Each breath is an effort.

Every part of my body aches.

The air stinks of ammonia.

I push my heavy eyelids open.

Above me patches of paint peel off the ceiling.

Bandages scratch at my skin.

An IV tube sticks into my left arm.

I struggle to sit up.

"Let me do that for you. Lie back."

A nurse starts cranking up the back of my hospital bed.

Against the wall, Ma sits dozing.

Beyond Ma, a glint of steel- a wheelchair.

Fear slices through my dull brain.

No. The wheelchair cannot be mine.

I see an ugly bulge under the sheet covering my legs.

Yank off the sheet with what's left of my strength.

My right leg ends in a bandage.

Foot, ankle, and nearly half of my calf, gone.

Chopped right off.

"No!" The nurse pulls my sheet back over the leftover bit of my right leg.

But I still see the nothingness below my right knee.

Ma jerks awake, leaps up from her chair, runs toward me.

Her eyes scared as a child's, she clutches the metal rail of my hospital bed.

"I'm so sorry," she says.

"About everything."

I turn my face away from Ma, away from the cold metal gleam of the wheelchair in this puke-green hospital ward.

Outside the window, I see the gnarled trunk of a huge banyan tree.

Its thick branches sprout roots that hang down s.h.a.ggy as Shiva's hair.

Wish I could slide out like a cobra.

Hide amid those unkempt roots.

"You were in a van," the nurse says. "The driver was speeding.

A truck crashed into the van and ran it off the road.

Your driver hit a tree. He died.

Remember any of that?"

A pipul tree's pale trunk coming closer and closer.

Screaming.

The smell of vomit and blood.

"Your surgeon, Dr. Murali, did all he could to save your foot.

He is a great surgeon.

He tried to save it but he had to amputate.

Your foot was too far gone."

My hands thrash at the sheets.

I feel the nurse's vise-grip around my wrists.

"Calm down. No need to panic. You're young. You'll recover in no time.

Dr. Murali even had a physiatrist advise him during the surgery on making the best cut so an artificial leg would easily fit.

You're lucky to have Dr. Murali for a surgeon."

Lucky?

Ma reaches for my hand, whispering my name.

I squeeze my eyelids tight. Shut out everything.

No no no no no.

I need to get away.

Can't.

Trapped.

EMPTINESS.

FILLS.

Pa comes in. Holds my hand.

His fingers are wilted stalks.

Drooping.

Tell me it's a bad dream, Pa, please.

"Just stepped out for a cup of coffee. Didn't mean to leave you.

Didn't want you to find out this way-we -they-tried-" he chokes.

He moves his lips.

No words come.

My eyes are dry sockets in a skull.

Pa and I share emptiness.

EVERYWHERE,.

in

EVERYTHING.

Everywhere, in everything, I used to hear music.

On sunny days when I was little, after Ma and Pa left for work, we'd walk to the fruit stall down the road, Paati and I.

There was music in the drone of horseflies alighting on mangoes ripening in the heat.

Each day of the monsoon season the rhythm of rain filled me.

Rain on the roof, rain drizzling into rainbows of motor oil spilled by scooters and rickshaws, silver sparks of rain skipping across waxy banana leaves.

Every morning I'd wake to the krr-krr-krrk of Paati helping Ma make breakfast in the kitchen, grating slivers of coconut for a tangy chutney.

I'd dance thakka thakka thai, into scents of c.u.min, coriander, and red chili.

Wrap my arms around Paati's plush body.

At night I'd hear music in the buzz of hungry mosquitoes swarming outside my mosquito net, in the whir of the overhead fan swaying from the ceiling.

In the gray-green hospital room silence stretches.

ASHES.

Light fades. Night falls.

But darkness doesn't shroud the sight of my half leg from my mind's unblinking eye.