I LEAVE IT TO YOU - CHAPTER IV

The ward nurses were taken by a surprise when they heard Hoggar shouting like a siren. The other patients in the neighboring rooms had got up. The nurses came running to him. Hoggar was sitting, straight up, still screaming, even after he knew it was just a dream. The nurses tried their best to calm him down. The angelic nurse gave him a glass of water. He drank it obligingly. He was thankful for all the nurses around him. He would have died shouting like that if the nurses hadn’t come. Another gave him a dose of tranquilizer. The medicine gave immediate effects. His eyes started to get all hazy and his body loosened as if going to fall flat. The next minute he was lying prostrate, deep in sleep.
The morning came, Hoggar didn’t get up. It was about noon when Hoggar got up lazily with no particular memories of what had happened the previous night. The angelic nurse came to him and asked him if he was ok. Once the nurse started telling him what had happened, it all came back to him. Now it was there, the dream was actually going on like a video in his mind, a video that he couldn’t control but only could sleep and watch. The nurse asked him if it was some nightmare. He told her that it was .He didn’t say anything more. She didn’t ask anything more too.
He asked the nurse to call a particular person and ask him to visit Hoggar. It was Steve she was going to call. Hoggar could confide everything only to Steve now. If Timothy had been there it would have been really different. But no, Timothy was not there. In one way Hoggar had always felt guilty for Timothy’s death. And sitting in the hospital, he felt guilty for his own near death experience. He was going to do everything to make sure that he was not going to feel guilty for the death of so many orphans. He would do anything, just anything. But unfortunately he was not in a state to do anything productive. What can someone who spends the whole day on a hospital bed do? Thinking is one thing that could be done. Giving orders to someone else is also another thing that could be done. That someone was none other than Timmy.
The nurse told Hoggar that Steve was on his way and that he would be there any minute. Hoggar had no time waste at all. He knew it was all going to happen at 3. He should ask Steve to go to the orphanage ask them to move out of the place before 3. Not for one minute did Hoggar realize that it might all happen before 3 or even after 3. He somehow knew that the details in the dream were authentic. Not once did he doubt the precision of the dream. In fact the whole ‘dream turning real’ thing could be a hoax, a false indicator. But Hoggar knew better. He was not going to let fate overtake him this time even if that meant projecting him weird.
Steve was there by 2. Hoggar told him everything, just everything. Steve started to doubt Hoggar’s sanity. One can’t blame him though. But still Steve listened to everything without the slightest traces of suspicion on his face. He may not have believed whatever he said but he didn’t ridicule them too. Whatever Hoggar asked him to do, he was going to do. Hoggar and Steve didn’t know each other much and the only common thing between them, Timohty was also dead, but still Steve wanted to help Hoggar by doing whatever he wanted him to do. That might not have been out of camaraderie but just out of respect for someone severely hurt, both mentally and physically.
Steve was supposed to go to the orphanage immediately. He took a taxi from the hospital and was going quite fast. At about 2:10 his taxi met with a small accident. Steve escaped uninjured. He paid whatever he had to pay to the taxi driver and was looking for another taxi. After about 10 minutes he found another one. He was about 10 miles away from the orphanage when the tires, all the four got flat. It was weird, really weird, all the tires getting flat at the same time. The taxi driver had just one spare tire to replace. It was all deliberate, calculated. Destiny’s plan was really conspicuous. If just one tire had got flat, the driver could have easily replaced the tires in a minute and could have continued driving, but there were two tires to replace now. Steve actually started believing Hoggar.
Steve too was determined that somehow or the other he was going to get all the orphans safe. He abandoned the taxi and planned to hitchhike. He was taken by one of the cars passing by the road. Luckily the car was also going to the same area. The time was already 2:30. But still Steve was sure he could make it. When they were approaching the orphanage’s area the car’s owner suddenly got a call on his cell phone. While speaking over his cell phone his face turned really worried. He was saying something like “Yup, will come immediately’ and immediately turned his car a 360 degrees and headed back the same way he was coming. ‘Sorry man, gotta go home, my niece just met with an accident’. Steve got down from the car, thanked him for the ride, and said that nothing would happen to his niece. Steve was sure that nothing would happen to his niece now that he was out of the car. He knew pretty well that it was destiny’s plan to just get him out of the car. Later the car owner would find out that it was just a crank call.
It was just 15 minutes to 3 and Steve was running all the way to the orphanage. Back at the hospital Hoggar was waiting impatiently. He was biting his nails, biting the bedsheet and was actually shivering. The nurse thought he was cold and so gave him an extra blanket. Thanks to the nurse. Now he had two blankets to bite and chew.
Steve was running, running really fast that he could have got a medal in the Olympics if he had participated in it. From somewhere suddenly a stone came flying at him and hit him on his head. It had missed his eyes by just a centimeter. Maybe his eyes were the target and somehow the stone might have just missed it. For once destiny’s plans were foiled. Blood was dripping down his face. There was not one single soul near him to help him. He thought he was going to fall unconscious. He couldn’t do anything. He was helpless.
There was one phone booth near him. He somehow dragged himself to the booth. He went inside and browsed the telephone directory inside for Mother’s Orphanage’s number. He got the number easily. He was dialing the number with one hand and with the other he was holding his handkerchief at the spot he was hit to stop the blood flowing out. It was 10 minutes to 3 then but it was already 3 at the Mother’s Orphanage. Their clock in the main room was about 10 minutes fast and the clock was showing 3 PM. Steve was dialing and the bell was ringing but no one was picking up the phone.
All the kids were replete with ecstasy and rapture. There was so much of uproar in the mother’s orphanage that no one even heard the telephone bell ringing in the other room. The clock in the main hall ticked 3 in the afternoon. The two teachers, three maids and three matrons were all boarding a bus with the thirty-five children. It was a paid trip for them. Some charitable organization had arranged for a trip for the orphans. This does not happen a lot of times, not more than twice a year or so. They planned to go to the museum and beach. The bus was standing just out of their modest one storied building. From somewhere a lighted cigarette flew towards the bus. Just like bulls eye it reached for the gas tank and just like magic the gas tank flew open and just like a cataclysm the bus burst into flames and then there was nothing just like it. A minute later about 50 charred corpses and a completely dismantled burned bus were the only occupants of that place.
Later that evening the news came to Hoggar. He was waiting for a telephone call from Steve. He was repeatedly asking the nurse if Steve had called. He actually wanted to ask them if they had heard about an orphanage in fire, but he didn’t dare ask her. All through the day he was shivering and sweating at the same time. It was about 6 in the evening when he heard a radio announcement about a fire at some orphanage. He didn’t even have to listen to the name of orphanage, he knew it, he knew it the previous night only. The radio cried when it talked about the 50 dead people. But Hoggar was not crying. He reached a stage in which people were not meant to cry or do anything but just can sit and watch whatever was happening and remain mute spectators.
What was the reason for everything that had happened? Fire accidents are very common but how the hell does a cigarette fly by itself and light the gas tank of a bus? Train accidents are usual too but how in God’s name can two trains come face to face in the same track? One hears about these kinds of freak accidents at least once a week at some place in the earth. They are all quite usual but still in Hoggar’s case it was all unusually usual. Whatever happened, happened just to emphasize the fact that he can never ever change the fate or fight against it. To emphasize this fact something harmless could have come in his dreams. He could have actually dreamt of him winning a lottery or something but why did nature choose such pernicious events? Again one cannot question destiny. We can just question ourselves.