Story 3: Of Stoppers and Closures
This is a story I had written in November 2017. Being busy with the blogathon on other topics on Anu's Words, I hadn't put it up as a blog post. Later, this story made its way into the ebook I published on Amazon, called Song of Life and Other Stories.
Recently, I remembered this story again. Considering that many of my readers may not have read the ebook, I'm putting it up here for your reading pleasure.
Prompt: Calculated Risk
A gloved hand reached into the bin labeled Batch 101 and picked up a few rubber stoppers. Sampling was underway in the Packing Material Store of Nor Pharmaceuticals. As a leading manufacturer of injectable products, the company took its quality control very seriously and its processes were all designed to leave nothing to chance. As Nor’s Managing Director often pointed out to anyone willing to listen, success in the pharma industry was all about working your way through calculated risk.
The stoppers now traveled to the lab where they were tested for quality and efficacy. Unknown to the owner of the gloved hand, one rubber stopper sat untouched just to the right of where he had picked the last sample from. This one had a tiny dent on its undersurface indicating an area of weakness in the rubber.
Within a few hours, the QC report for Batch 101 was released, with a bright green stamp announcing “APPROVED.” In the midst of the other perfectly moulded stoppers, the dented closure too made its way ahead for an elaborate cleaning, washing and sterilizing procedure – one that was designed to ensure the stoppers did not shed any particles into the life-saving injectable vials that were the pride of Nor Pharmaceuticals.
Late in the afternoon, four doors away, Sunita rubbed her eyes tiredly and pressed the STOP button on the conveyor belt. As one of the senior operators in the Visual Inspection area, she diligently followed her supervisor’s instructions about frequently resting her eyes in the middle of checking the filled vials as they passed on a conveyor in front of a black and white background. The black background would show up white particles, and the white background would show up the black particles. Sunita’s job was to watch and pick out the vials with particulate matter because they were dangerous. She knew all about how particles in the product could cause some patient receiving the medicine to even die.
A few minutes later, just as she pressed the START button on her vial inspection machine, Sunita turned away for 2 seconds to smile and wave at another operator entering the area. One vial had passed by the black background unwatched and Sunita only focused on it as it moved to the white background. Clear. No black particles. And on the conveyor moved.
A month later….
50 kilometres away, despite the cough and difficulty breathing, Dadu Shet paced the floor of the waiting room in MR Hospitals. This is what happened when you consulted the most famous lung doctor in the city. His family doctor had written “COPD” in his referral letter and Dadu’s young lackey had looked it up on his phone and pronounced, in halting engish that it meant “Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.”
A few minutes later, just as she pressed the START button on her vial inspection machine, Sunita turned away for 2 seconds to smile and wave at another operator entering the area. One vial had passed by the black background unwatched and Sunita only focused on it as it moved to the white background. Clear. No black particles. And on the conveyor moved.
A month later….
50 kilometres away, despite the cough and difficulty breathing, Dadu Shet paced the floor of the waiting room in MR Hospitals. This is what happened when you consulted the most famous lung doctor in the city. His family doctor had written “COPD” in his referral letter and Dadu’s young lackey had looked it up on his phone and pronounced, in halting engish that it meant “Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.”
Dadu had grunted hearing this, knowing it was just a fancy term for the cough that troubled him since his youth. Of course his family doc had said it was getting worse because of Dadu smoking, but he knew no other way to cope with all his business tension. Business that involved recovering money lent to people under duress – at astronomical interest rates. Business where Dadu had to sometimes use violent means to ensure people paid up.
An hour after this, Dadu Shet finally met the lung doc and was told his lungs were growing worse. Another attack of wheezing and there would be no alternative to surgery, the doc said and sent him home with some medicines and the repeated warning to not smoke. Dadu hardly heard that last bit – he now ignored anyone who said that, just like his wife Sunita, who thought that working in a pharma company made her equal to a doctor.
An hour after this, Dadu Shet finally met the lung doc and was told his lungs were growing worse. Another attack of wheezing and there would be no alternative to surgery, the doc said and sent him home with some medicines and the repeated warning to not smoke. Dadu hardly heard that last bit – he now ignored anyone who said that, just like his wife Sunita, who thought that working in a pharma company made her equal to a doctor.
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Dr. Raghu woke up in a cold sweat, heart racing and struggled to get his bearings. It was that familiar nightmare born out of a childhood memory. He’d watched a man pummel his father to near death for failing to pay up on a loan. Ever since his father died shortly after in the hospital, the memory of that goon’s hacking cough punctuating his dad’s screams had tormented Raghu. Splashing cold water on his face and toweling it dry, Dr. Raghu decided for the hundredth time to see his psychiatrist friend about his nightmares. Hurriedly finishing dinner, he made his way to the hospital where he was the surgeon on night duty.
1.00 am…
Dadu Shet woke up coughing and the fit lasted longer than it usually did. He used the inhaler as the lung doc had advised, but it gave him no relief. He started going blue in the face, and gesticulated wildly that he couldn’t breathe. Sunita screamed to the lackey sleeping in the next room and together, they got him into the car and rushed to MR Hospital, praying there would be a good doctor available in the emergency room.
A nurse burst into the doctor’s room and spying Dr. Raghu napping in his chair, pulled at his arm to wake him and demanded he rush to the COPD patient waiting in the Emergency Room. One look at Dadu Shet and Raghu felt he was reliving his nightmare then and there. Wrestling with his conscience, he rushed to see what the patient’s file revealed about existing health problems.
Time slowed down for Raghu. He seemed to be in an echo chamber filled with screams and a hacking cough and the sounds of the Emergency Room as nurses and orderlies rushed by shouting out instructions and reeling off temperatures, blood pressures and other stats.
Pulling himself together, Dr. Raghu remembered who he was. His brain reeled out the emergency procedures to be followed in COPD patients and his mouth shouted out instructions to the nurses. Dadu Shet was given all that was required to deal with his attack of breathlessness until finally, his lungs filled with air, and he slept peacefully despite the still labored breathing.
The next morning, Dadu Shet opened his bleary eyes and had the shock of his life. No, it couldn’t be possible. He had killed this man years ago…how could he be sleeping in a chair next to the bed, dressed in a white coat and with a stethoscope around his neck like a doctor?? Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him…it had to be the effect of all those medicines they had pumped into him last night. Maybe he was dreaming….and Dadu Shet fell asleep again.
When he finally woke up with a clear head, it was evening. That doc was still sitting in the chair by the bed and staring. Dadu looked at the name plate on the doc’s coat that said Dr. Raghu. Before he could say anything, the doctor gave a crooked smile and said, “How does it feel Dadu to know that you’re totally in my control? I could snuff out your life just like that, you know…” said Raghu, snapping his fingers.
“Please don’t do that…I’m sorry….really sorry…..you’re Ramu’s son, right? It was all a mistake….I never meant to be so hard on him, I was only trying to frighten him into paying up the money….”
Raghu drew a bottle out of his coat pocket and brought it close to Dadu’s eyes. “See this? All I need to do is add it into the intravenous drip that’s running into your arm. In a few minutes, you’ll have a massive heart attack and no one will even know….don’t you think that would be a good punishment for your sins, Dadu?”
As Dr. Raghu stepped closer to the IV drip, a nurse entered the room with a message for him. Whirling, he turned and ran back to the Emergency Room. A hit-and-run case right outside the hospital. A lady bleeding and in grave danger had been wheeled in and was in urgent need of treatment. Raghu scribbled a prescription and thrust it into the nurse’s hand, saying, “Get this at once from the pharmacy.”
The nurse ran into the pharmacy at the end of the floor, praying that rare injection was available there. The pharmacist shook his head ruefully saying, “I just dispensed it to another patient two minutes ago.” “But this is an emergency,” cried the nurse.
“There’s nothing I can do…but maybe you can ask Sara….she walked out just now and was going back to the ward with the medicines.”
The nurse rushed out and caught up with Sara, trying to explain why she wanted that vial in her medicine basket. As Sara caught on and began removing it to hand over, Dadu Shet’s lackey who was walking with Sara grabbed her hand roughly. “This medicine is for my boss. No one else gets it.”
The nurse and Sara begged, all to no avail. The nurse then sent an orderly with her prescription to the pharmacy located right outside the hospital. She knew the pharmacist there and had relied on him in the past to supply medicines in an emergency.
The medicine came in a few minutes and Dr. Raghu administered it to the hurt woman in the Emergency Room. As he prepared to leave the place, he stopped in his tracks. The orderly and the nurse were discussing about how unlucky this woman was. Just the previous night, this woman’s husband had been admitted for breathlessness and lung problems and today, here she was, injured in a road accident as she made her way to visit her husband.
As Raghu trudged to the first floor of the hospital, he saw a shrouded body being wheeled out of the room in which Dadu Shet had been sleeping. He ran towards the stretcher and asked for an update on what had happened.
The junior doc accompanying the body told him, “Death by anaphylactic shock.”
Dr. Raghu stood numb, fingering the unopened, unused injectable still nestled within his coat pocket. He walked into the now empty room and looked around for what medicine could have caused that sudden life-taking allergic reaction. An empty vial lay on the cabinet by the IV drip set. A common medicine used to treat breathlessness in COPD patients, manufactured by Nor Pharmaceuticals.
As Dr. Raghu turned the vial this way and that, he couldn’t see anything out of place.
Dr. Raghu woke up in a cold sweat, heart racing and struggled to get his bearings. It was that familiar nightmare born out of a childhood memory. He’d watched a man pummel his father to near death for failing to pay up on a loan. Ever since his father died shortly after in the hospital, the memory of that goon’s hacking cough punctuating his dad’s screams had tormented Raghu. Splashing cold water on his face and toweling it dry, Dr. Raghu decided for the hundredth time to see his psychiatrist friend about his nightmares. Hurriedly finishing dinner, he made his way to the hospital where he was the surgeon on night duty.
1.00 am…
Dadu Shet woke up coughing and the fit lasted longer than it usually did. He used the inhaler as the lung doc had advised, but it gave him no relief. He started going blue in the face, and gesticulated wildly that he couldn’t breathe. Sunita screamed to the lackey sleeping in the next room and together, they got him into the car and rushed to MR Hospital, praying there would be a good doctor available in the emergency room.
A nurse burst into the doctor’s room and spying Dr. Raghu napping in his chair, pulled at his arm to wake him and demanded he rush to the COPD patient waiting in the Emergency Room. One look at Dadu Shet and Raghu felt he was reliving his nightmare then and there. Wrestling with his conscience, he rushed to see what the patient’s file revealed about existing health problems.
Time slowed down for Raghu. He seemed to be in an echo chamber filled with screams and a hacking cough and the sounds of the Emergency Room as nurses and orderlies rushed by shouting out instructions and reeling off temperatures, blood pressures and other stats.
Pulling himself together, Dr. Raghu remembered who he was. His brain reeled out the emergency procedures to be followed in COPD patients and his mouth shouted out instructions to the nurses. Dadu Shet was given all that was required to deal with his attack of breathlessness until finally, his lungs filled with air, and he slept peacefully despite the still labored breathing.
The next morning, Dadu Shet opened his bleary eyes and had the shock of his life. No, it couldn’t be possible. He had killed this man years ago…how could he be sleeping in a chair next to the bed, dressed in a white coat and with a stethoscope around his neck like a doctor?? Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him…it had to be the effect of all those medicines they had pumped into him last night. Maybe he was dreaming….and Dadu Shet fell asleep again.
When he finally woke up with a clear head, it was evening. That doc was still sitting in the chair by the bed and staring. Dadu looked at the name plate on the doc’s coat that said Dr. Raghu. Before he could say anything, the doctor gave a crooked smile and said, “How does it feel Dadu to know that you’re totally in my control? I could snuff out your life just like that, you know…” said Raghu, snapping his fingers.
“Please don’t do that…I’m sorry….really sorry…..you’re Ramu’s son, right? It was all a mistake….I never meant to be so hard on him, I was only trying to frighten him into paying up the money….”
Raghu drew a bottle out of his coat pocket and brought it close to Dadu’s eyes. “See this? All I need to do is add it into the intravenous drip that’s running into your arm. In a few minutes, you’ll have a massive heart attack and no one will even know….don’t you think that would be a good punishment for your sins, Dadu?”
As Dr. Raghu stepped closer to the IV drip, a nurse entered the room with a message for him. Whirling, he turned and ran back to the Emergency Room. A hit-and-run case right outside the hospital. A lady bleeding and in grave danger had been wheeled in and was in urgent need of treatment. Raghu scribbled a prescription and thrust it into the nurse’s hand, saying, “Get this at once from the pharmacy.”
The nurse ran into the pharmacy at the end of the floor, praying that rare injection was available there. The pharmacist shook his head ruefully saying, “I just dispensed it to another patient two minutes ago.” “But this is an emergency,” cried the nurse.
“There’s nothing I can do…but maybe you can ask Sara….she walked out just now and was going back to the ward with the medicines.”
The nurse rushed out and caught up with Sara, trying to explain why she wanted that vial in her medicine basket. As Sara caught on and began removing it to hand over, Dadu Shet’s lackey who was walking with Sara grabbed her hand roughly. “This medicine is for my boss. No one else gets it.”
The nurse and Sara begged, all to no avail. The nurse then sent an orderly with her prescription to the pharmacy located right outside the hospital. She knew the pharmacist there and had relied on him in the past to supply medicines in an emergency.
The medicine came in a few minutes and Dr. Raghu administered it to the hurt woman in the Emergency Room. As he prepared to leave the place, he stopped in his tracks. The orderly and the nurse were discussing about how unlucky this woman was. Just the previous night, this woman’s husband had been admitted for breathlessness and lung problems and today, here she was, injured in a road accident as she made her way to visit her husband.
As Raghu trudged to the first floor of the hospital, he saw a shrouded body being wheeled out of the room in which Dadu Shet had been sleeping. He ran towards the stretcher and asked for an update on what had happened.
The junior doc accompanying the body told him, “Death by anaphylactic shock.”
Dr. Raghu stood numb, fingering the unopened, unused injectable still nestled within his coat pocket. He walked into the now empty room and looked around for what medicine could have caused that sudden life-taking allergic reaction. An empty vial lay on the cabinet by the IV drip set. A common medicine used to treat breathlessness in COPD patients, manufactured by Nor Pharmaceuticals.
As Dr. Raghu turned the vial this way and that, he couldn’t see anything out of place.
If only he had been able to look at the rubber stopper hidden below the aluminium outer cover, he’d have seen a tiny dent from which a small particle had chipped off and made its way, along with the medicine, into Dadu Shet’s veins.
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