A Year · Second Shift · Pulse Beat
She sat the exam in January. It was held in a school in Bandra, a long grey hall with rows of desks. She had slept four hours. She had on her good blouse and her mother's gold earrings, and in her…
She sat the exam in January.
It was held in a school in Bandra, a long grey hall with rows of desks. She had slept four hours. She had on her good blouse and her mother's gold earrings, and in her pocket, folded small, the note Mr Rao had written. Around her, three hundred young people bent over their papers, scratching.
She did the first section in an hour. The second, in ninety minutes. In the third, a long chemistry paper, she stopped halfway down a page and realised, with a strange slow wonder, that she was not afraid. She knew this. She had learned it in the dark, at two in the morning, with a torch and a sleeping ward. She could feel the kidney, the loop, the long countercurrent pump.
When the bell rang she put down her pen and sat for a moment, breathing. Outside, in the rain, Imran was waiting with an umbrella, in his shirt and good trousers, not having asked whether he might.
"How was it?" he said.
"I don't know," said Fatima. "I think I was myself."