."

"I know what you are telling me." Meera sounded tired, but steady. "And I am telling you as someone who has lived in this town her whole life. I stay."

"Please."

"Nalini." A pause, and the rain filled it. "Promise me something. Whatever happens, he does not hear it from anyone but me."

"Meera..."

"Promise."

A gust of wind pushed the door shut with a soft click, and the voices went away.

Aya stood there with the cold tumbler against her chest, her heart knocking. She did not understand a word of it. Who was he? Hear what? She told herself it was nothing, a mother's nerves, the kind of talk grown women have in the middle of the night.

She went back to the bench and did not say anything. Shubham asked if she was all right, and she said yes.

It was after one in the morning when the swinging door slammed open.

Sister Lata ran out with her sleeves wet to the elbow. She ran past the bench without looking at anyone, shouting for the other nurse, shouting for something Aya could not make out. Kabir was on his feet instantly. Shubham dropped the paper boat.

"What happened?" Kabir said. "Lata! What is wrong?"

Nobody answered him. The door flapped. Through it came the sound of metal against metal, quick footsteps, and her mother's voice, sharp and clear, giving orders Aya had never heard her give.

For a long time, there was only that.

Then, one by one, the sounds stopped.

When Dr. Nalini came out, her hair had slipped loose from its pins and her white coat was stained dark down the front. She walked up to Kabir Rao and stood in front of him. Her lips opened. Nothing came out for a moment.

"I am so sorry," she said. "We lost her."

Aya had never seen a person break before. She saw it now, in how Kabir's knees simply gave way, and he sat down on the bench with his hand over his mouth, and a sound came out of him that was not a word.

Shubham did not move. He stood absolutely still, his face gone white and blank.

Then he turned and looked at Aya.

"You said," he whispered. "You said she was the best doctor in this town."

"Shubham, I..."

"You said it would be okay!"

"I didn't know," Aya said. Her voice cracked on the last word. "I didn't know."

He was shouting by then, at her, at her mother, at the whole corridor. He grabbed the edge of the bench and shoved it against the wall. Dr. Nalini put out a hand toward him, and he knocked it away.

"Do something!" he screamed. "You are a doctor! Do something! Go back in there and do something!"

"Beta, I did everything I could."

"Then why is she dead?"

Dr. Nalini opened her mouth. And Aya, watching from three steps away, saw her mother close it again without saying a word. She saw her look down at her own stained hands, and saw something she could not name pass across her face.

Her mother did not defend herself. Not that night. Not ever.

Later, when the morning came gray and dripping, and the ambulance had taken Meera away, two policemen came to the clinic. One of them crouched down in front of Aya, kind and tired, and asked if she had heard anything unusual in the night. Anything at all.

She looked at her mother, who was standing in the doorway, very straight, very pale.

"No," Aya said.

It was the first lie she had ever told. She had been telling it for six years.

Tonight, lying awake in the narrow bed of her small room, with her mother's brass key still sitting in her mind like a stone, she finally let herself hear those words again.

Whatever happens, he does not hear it from anyone but me.

Meera had asked her mother to keep a promise. Meera was dead, and yet her mother had never stopped keeping it.

The question was what, exactly, she had promised to hide.