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By Root 1047 0

verandas and the approaches to the building. The admissions nurse closed her register. How could she begin to record the names of so many people? The spasms and convulsions that racked most of the victims, the way they gasped for breath like fish out of water, reminded Dr. Gandhe of Mohammed Ashraf’s death two years earlier. The little information he could glean confirmed that the refugees came from areas close to the Carbide factory. So all of them had been poisoned by some toxic agent. But which one? While Sheikh and a nurse tried to revive the weakest with oxygen masks, Gandhe picked up the telephone. He wanted to speak to his colleague Loya, Carbide’s official doctor in Bhopal. He was the only one who would be able to suggest an effective antidote to the gas these dying people had inhaled. It was nearing two in the morning when he finally got hold of Loya. “That was the first time I heard the cruel name of methyl isocyanate,” Dr. Gandhe was to say later. But just as Mukund had been earlier, Dr. Loya turned out to be most reassuring.

“It’s not a deadly gas,” he claimed, “just irritating, a sort of tear gas.”

“You are joking! My hospital’s overrun with people dying like flies.” Gandhe was running out of patience.

“Breathing in a strong dose may eventually cause pulmonary edema,” Dr. Loya finally conceded.

“What antidote should we administer?” pressed Gandhe. “There is no known antidote for this gas,” replied the factory’s spokesperson, without any apparent embarrassment. “In any case, there’s no need for an antidote,” he added. “Get your patients to drink a lot and rinse their eyes with compresses steeped in water. Methyl isocyanate has the advantage of being soluble in water.”

Gandhe made an effort to stay calm. “Water? Is that all you suggest I use to save people coughing their lungs out!” he protested before hanging up.

He and Sheikh decided nonetheless to follow Dr. Loya’s advice. Water, they found, did ease the irritation to the eyes and the coughing fits temporarily.

The situation in which the two doctors found themselves was more horrific than any war story or tragedy they might have read about. “What I liked more than anything else about my profession was being able to relieve suffering,” Gandhe would say, “and there I was unable to do that. It was unbearable.”

Unbearable was the fetid, foul breath from mouths oozing blood-streaked froth. Unbearable was the stupor in people’s expressions, their inflamed eyes about to burst, their drawn features, their quivering nostrils, the cyanosis in their lips, ears and cheeks. Many of their faces were livid. Their discolored lips already heralded death. Through their stethoscopes the two doctors picked up only the faintest, irregular sounds of hearts and lungs, or sputtering, grating, gurgling rattles. What struck them most was the state of torpor, bewilderment, exhaustion and amnesia in which they found most of the victims, which suggested that the nervous system had been profoundly affected.

The doctors would never forget the scenes of terror. A man and a woman broke through the crowd and laid their two children, aged two and four, on the examination table. Their heartbeats were scarcely perceptible and both were frothing at the mouth. Gandhe at once injected them with Derryfilin, a powerful bronchodilator, bathed their eyes with salve and gave each an oxygen mask. The children stirred. Their parents were overjoyed, convinced their children were reviving. Then the little bodies went rigid. Gandhe listened with his stethoscope and shook his head. “Heart failure,” he mumbled angrily.

This was only the beginning of his night of horror. Quite apart from hemorrhaging of the lungs and cataclysmic suffocation, he found himself confronted with symptoms that were unfamiliar to him: cyanosis of the fingers and toes, spasms in the esophagus and intestines, attacks of blindness, muscular convulsions, fevers and sweating so intense that victims wanted to tear off their clothes. Worst of all was the incalculable number of living dead making for the hospital as if it were a lifeboat