Dr. Bhargavi Chatterjea Bhattacharyya, is a practicing psychiatrist in Kolkata. She
was awarded the Morris Markowe Public Education Prize by The Royal College of
Psychiatrists, England for her article in The Telegraph titled “When your child asks
for the Moon.” She has been selected as one of the 25 inspirational women in
Psychiatry by The Royal College of Psychiatrists, England.
Apart from journal and newspaper publications, she has written stories. Her writing
appeared in two anthologies titled ‘Everything Changed After That’ and ‘Ellipsis’. She
has written a book on historical fiction titled Home Coming.
An Encounter
It was one of those nights. Being on-call on a Friday night is not something anyone looks forward to. But, this was a particularly bad night. I had to attend to three patients in the Emergency Department, four patients in the general ward and clerk in a couple of new patients in the psychiatric unit. Exhausted, I curled up in my bed in the on-call room hoping to sleep for a few hours.
Being the only on-call psychiatrist in a busy ward is not easy. Even on good days, you see a stream of patients coming in. People who are hearing voices, telling them to kill others, people who are so depressed, that they want to end their lives, people who abuse drugs and alcohol, people who are anxious and they feel they cannot handle the challenges of life. At night, when you don’t have the support of senior doctors, and when there are only skeletal staff manning the wards, it can be very difficult.
It was early hours in the morning when my bleep went off. “Oh no! Not again. I mumbled to myself. I had a long day. Can I not have a couple of hours’ sleep?” The doctor in the Emergency Department was paging me. There was an intoxicated suicidal patient. So, I had to leave the comfort of my bed and go down to the Emergency to assess him.
The same old story. Just another ‘drunk’. He had no home, no family, no job. After a few pegs, he decided to kill himself. “Why didn’t he just do it,” I said to myself. “That would have spared me a lot of trouble. My time is a precious resource. It should be used to treat ‘genuine‘patients, not this worthless fellow.”
In fact I thought like Scrooge in the Christmas Carol, “If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
He had also rung up his friends, telling them that he wanted to kill himself. A couple was driving from another town—just to comfort him. Had I been more composed, I would have reflected on this. He must be worth something to these friends. Otherwise why would they come to comfort him? They have suggested to him that he should go to the Hospital, otherwise he would not have come here. But, I was annoyed and had neither the time nor the inclination to think about him.
Fortunately, we had a bed to spare in the psychiatric ward. So, I thought I’d admit the patient. He will sleep right through the night and so will I. Finally, the prospect of some sleep made me feel pleased. Just a couple of hours after I have retired to bed, I received a call from the ward. The patient is sober, wide awake and he wishes to leave. So, I had to go back to the ward to reassess his mental state again.
Now, I was really angry. This man has disturbed me the whole night. He has deprived me of my sleep. I thought he was a nuisance. The man sensed my annoyance, but he did not say anything. He was sober. His quiet glance told me that he knew how angry I was. I was slightly ashamed of myself. But there was more to come.
A few months later, I had just finished my work at the hospital. As I walked towards my car in the parking lot, a smartly dressed man pushing a wheelchair greeted me. I returned his greetings, but I had no recollections of ever meeting him.
“Doctor,” he stated quietly. “I found this man on the pavement. He was shivering with cold, He looked rather ill to me. So, I managed to get hold of this wheelchair. Let me see if I can help him.” He paused. After a few seconds, he continued in the same quiet tone. “I know you do not remember me. When we met, I was very drunk.”
I knew he would not drink a drop, nor sleep a wink that night. Not until the destitute in his charge was comfortable. For me, it was an eye-opener. I too might have seen the shivering man on the pavement. I did not bother to look at him twice. The man, whom I had dismissed as being useless, had admirable human qualities. When he was in distress, I regarded him with annoyance. He was regarding a fellow person in distress with kindness and compassion.
No wonder he had friends who were willing to come down all the way to be with him. I learnt to look at him as a person, not as a ‘case’ and definitely not as a ‘drunk’. He had a name, I must have noted it down then. But to me he was a faceless entity. In fact the other man whom he is helping now is another faceless entity for me.
As a doctor, we always learn from our patients. We learn anatomy from the cadaver and medicine from the patient. But, this was a lesson in life. Has my training taught me to be arrogant? My job is to treat people, not to decide whether they are worthy of my treatment. Suddenly I realized what Charles Dickens said in The Christmas Carol, “Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than…..”
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