Chapter 3 Nine Days

Sleep did not come, so Aya got up before the rooster did.

She dressed in the dark, tied her hair, and walked down Mill Road with her chappals slapping softly on the wet stones. The streetlamps were still on. A stray dog watched her from the steps of the tea stall and decided she was not worth the trouble.

She was not heading to the pharmacy. Mr. Gopal did not open until seven. She was heading to the clinic, because last night her mother had said the front-desk register needed cleaning up, and Aya knew if she did it before Amma woke, there would be no questions.

That was the plan. It was a small lie, and she was tired of the bigger one.

The green door was unlocked. Her mother had a habit of forgetting. Aya slipped inside and breathed in the smell of spirit and old wood. The waiting room was dim and empty, six chairs lined up like patients nobody came to see.

She sat behind the front desk and pulled out the big black register. It had been her grandfather's idea, a ledger for the clinic's money, every rupee in and every rupee out. Her mother kept it in neat blue ink. Aya turned the pages slowly, and her stomach dropped a little more at each one.

Last March, the page was full. Forty, fifty patients a week, the fees written in a tight row. By June, the lines grew shorter. By September, there were whole days with nothing at all, only a dash where a number should be.

She flipped to the last page.

Under it, folded in half and tucked into the spine of the ledger, was a letter.

It was on thick cream paper, with the printed name of the Brindle Cove Cooperative Bank across the top. Aya almost put it back. Then she saw the word stamped in red along the edge, and her hands went cold.

FINAL NOTICE.

She read it standing up, her lips moving without sound.

The clinic had taken a loan eight years ago, to build the new delivery room. It was a small loan, her mother had once said, nothing to worry about. But the payments had stopped being small the day patients stopped coming. Three months missed. Then four. Then five. The bank had been patient, the letter said, but patience had limits. If the full overdue amount of sixty-two thousand rupees was not paid, the building and the land would be put up for recovery.

Aya read the number twice, then a third time, in case she had misread the zeros.

Sixty-two thousand.

She had eleven thousand four hundred in a biscuit tin under her bed. She knew the exact amount because she counted it every Sunday, the way some people say prayers.

"Aya?"

She jumped so hard the register slid off the desk and hit the floor with a slap.

Dr. Nalini stood in the doorway of the back corridor, her dupatta pulled around her shoulders, her hair still loose from sleep. She looked at the notice in Aya's hand. She looked at the fallen book. Then she looked at nothing in particular.

"You should not be reading that," she said.

"How long have you known?" Aya's voice came out thin. "How long have you been carrying this, Amma?"

"It is my work to carry it."

"That is not an answer."

"It is the only answer I have." Her mother walked over and bent to pick up the ledger, slowly, as though her back hurt. She closed it and held it against her chest. "The clinic will manage. It always has."

"Amma, look at the pages!" Aya held up the letter. "Five months! You did not tell me. You let me go to the pharmacy every day and come home and eat dinner and say nothing, and all this time..."

"What would you have done?"

The question stopped her.

"If I told you," her mother said, quieter now, "what would you have done? Sell your bangles? Take more shifts? You already work from seven in the morning until the lamps are lit. I will not put a child's wages into the mouth of a building."

"I am not a child."

"You are my child."

It was said gently, and somehow that was the worst part. Aya felt her eyes sting and looked up at the ceiling fan until the feeling passed.

"We could ask someone," she tried. "Mr. Gopal. Or the panchayat. Or Zoya's father, he knows people at the..."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I am not going to beg that man's neighbours for money in the same town that..." Her mother stopped. Her jaw worked. "No. I said it will be managed, and it will."

Aya looked at her. She saw how thin her mother had become, how the white coat hung from her shoulders now, how new gray lines showed at her temples. She saw, with sudden clearness, that Dr. Nalini was not hiding the problem to protect the clinic. She was hiding it because she could not bear for her daughter to see her fail.

It was an old kind of love. It was also a heavy one.

"Fine," Aya said quietly. "It will be managed."

Her mother nodded, relieved, and went back to put the kettle on. The moment she was out of sight, Aya spread the letter flat on the desk and read every line again, slowly this time, because she had been so busy being angry that she had skipped the dates.

Printed at the very bottom, in small black type, was the day it was issued.

It was dated twenty-one days ago.

She counted on her fingers. Once. Twice. A third time, and her heartbeat went loud in her ears.

The letter gave thirty days. Her mother had been holding it for three weeks.

Which meant the clinic did not have a month left. It had nine days.