Chapter 2 - The Ghost of 84 Váci Street
"Out of the way! Move! *Azonnal!*"
Hands grabbed my shoulders, yanking me backward into the cold concrete wall. The physician—Dr. Kovács, according to the embroidered nametag on her lapel—slid onto her knees beside Maya’s thrashing body. Maya's teeth were clamped together, a thread of pinkish froth bubbling at the corner of her lips. Her pupils were blown wide, black disks reflecting the sterile neon ceiling.
"She’s seizing! Diazepam, ten milligrams, IV push! Now!" Kovács barked in sharp, accented English, glancing back at me with eyes like chilled steel. "Who are you? Are you family?"
"I’m... I was..." The word *ex-husband* felt like a branding iron pressed against my tongue. It felt cowardly. It felt like treason. "I’m her husband. I’m Arjun."
"Then get out of this corridor before you contaminate my sterile field," Kovács said without breaking rhythm, grabbing Maya’s jaw to clear her airway. "Take him to the family waiting room. Don't let him leave."
Two security guards ushered me backward through swinging double doors, shutting Maya away behind frosted glass. I stood there in the vestibule, my hands shaking so violently that my keys slipped from my fingers, clattering loudly against the tiles.
I looked down at my shirt.
Smears of pale blue chalk from her hospital gown and two drops of dark, venous blood were stamped across my left sleeve. My breath came in ragged, shallow gasps. My chest felt compressed by a hydraulic vice.
*She hid it.*
Every single detail of the last six months replayed in my mind like a horror reel played in reverse.
The weight loss. In January, she had taken in the seams of her winter coats. I had casually remarked, *“You look great, honey, that new Pilates routine is working.”* She hadn't been doing Pilates. She had been vomiting up her meals in our guest bathroom with the water faucet running on high so I wouldn't hear.
The fatigue. The weekends she spent in bed with the blackout curtains drawn, claiming seasonal migraines. I had gone to the gym, met Rohit for craft beers along the river, and complained over pints that my wife had become dull and uninspired.
The food. She had stopped cooking her signature spicy curries, switching entirely to bland broths and plain rice. *“My stomach has been a little sensitive lately,”* she had told me when I asked why dinner tasted like water and salt.
I slammed my fist against the plaster wall of the waiting room.
*Idiot. Blind, self-absorbed, arrogant idiot.*
"Mr. Mehta?"
I spun around. Dr. Kovács stood in the doorway, peeling blue latex gloves from her hands and dropping them into a biohazard bin with a wet snap. She was a woman in her late forties, with silver-streaked hair pulled tight into a functional bun and lines of chronic exhaustion etched deep around her mouth.
"Is she... is she alive?" I barely recognized my own voice.
"We stabilized the seizure. The hepatic encephalopathy is worsening," Kovács said bluntly, stepping into the small room and letting the door click shut. "The tumors in her liver are obstructing the biliary tract. Toxins are crossing into her blood-brain barrier. That’s what triggered the neurological episode."
She folded her arms, studying me with an intensity that made me want to shrink through the floorboards.
"You said you are her husband."
"We divorced two months ago," I confessed, the shame scorching my throat. "I didn't know. I swear to God, Dr. Kovács, I didn't know she was sick."
Kovács exhaled a long, heavy breath through her nose, shaking her head. "I wondered if there was someone. On her intake forms, under 'Next of Kin' and 'Emergency Contact,' she wrote *None*. She listed an old address on Váci Street and explicitly checked the box refusing palliative hospice notification."
My knees nearly gave out. *None.*
She had walked into this slaughterhouse completely alone. She had faced oncologists, needles, PET scans, biopsy needles shoved through her intercostal spaces, and nauseating chemicals, with no one to hold her coat, no one to bring her a plastic cup of ice water, no one to sit beside her during the four-hour infusions.
"What is the prognosis?" I asked, terrified of the answer.
"Without intervention? Weeks. Maybe a month," Kovács said coldly. "With the current public healthcare regimen, we are simply managing her pain. The standard gemcitabine-cisplatin chemotherapy protocol failed three weeks ago. The primary mass has metastasized to her peritoneal lining."
"There has to be something else," I pleaded, grabbing the edge of the small wooden desk between us. "Experimental treatments. Private clinics. Immunotherapy. Anything!"
"There is," Kovács said, narrowing her eyes. "There is an FGFR2 inhibitor trial being conducted across the border at the General Hospital of Vienna. Her molecular profile qualifies. But because she is a foreign resident without full private international coverage, and the Hungarian state insurance will not underwrite cross-border experimental therapies for non-citizens... the deposit alone to enter the program is ninety thousand euros."
Ninety thousand euros.
Nearly thirty-six million Hungarian forints.
My entire personal savings account held four thousand euros. The modest severance I had saved, along with the half-share of our old rental deposit, was barely enough to cover my dingy bachelor pad in District VIII for the remainder of the year.
"She knew about the trial?" I asked quietly.
"I gave her the pamphlets myself six weeks ago," Kovács replied, her voice softening by a fraction of a degree. "She read them, thanked me politely, and handed them back. She told me she had no money, no family left in Europe, and that she didn't want to die leaving behind debts for ghosts."
Kovács tapped a manila folder against her thigh.
May you like
"She gave up, Mr. Mehta. She chose Corridor 4 because the beds in Oncology are full, and she didn't want to fight the system for a mattress she felt someone else deserved more. If you truly cared for that woman, you need to decide right now whether you are staying or leaving. Because another shock like this will finish her."
***
