In a hospital, the casualty remains active throughout the day. With the rise in cases, the Covid admission center has become as active as the casualty. Having walked for a minute, I reach the casualty. The autorickshaws are lined up as always, but they are empty. A couple of bikes are parked on the bike stand. One ambulance is parked near this, the other one is right in front of the casualty entrance. It is a Maruti Omni. There is no one inside. The security guards who stood in front of the door are absent. The chair has the register and whistle on it. I enter it.

The foyer is empty. Paper bits can be found lying on the floor. The lights are on, the fans running at half the speed. I walk straight ahead and take the stairs to the first floor. As I exit it, I am in the main corridor. It runs the length of the building. It is the main walkway for everyone going around. The entry to the wards is situated on either side of the corridor. Her department lies on one end of the corridor. I walk in that direction.

I come across a ward on my left. I take a moment to peek inside. I don’t slow down though. The ward is empty. Completely empty. The beds that were visible to me had their sheets on. The IV stands were standing still, their needles lying on the bed or on the floor. Slippers could be found on the base of these beds, and bags under the bed. Some of the items associated with a hospital bed can be seen in and around it - thermos flasks, shawls, steel plates, tumblers, the plastic container having medicines, tiffin boxes, fruit baskets, etc. They all lie neatly in their respective places. Nothing has disturbed them.

This ward was full and teeming with people when I came to visit her yesterday night. It was shut and empty for a week while it was undergoing some maintenance. As it opened up it was filled immediately. No beds were empty. Bystanders would sleep near the entrance to the ward. Some patients who were on the waiting list could be seen to rest beside it, waiting for someone to be discharged so that they can get admitted. This was the general ward that belonged to the casualty. The limit of one bystander does not apply here. In severe cases, one might even find political people crowding around the premises.

An empty cardboard lies flat on the floor. It has a cover and an inflatable pillow on it. I quicken my pace. I enter the psychiatry department first. Soon I pass their ward. It is empty. I see the name of their head of department and his room. Then comes their common room and nurses' station. All are empty.

I see the board on the wall that announces the entrance to the department of radiation oncology. I enter it. Towards the right side of the entrance is their department heads room. It is locked. Down the corridor is the nurse's station. The lights are on. The chair on which I always find a nurse sitting is empty. I get to the doctor's room on the left. I push open the swing door and enter. I walk straight inside. She is not in the first room. The second room is where the patient is diagnosed by the doctors and students. I see her mobile lying on the table. I pick it up. She had a flip cover protecting the screen. I flip it open and press the power button. It lights up.

There is no network on her phone. She has a secondary number but she has put it on another phone. She rarely uses it. She left it back at home for me to use its internet pack. It had accumulated a lot of data which would get lapsed in a couple of days' time. We decided to stream as many series and movies as we can. I also decided to download some software that I needed -updates to the apps, e-books, music, etc

I unlock her phone. I know her pattern. She knows mine too. I open her WhatsApp. I see that my first message hasn’t been delivered yet. I take out my phone and check it. It is in the same state. I pick up her phone to send a WhatsApp message to myself when I realize its futility.

Suddenly I realize that her department has wifi. I scroll down the settings tray and switch on the wifi. Within a few seconds, it connects to the wifi. I open chrome and type in something. The window stays promising for a second after which it tells me that there is no internet. I close it, open WhatsApp, and send a text to myself. It is not getting sent. The waiting icon comes along. I see the exclamation mark that has come on the wifi symbol on top. It seems there is no internet here too.

The conclusion I can make out of this is that all the networks are down due to some reason. Since there is electricity which is more than enough for these networks to work, there must be some larger reason at play. Also, most of the network towers are equipped with backup generators. They fire up when there is a power outage. Some of them are manual but most of them are automatic. But that rarely happens. If a power outage has to happen then it will firstly affect residential areas. Industries and hospitals would be the last ones to be affected. By this time the electricity board would have figured out the problem and found a solution to it.

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There is another room on the left. This is the room that is visible from the parking area. The door is closed. I push it open and walk in. It is empty. I see her backpack lying on the chair. I take the bag and examine it. It contains her books, purse, charger, umbrella, and a bunch of blank papers. Her usual stuff. I close it and swing it onto my back. I drink water from the bottle on the table. By the time I have finished drinking it, I have sunk myself into the chair crying.

I am afraid. I can’t make sense of my surroundings. I am okay with that. But I am not okay with the fact that my wife is missing. Missing is not the right word. She is not to be found. Disappeared maybe? I don't care if anyone else has gone missing or disappeared. I know I haven’t seen a single person after leaving home. I can live with that. Just that I need to see her and be with her. She has been my focal point from the time we got married. My world revolves around her. With her gone, I find myself collapsing. I don't know what to do. I am at loss.

Lots of images and thoughts rush through my head as I sit down and cry. Most of them involve the conversations we have had regarding life and death. Having fallen in love over this period of time, we have realized that it would be very difficult for both of us to be separated. The only thing that could separate us would be death. I am afraid of death. She is not. But in this context, she expresses her fear. Her eyes tear up when the topic comes in.

She says I should move on if something happens to her. I say that would be very difficult for me. In fact, it can be that I don't want to move on. She tells that is not how it is, that no matter what we all have the mental strength to move on in life. We are having this conversation when we came to know about the death of a friend's wife. He is a very good friend of mine, a big brother of sorts. I would seek consultation from him regarding work and life. He would take time out to answer me. He was happily married for four years with a kid. She became pregnant the second time and passed away after delivering her second child. When my friend called me to share the news, I was hit hard. I felt the floor giving away beneath me. I sat down and took time to hear him out and process it. After the call, I lingered around the kitchen, lost in thought. She sensed the change in me and enquired about the matter. I shared it with her following which I hugged her and broke into tears. I couldn’t contain it any longer. I was trying to make sense of the death, and why it had to happen. This guy is a gem of a person. He has had his own tragedies in life and risen above them. Now when things were going smoothly, a tragedy of such magnitude was too harsh on him. Why him? Of all people why him? He is someone who only knows how to love. Why him?

The next morning my friend comes to my house. We are leaving to pay them a visit to the hospital. We leave early so as to avoid any police checking. The second wave is on and travel restrictions are in place. On arriving and on seeing him, I don't know what to tell him. He looks composed. I thought he might cry on seeing us but he held on. If it was me I would have burst out and screamed out my misfortune. It wouldn’t reverse it but it might bring in some comfort in that instant. We go out and buy breakfast for them from the canteen. We are silent. I don't have anything to say to my friend. It’s the same with him. We take the parcel in silence and give it to his mother. Her eyes are swollen. A call comes and she attends it. Soon she is crying. I can’t bear to watch this. I am not that courageous. I distract myself and sit silently. We leave soon.

Tragedy comes without calling. It will leave us devastated. I know this for a long time now. I have tried reading books that would help me make sense of it. Stoicism is something that I found to be interesting. As I got into it, the concept interested me a lot. But soon enough I realized that I can’t be a true stoic. Maybe I can try to implement some of their strategies in life so as to make it more meaningful and worth living. But alas, I am emotional and I cannot suppress them.

My crying gets worse. I cannot hold it together. The overwhelming feeling is of helplessness along with my world crashing over. I have rarely been put in such situations. Being an overthinker I sometimes put myself in these situations and try to gauge my reaction. They are just a thought process. They don't fare much. A thought that gives me comfort in that simulation is the fact that in the grand scheme of the universe we are nothing. It shows me my minuscule existence. But the need to make sense of this life and our purpose here quickly engulfs me. It leaves me naked to experience the emotions that I will go through.

Life started to make sense when she was around. We are two very different personalities. I am pretty sure that if it weren’t for this pandemic we wouldn’t have met and come together. Everything happens for a reason. This is what I say to myself when something happens in an unexpected way or when I can’t make sense of events. I remain under the myth that this has surely happened for a reason, which will be revealed to me over time. Today, right now, that myth ceases to exist. It has been tossed out the window. There is no time for myths here. It is time to figure out what is happening and the reason behind it all. There must be a reason. That’s how the universe works. A reason for all that we do.

I wipe the tears from my cheeks and eyes. I take a couple of deep breaths and try calming myself. My eyes are blinking at a faster rate. I am stressed out. My nose starts leaking. I use the sleeve of my tee to wipe it off.

Suddenly I feel a vibration in my left pocket. It is her phone.