The Good Son

At a quarter past two in the morning, the corridor outside the intensive care unit of a Chennai hospital holds six plastic chairs, a water dispenser, and Suresh. He is forty-nine. His father, who is eighty-one, fell in the bathroom at eleven, and lay there for some time before anyone heard. There is a fracture at the hip, and the doctors are speaking in the careful way about his heart.

The phone buzzes. It is Ramesh, his younger brother, calling from Seattle, where it is early afternoon and sunny. Ramesh has questions, and they are good ones. Which surgeon. Whether it will be a replacement or a fixation. What the ejection fraction is; he has been reading. Whether they have considered moving Appa to the other hospital, the one a colleague’s father went to. He asks for the reports to be sent on WhatsApp.

Then he asks, “Should I come?”