Chapter 13 — The Results

The hospital was in Gopeshwar. It was a district facility with limited laboratory capacity and a duty doctor named Dr. Anand Bora who was forty-two and had been practicing in this district for fifteen years and had the specific no-nonsense competence of a physician who had seen everything and had the equipment to handle most of it.He looked at Meera's request — full metabolic panel, neurological baseline, and then a long list of specific compounds she had written from memory from Amrita Bhardwaj's notebook descriptions — and he raised an eyebrow but did not ask questions."The extended panel will need to go to Dehradun," he said. "Three days minimum.""Can you start the neurological baseline here?""Yes.""Then start that. And I need an ophthalmology assessment. Specifically blink reflex, tear production, ocular surface condition."He looked at her eyes. He looked at them with the clinical attention she was used to directing at others. She made herself hold still."When did you last blink?" he said.She felt the cold again."I don't know," she said. "I noticed in the car — I was trying to count and I couldn't establish—"He held up a pen light. He clicked it.She felt nothing. No reflexive shut. No flinch."Blink for me," he said.She blinked. Deliberately, consciously, the way you blinked when you were thinking about blinking. The reflex itself — the automatic closure triggered by the light — had not fired.Dr. Bora lowered the pen light."How long were you in the village?" he said."Three days.""And you had contact with the water?""Dermal. Face wash, hand washing. No ingestion that I know of."He was quiet for a moment. He wrote something in his notes. Then he looked at her with the expression of a man making a clinical assessment and a human assessment simultaneously."I want to run a basic neurological exam," he said. "I want you to stay in this facility tonight. I want to start IV fluids — clean water, purified — and I want to monitor your blink reflex hourly." He paused. "I want you to understand that I am not certain what we are dealing with.""I know," she said. "I'm not certain either.""But I have seen enough unusual things in this district," he said carefully, "to know that unusual things in this district are not to be dismissed."He sent her to a ward bed. He started the IV.She called Devraj from the bed with her mobile. Signal was strong here."Police have been dispatched to Sunderkhal," he said. "The forensic team is leaving tomorrow morning. I have spoken to the district magistrate." A pause. "Are you all right?""I don't know yet," she said. "Ask me in three days when the bloods come back from Dehradun.""Meera—""I'm safe. I'm in hospital. Devraj — the notebook I found. I still have it. I'm going to read it again tonight. Everything Amrita Bhardwaj documented about the compound — that's the key to understanding what happened to the children." She paused. "And what's happening to me."She hung up.She looked at the ceiling. She thought about blinking, deliberately, and felt the strangeness of a voluntary action that should be involuntary.She thought about the children standing in the square at midnight around the fire.She thought about Paro's voice, barely above a whisper: I don't know if I can go.She thought: I'm going to get you out. All of you.She did not know how. She did not know if it was possible.She blinked, deliberately, five times in a row, and felt each one as a small act of defiance.