I said I always win NaNo.

I don’t lie.

Word Count: 78,363

I was walking through the “old” district of Srinagar. It looked as though it dated back to the early nineteenth century – not since it was created, but since the last time it was tidied up. Buildings slumped over themselves as people did, and where a building was not slumped there was a crowd of Indian men and women waiting to purchase something, as though only the man with the good home could be a merchant. The dirt roads led to a bazaar, which was completely empty. The bazaar should have been the central point of the old district, but for some reason nobody was buying either bread or rice. The shopkeepers waited patiently for a single customer to walk around that fated corner, but Srinagar’s old city district citizens were too preoccupied. They were preoccupied with far more than their own lives; tending to the lives of other was their task. Continuing around the streets, I saw one house around which a particularly large lot of people gathered. My phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hemmings? It’s Dr. Afalsi.”

“Oh, great – I’m in Srinagar now.”

“Yes, that’s why I called. There are about fifteen hospitals in Srinagar. You’ll only be working at one of them. Ask around for directions SMHS Hospital, since I don’t know exactly where you are. Anywhere you go, though, it should be north of you – usually northwest. Once there, don’t even bother asking for the man in charge. They’ll know who you are.” Afalsi’s voice was so confident – something I could never match. He knew exactly what he was talking about, as though it had been thoroughly rehearsed and I was but an audience to his perfect speech.

“Alright. I trust you, Afalsi. I’ll start going right away; I’ll call you when I’ve started work.”

“Sounds good. Take care, Hemmings – and don’t lose track of our goal.”

Click; he hung up.

“Excuse me,” I said, walking up to a completely random man gathering in front of the busy building nearby, “do you speak English? Does anybody here speak English?” I shouted to all.

“Yes, I do speak English! Do you need something, sir?” a voice answered from within the hotchpotch of human beings. “Sir?” he said when I hesitated to answer for a moment.

“Yes, yes – I need a map of Srinagar! I do not know my way around, and need to get to the SMHS Hospital right away! I’ve come to Srinagar to cure the ill sick with a very deadly disease!” I was shouting so loud, but I could hardly hear my own voice. I didn’t know if the man I was speaking with could hear. When he responded, I remember thinking that he must have had very good ears.

He let out a hearty laugh through the crowd. “Then you are surely crazy! There is no cure. All of my family has died already, and if you are talking about that, then our best doctors have been trying to cure that sickness for months. Now it is too late; all of Srinagar might as well be doomed. One more doctor does not mean much to us when one hundred doctors together could not cure this illness.” He shoved his way through the crowd to talk to me. I almost thought that I would find the hospital empty as well, for everybody must be outside in front of this one building. The crowd was growing, and I was shrinking. I was but a small being in a larger universe made up of Indians from the old city district of Srinagar. The man finally managed his way out of the crowd, huffing to catch his breath.

“What were you in front of that building for?”

“The man there said he would pay for all of our surgeries, that he works at the hospital and can get us a good deal when we fall sick. Many people are selling things like these, because most of us cannot afford to get sick. You look like you are not from Srinagar, so I will tell you. It is not good living here. Not many live in the old city but the poor and destitute. The rest live in the new Srinagar, across the river Jhelum. However, even those people do not live in peace. They are ravaged by the same illnesses we are here in the old city, and they fall prey to the same fate. I have seen the dead, sir; they have fire in their eyes. They are the strangest corpses I have ever seen – and nobody, old city or new, is exempt from this death. But,” he laughed, “if you are here to treat us, then you must know about this already.”

I did know. I made a special connection with description if the corpses’ eyes. I, too, had noticed a certain fire in all of those eyes infected with Athan’s. It showed not death, but life – that somewhere deep inside that dead body was still the living organism that had been walking the Earth not so very long ago. And it was what gave me hope that there was a cure for Athan’s Disease, what had driven me to find what eventually became the antibiotic I was now distributing to the people of the world. I felt proud of myself for noticing the fire that this man noticed. He had been through all the tragedies of Athan’s Disease but one, and his noticing that there was just a small spark of life inside all those dead people made me confident that somebody, somewhere, and saved the bodies in a special place so that they could wake up later in peace. Perhaps Srinagar wasn’t going to be in chaos for long, once the city began waking up. Once everybody was back, the city would return to normal. Or, at least, normal until the people realized that the disease had not been cured.

The man guided me to where I could find a map – back to bazaar, which was only just beginning to receive some customers. I took the map from another strange, old man with a long, dark beard. He said that the map was free, but if I wanted the map I’d have to buy something else. I didn’t have any money – what was I to do? “Shut up,” said the man who had brought me there, “and give the man a map. He is here to cure… those people. This map will help him get to the hospital, I take it.”

Suddenly, the salesperson was quiet. He looked at me with an expression of utter awe, and handed me the map. “You’d better do good things,” he told me. “I don’t like people who do bad things. You’re not one of those people, are you?”

“No, of course not,” I said, not knowing what he meant by good and bad things. It was all so very subjective – one’s notion of what was good and bad could be entirely different from another human’s conceptions of right and wrong. Furthermore, it was never stated that right and wrong were the same as good and bad – I ended up confused with the man’s statement. All I could do was reassure him that I was the type of person he wanted to see own his map. I might have been lying to him, but I needed the map. There was no question about that. Needing the map was not as confusing as knowing good from bad, right from wrong, in cities that reminded of Westendorf. Westendorf, where what good and bad is don’t matter anymore. Good and bad, right and wrong, they mean nothing if everybody is dead!

I opened the map – it was slightly rotten on the inside, but more than readable. I saw the SMHS Hospital at the top of the map, in the northernmost part of Srinagar. I would have to cut across the Jhelum River, using one of the many bridges that led to the new city. I thanked both of the men for their kindness, and asked where I was. Once I knew, I walked east. Simply east. If I continued east I would hit the river, and then I could pick any bridge I wanted to get over to the other side of Srinagar. That side of the city would turn out to be far less organized than the old district was. It was a subtle divide, even if it was a river between them. I could see the difference, even still. On the old city side, one man had set up his own hospital to attempt to treat the sick, and was now host to a hoard of bodies – many of them dead – and he did not know what to do with them. On the new city side, there were none of these false hospitals. Everybody made the same trek to the same hospital, hoping that after the doctor’s one millionth try he might have found a cure. Anybody next in line could be winning the medical lottery and be saved that day.

The river was the color of dirt. You could not see under the surface – almost like the Hudson, but nowhere near as dirty. I pitied anybody who might have fallen in. They would rise out of the river mucky, disgusting – almost the way I thought I looked covered in rain at Westendorf, but with the extra mud added into the mix. The bridges were not well held together. They looked as old as the old district, and were made of plywood and other rickety material. They had triangle-shaped rails that seemed to barely serve as a way to stable oneself. I was wary of crossing them, but I knew I had to get to the SMHS Hospital if I wanted to cure anybody – if I wanted to see if the cure would work this time. As I crossed the bridge, clutching the railings for dear life until halfway through (when I realized that they were stable after all), I became afraid that my cure wasn’t at all effective. My mind wandered to a land where I had failed again. Srinagar became a temple for the development and spread of Athan’s Disease. I could see the saddened, frightened faces of all the citizens of Srinagar, all of Kashmir even. They cowered in their homes as though the threat of nuclear war loomed over the tables that they hid under. When I snapped back to reality, I was on the other side of the bridge. I could see many structured buildings, and many more of those structured buildings resting directly against the water’s edge. There were boats going up and down the river, people for whom it seemed life was still fairly normal, even amidst the chaos and turmoil of Athan’s Disease. These men paddled the river, throwing all of their cares and worries into the murky depths with their oars.

But not everybody in the new district of Srinagar had this luxury. The new district of Srinagar was far more like Westendorf. Instead of filing like a community out in front of one home asking other friends and citizens for help, everybody only wanted to fend for his or herself, to protect whatever they owned in case they might die. I could tell that a lot were locked away in their homes making adjustments to their last will and testament. The few that were on the streets – and I thanked the air silently for showing me people on the streets this time – were wandering. They did not know where they were going. Perhaps they were out to purchase groceries, or to visit a friend’s house. Perhaps they were searching for somebody to help who was in need, keeping with the true community spirit nestled deep within Srinagar’s traditions and culture. But more than likely they were walking waiting for their own demise. As soon as I crossed the bridge, one more person collapsed on the street. They were the walking dead.

How many in Srinagar were infected by the time I arrived? I could not have possibly imagined. It was beyond me to perceive that Athan’s was spreading so fast.

It was too far to walk to the hospital. Before bothering to find a taxi, or some random stranger who would drive me, I wanted to find a hotel. This proved easy, because tourism fed Srinagar’s empty stomach every summer. I picked a nicer hotel; I didn’t want to stay in a small place like I had at Westendorf, which was far too cramped a room for the open lifestyle in Srinagar. I picked a hotel and bought a room; I told them I didn’t know how many nights I would be staying. It really was a mystery to me, although I didn’t want to stay the several weeks I had at Westendorf again. I was hoping that the antibiotics would work faster than that. If anything, Srinagar would be the perfect place to find out whether or not the antibiotics were working properly. With so many people flooding in and out of the hospital looking for treatment, one of them was bound to be cured. The medical lottery – that’s what it was.

I flashed back to Edward Nambet once again. I could see his smiling face in front of his first car. “Ethan, check this out!” he said, and hopped in while turning the key at the same time. The engine revved, the car shook. It was unstable at first sight, like the bridges of Srinagar. But Edward smiled, gave me a thumbs up, and backed the car out of its parking space. He drove around the cal-de-sac where he lived. He circled the cal-de-sac until I thought the hulking SUV might tip over. He stopped the car, jumped out, and praised himself for being able to drive at last. Said it took him forever to figure out. I was younger, I didn’t care that it had taken him too long to learn how to drive, or that his parents had labeled him hopeless. “If you can’t learn how to drive, how will you ever be able to keep your wife?” Utterly ridiculous statements like these came all too often out of the mouths of Edward’s parents.

My face resumed the inquisitive face with the raised eyebrow that I had thought was gone to the shivering at Westendorf. Only in the presence of Edward, now, did it seem to resurface. I shook my head to return my face to normal – I didn’t want anybody to see me like that. I found that I was already walking down the hallways of the hotel to my room; I was almost there, to room 102, on the first floor. It was spacious as I’d hoped, but it was not luxurious – which was good as well, because I wasn’t the fancy type. I would have failed to exist in a five-star resort. I didn’t think that there were any five-star resorts in Srinagar, though. And if there were, they were completely empty by then. Nobody came into Srinagar now. They would never come. Those tourists on my flight to Srinagar were the last that the city would ever see.

Once my things were placed in my room I left the hotel and waved in the streets for some sort of taxi. I didn’t care who drove me, just that I could get to the hospital somehow. However there were few people on the streets in the new city district, and an even smaller number of cars. I saw, in an hour of wandering the city, perhaps three cars. I didn’t know how anybody managed to get around until I found a bus stop, with a route that went straight to the hospital. There was a line – a very large line – of people waiting to board the bus that would take them straight to the SMHS Hospital. In fact, all other routes had been crossed off with black permanent marker by some graffiti artist who wanted to tell the bus company that there was nobody in the city going anywhere but the SMHS from now on.

Sure enough, the first bus to arrive was going to the SMHS, as well as the second, and the third, and so on until I was next in line to board a bus. I boarded quietly and inconspicuously, attempting not to garner attention amongst so many people who did not resemble me in the least. I definitely looked like a stranger; but what kind of tourist would visit a hospital on their day trip? After about twenty minutes sitting on the run-down bus and its plastic seats, looking out of its dirty, plastic windows, the SMHS was in sight. It was a thoroughly unimpressive building made of red brick with single roofing. It did not resemble a hospital in the least, and looked very small5. I was wary of what would be inside – and baffled by how that one building managed to store half of Srinagar’s population. I knew that Srinagar was very large, and that this building was nowhere near large enough to hold half of everybody – much less treat them.

I caught a glimpse of the OPD. It was full of people just waiting to be looked at – for anything. They wished upon a star that they would get treatment that day. Some of them were probably praying for treatment in the next week. The medicinal lottery said that they might get it – but who knew? Everything was a gamble. I got off the bus and found the main entrance, which was practically blocked by the amount of people waiting to be treated. I shoved my way through the largest crowd I’d seen yet. The lobby, like the rest of the hospital was small. Green tiled floors had long since lost their reflective surfaces to the untamed, unpredictable stamping of sick feet. Taking up space in this small lobby were stairs leading to another floor, presumably just as small and just as crowded as the first. I followed signs to the medical ward, where I hoped somebody would recognize me.

Afalsi hadn’t lied – they knew who I was instantly. Granted, I was the only white man in a sea of Indians, but even so there was no telling that I was the doctor they were looking for. I wasn’t even dressed the part; I looked like any normal man, wearing normal clothes. But I would change into proper clothes soon enough. The air around me tasted sour as I was given a quick tour of the building by one doctor who was taking a break. He introduced to me all of the wards and storage rooms, in one of which I saw the same shipping box that I’d found in Westendorf. I marked that door on the map inside my head and continued on with the tour of the SMHS Hospital. The man seemed disoriented, but it was not his fault – I didn’t doubt that he’d been up all night treating people for the same disease. I wondered how many doctors there had taken tissue samples from patients and discovered the white bacteria. I wondered if they knew how smart it was, and what its parts were for, and how it chose who to infect and who to leave alone.

“We keep all the carriers in here for testing, but I’m sure we won’t need them for long once you start using your antibiotic. We’ve been waiting a long time for you to come, Dr. Hemmings. It is truly a pleasure to see you here.” He was referring to an entire ward of the hospital entirely dedicated to those who never caught the sickness. As carriers, they would hold Athan’s inside of them but never catch the disease. I didn’t even know that Athan’s carriers existed until that point. I believed that it was the bacteria evolving. Now they were spore-like. They were making for themselves more shapes and forms which to morph into, to give them the utmost flexibility to infect any person possible, even if it meant forfeiting some potential infections in favor of creating a carrier to spread the disease everywhere.

If Athan’s Disease had been a human, I would have called him despicable. I would have possibly been crazy enough to kill him where he stood – and I’d never had such urges in my life. It was entirely new; the feeling of madness that coupled the want to murder. As Athan’s evolved, my want to destroy it grew. But how far would I go to really get rid of the disease? The truth was, I wasn’t entirely sure. I didn’t know my own limits at that point – but I do now. I know what a coward I am. I deserved after Srinagar to be who I was; who I found out that I might become.

Finally, I was introduced to one of the doctors in charge, Dr. Rochak. Rochak knew all about me, and had been waiting, as the other doctor had said, “for quite some time.” He, like all of the other men in charge I met, spoke with fluent English, although his was tinged with a thick accent as everybody else’s was. I didn’t expect less; I was simply surprised that Pharand was kind enough to send me to English-speaking areas at all. Together Dr. Rochak and I walked to the utility closet where my shipping box full of antibiotic sit neatly on the floor, God forbid anything in that place be arranged with any apparently organization except the casualty ward. The casualty ward at the moment had been emptied and turned into a break room. The employee wreck rooms were used for patients. The casualty ward was large and hospitable, unlike the employee wreck rooms. So many doctors were now working double shifts (without extra pay, I was told, for there was not enough money in the hospital to pay everybody twice) that the casualty ward was always full. Nobody had casualties anymore – everybody was sick with Athan’s. The hospital had become a breeding ground for the disease without trying.

I was rushed immediately to work. The influx of patients was incredible. Every five minutes I injected antibiotics, and then moved to another patient. People had been “waiting on the backburner” to receive the treatment. Several had paid extra just to have a home in the hospital until I arrived. It seemed that all of Srinagar knew I was coming and was waiting eagerly for my arrival. I received so many thanks that day and, though I never saw any of those people again, I remain grateful for the thanks I received. I was grateful because I did not see them again, not because the people had thanked me. For hours, and late into the night, I treated people with my antibiotic, praying that all of this special fluid would not be going to waste. Everything was calculated by body mass. I had the person stand on a scale – one that I thought was fairly accurate – and then determined the correct dosage.

I nearly fell asleep in the casualty ward that night. The hospital was larger than it seemed on the outside, and I was having trouble navigating through parts of it. I had taught several doctors how to administer the medicine properly; the rest watched and learned. The medicine would be distributed whether I was there or not, but I knew I had to stick around, as Afalsi had told me, to “supervise” the operations of the SMHS Hospital. Everybody seemed adept at what they did, and there didn’t seem to be much of a need to supervise. As it was late, I bid farewell – and said a special goodbye to Dr. Rochak, who had continued touring the building with me even after the other doctor had left to continue his own work. Dr. Rochak was an incredibly intelligent man, housing more knowledge within him than I could ever hope to harbor. In fact, his mental capacity seemed to soar beyond that of anybody’s in the hospital. He must have had some deep, dark secret on how to gain intelligence, because it seemed to gravitate towards his being. Anywhere he went he seemed smarter than those around him. He was a constant intimidator, a consistent outsmarter, and a professional human encyclopedia. I was surprised that it wasn’t he who had developed the cure for Athan’s Disease; but then again, as smart as he was, he didn’t know its name.

Or so I thought.

I always remember Srinagar as being less of a city than it seemed. It reminded me far more of the suburbs which I loved than of the city that I hated. It didn’t matter how populated it was. Simply that everything was small and tidy meant that I was at home. Srinagar did not intimidate me as the city near my American home had. Nothing outside of America seemed intimidating to me. Srinagar was the first foreign urban environment I’d ever visited, and after feeling so welcome within its boundaries I felt like a true world traveler. It was an exhilarating feeling. My adventurer’s eye was beginning to wander far beyond my body – into the lands beyond Srinagar, beyond India, into China and Russia and all the surrounding nations. I was tempted with the urge to go everywhere, to experience everything. But I knew that it was not safe. Once again I wished death to Athan’s Disease, which prevented me from exploring the world as I so now desperately wished I could. I gave more prayers that my antibiotic would take effect quickly.

I took a side trip to Dal Lake that night, partly on Dr. Rochak’s command, who insisted that I go there as soon as possible. The Dal was far more beautiful than the Jhelum, whose murky depths were unfathomable because they were so dirty. The Dal was pristine, even if it too was slightly murky. It was pristine because one could see everything on it, and everything surrounding it. It was the lake that gave sustenance to Srinagar, and truly credited the city’s English name, “paradise on earth.” The Dal was the same lake I’d seen coming into the city, where I’d seen the houseboats floating peacefully. I still wished that I could be a part of that world, where houseboats floated and cares sunk into the deep. Several moonlit shikaras, small boats, floated along the surface of the Dal, begging me to leap onto one and float with it. I only wished I could jump to the center of the lake to land on one of them. I couldn’t have even if I could leap so far – the boats were roofed.

“You don’t want to go on one of those,” said a voice from behind me that I did not recognize.

“Who’s that?” I said to the dull darkness.

“Nobody that you know, mister. Just a woman who spends most of her time looking at the lake in her old age,” she said in quivered tongue. “But those shikaras, they are for tourists. Somebody like you should not waste your time paying a poor man for a ride in his boat.”

“It looks… fun, though,” I whined, like a child, like Shane Evans might have whined. I looked out at the shikaras. One man was nestled up in a blanket, sleeping on the soft wood of the boat under the moonlight. The boat emitted bright orange and yellow hues, and glowed as though it were on fire. The entire lake formed one giant, fiery eye with all of the boats inside. The outline of the Dal was marked by houses on bamboo stilts, struggling to stay structurally sound while remaining a proper fishing home. Some of the houses were painted a delightful blue, while others were grey and dull. People had laid their clothes out for the night, so that the bright colors of the clothes and the bright colors of some of the homes reflected perfectly in the water, which would have been as perfectly still if the equally bright boats weren’t also floating around.

“Dal Lake,” the old woman screeched, “is for the poor and destitute. If you want to go there, you’re better off in the old city. At least there you can buy decent food. There is no food on Dal Lake. There is no way for you to sustain yourself. I can’t imagine why anybody would want live there – even the water is bad for you.” I heard the woman sit down on a nearby wooden bench – the same kind of bench I used to sit uncomfortably upon while eating my lunch at the now-destroyed hospital back home. I was jealous. Why could she sit so comfortably on such a bench, while I struggled to gain peace on the hard wood? Throughout my adventures I had struggled through everything – yet so many talents were partial to their savants! And now I didn’t dare sit on the bench with the woman, out of spite. I left Dal Lake without saying goodbye to the lady who had spoken none but melancholy to the world.

That night in the hotel was uncomfortable. I heard people in the room over singing, all night long. At one point they sang India’s national anthem. I could hear the jeers of “Jaya! Jaya! Jaya!, Victory! Victory! Victory!” that they shouted. And to that tune, I lolled myself to sleep. Jaya – I wished for victory over all of the savants around me. Jaya – I wished for victory over the growing fear within me. Jaya! I wished for victory over Athan’s Disease.

I felt completely refreshed. I woke, showered, and prepared myself for another day of hard work at the SMHS Hospital in Srinagar, India. The bus stop seemed less crowded that day. The streets were emptier, and with them my mind as well. Everything, overall, was far more peaceful and quiet. I should have known at that moment to begin worrying, instead of relaxing. Instead, I casually walked towards the SMHS, unaware of anything that was going on. I found out when I arrived: All of the living people I’d treated the day before were now dead. As though the disease had progressed on its own. As though my antibiotic wasn’t doing anything at all.

The bodies were all lumped into a single ward. Somebody had already brought the many bodies into that ward, and I couldn’t imagine that it was anybody but Dr. Rochak. Rochak was truly a hero – a savant, a master of planning ahead. I caught him already in the ward smiling when I arrived to tend to the bodies. He’d known I’d head that way, and waited for me to show up. “Look,” he said, “I don’t want you to worry about these bodies very much. If they are cured, wonderful, but we must wait and see what your medicine does. I know you are anxious, but you must be patient. Administer the antibiotic to them again, as potent as it may be. After doing that, tend to the other dead – we keep them in a separate building, what used to be the Bone and Joint Hospital before a—” he stuttered there, on that single vowel sound, then continued on, “before this disease began to spread. It’s silly, really. We are not very much of a hospital any more. We now only treat this one illness!”

He left the room (and me to my work) humming the national anthem. I could hear the melody that had accompanied last night’s rounds of “Jaya! Jaya! Jaya!” It echoed down the halls and across the hospital. Other people began to pick up the melody and join in his humming. Some chose to whistle. Never before had a national anthem been so captivatingly addictive. It was something that one simply could never find in America. US citizens, I learned, would rather complain about their country than praise it, and adore the fine standard of living that it has brought them. And these people in Srinagar, of all conditioned, lived mostly in poverty – yet they echoed India’s anthem with such vigor and chorus as soon as Dr. Rochak entered into the hallway.

I gave the bodies my antibiotic, which took about an hour. There was no way of systemizing the number of bodies in the room and who I had already given the shots to. I second-guessed myself with some of the cadavers, but I knew that as long as it took to identify them, they would never rot. The bodies were perpetuated, frozen in time like so many were doomed to be. After my work, I rushed back to the lobby of the hospital. The lobby was almost empty. Everybody who was to fall ill had already done so. Everybody was dead. A few patients entered here and there throughout the day, but I was busy tending to the already-dead citizens of Srinagar, who needed my antibiotic to wake up. Sure, they would all wake up eventually no matter what – but I’d rather have seen them awaken as human beings. It was a shame that they did not.

That day, during my lunch of all hours, one of the dead patients woke. “We’ve got a spawner!” somebody shouted. Had that term really spread so quickly? Language itself was a powerful, omnipresent disease. I could spread across the world in mere minutes, unlike Athan’s Disease, which took weeks.

I had little time to ponder, for soon the patient was living himself up and attempting, even, to get out of bed. They thought that they were fine and well! I would have let them up out of bed if I hadn’t thought it so ridiculous. “Lay down!” I shouted from across the room as I ran from one end of the hospital to the other. “Please don’t strain yourself – you are not alright, even if you think you are!” Inside my mind I added to that sentence, “not until I’m done with you, at least.” I didn’t bother taking tissue samples to check and see if the man was still infected, because Dr. Rochak appeared behind me.

“He is still sick,” he said with confidence that I could not have mustered. “Don’t let him go. Give him some more of that antibiotic you’ve got and leave him alone to sleep. Ai apologized to the man and reached for a nearby bottle of my antibiotic that had been lying around. I injected the medicine into him, and he almost immediately fell to sleep. I didn’t know how Rochak had known that the man would be tired; rest is always useful, but in this case it was immediate, happening literally moments after I injected the antibiotic into the man’s system. He couldn’t have possibly been that tired.

I resumed my lunch, hoping that for five minutes I would have time to eat it. I had before viewed to have at least one day in my life where I was free to eat my meals uninterrupted. I decided that in order to do that I’d have to change my meal times. While eating, I overheard Rochak speaking on the phone, though I didn’t know who he was talking to.

“Yes, of course, sir. No, he doesn’t. I promise you. More? I don’t see why we would need more. There are plenty of bottles left; a whole case full, even after treating the whole tow— alright, I will order another case. The money better not be coming out of my wallet. I do not want to pay for the hospital’s supplies, especially this stuff.”

And by the next day, another crate from Pharand arrived on the steps of the SMHS hospital. It was all put to good use. Everybody who had been sick for the last few weeks was beginning to wake up – although the man I had treated the day before was still asleep, in a bliss that escaped me entirely.

The night before I had taken a second trip to Dal Lake in hopes of hitching a ride on a shikara. The small boats were only their most mysterious at night, where they were almost ghostlike, ethereal. That night there was no old woman to tell me not to board the ships, but there was also no moon to guide me to them. The sky was cloudy, and the moon was afraid of those clouds. It ran away, and my light to see the shikaras with it. I had only stayed by the Dal for a moment before beginning to walk home. While walking home, I’d heard a familiar voice. It was Rochak again. He appeared everywhere I was. I didn’t know if he was following me, but he was still humming the Indian national anthem. I wanted to learn some of it from him, so that I might feel even more at home in this strange land, but I ended up walking back to my hotel, ignoring his perfectly pitches notes and focusing on the path that would lead me to a soft bed for the night.

I’d never unpacked.

Now I could hear Rochak talking again. I could hear what he was saying beyond the anthem, and what his heart sang out loud for all to hear: “Hemmings doesn’t know. Don’t worry, sir. Hemmings doesn’t know.” He had said that the night before. I remembered it after waking up in the morning, after riding the bus and using the many minutes inside to flash back to Dal Lake for the only relaxing few minutes of the way. I remembered it because it sounded dreamlike among his singing. Had he been on the phone? Had he been speaking to himself? Could I have been hearing things? No – impossible, I told myself. I was not hearing things. Something was going on. I ceased treating patients that day and followed Rochak. Wherever he went, I followed. I was his shadow – his lesser half, and although I could never live up to the original’s greatness, I had every right to follow him around forever. I tried not to be a bother – we were doing the same work either way. I made it seem, as best as I could, as though we needed to work together to give people the medicine, if not for this one day only.

He didn’t seem to mind, so long as I didn’t go into certain places – and these places did not only include the bathroom. There were other rooms he kindly asked me not to enter. There were quite a few actually, and every one of them had a phone inside. I didn’t think that Rochak seemed one to carry a cell phone – or one to be able to afford it. But I tried my hardest to listen to every word he said. Perhaps he knew I was listening. Perhaps he didn’t, and I truly learned something I was not meant to learn. But I caught him speaking quietly on the phone while we rested in the casualty ward with several other doctors. He stood in a remote corner, far away from all the other chattering doctors. “Yes,” he said, “I am going to invite Ethan. Of course, what would the wake be without him? He is an essential guest. After all, he might as well be responsible!”