Anand was forty-two and slept in the plastic chair beside his father's bed. The ICU of the Prasad Hospital, fifth floor, Brahmpura, Muzaffarpur. You know that floor, you understand, everyone in the neighbourhood knows that floor, it's the one they call the floor upstairs, and from that floor the old don't come down. His father was called Krishnandann Prasad Singh, seventy-six, a stroke in March, admitted eight days ago. Intubated. The heart monitor made a sound like four by five. Four beats, a pause, five beats, a pause. Anand counted so as not to fall asleep. He fell asleep anyway. His head on his father's blanket, a new blanket, bought on Saturday at the Kalyani Chowk market for two hundred rupees.

Three fifty-five. The smoke came before the alarm. It was a smell of burnt plastic, sweet, sickening. Anand jumped to his feet. He looked at his father. His father was sleeping. The monitor still made four by five. He opened the door of the room. The corridor was full of grey smoke. He pulled his shirt over his mouth.

He went towards the nurses' room. Empty. He went towards the desk of the doctor on duty. Empty. There was a lit cigarette in the ashtray, an open bottle of water. A mobile phone on the table. It was ringing. No one answered.

He went back into the room. He closed the door. From the corridor came a sound of shoes on the stairs. Many shoes. He looked through the spyhole. He saw three nurses running. He saw the doctor on duty, the one he called madam, running. They were heading for the stairs. He opened the door. He said: madam. He said: madam. He said: madam. The doctor did not turn. The smoke came into the room. Anand closed it again. His father coughed, his eyes shut.

He thought of his sister in Patna. He thought he should call her. He thought of the treatment sheet pinned to the bed. He had read it twenty times. It said: do not move the patient without qualified assistance. It said: continuous oxygen, two litres a minute. It said many things. Anand was gripping the sheet. He did not know whether it was he who was gripping or the hand that had closed by itself.

He thought of the blanket his father had wanted in flowers, not in stripes, because in flowers it resembled his mother's, dead seven years before. He thought of the nurse who on Wednesdays combed his father with the wide teeth of the old comb, the only one who treated him as a man. He thought that that nurse was at home that night. It was a middle night, one of those nights when the staff on duty is the youngest. He thought he should also call the cousin from Sitamarhi, because the cousin from Sitamarhi was the one who always took care of the affairs of the old.

He turned towards his father. He said: babuji. His father did not answer. The smoke was coming now through a crack under the door. Anand thought of waiting. He thought the doctor would come back. The doctor did not come back. He put his hand on the oxygen tube. His father's skin was warm. The mask with the tubes was sealed with tape on the cheek. Anand removed the tape with two fingers. He removed the mask. He removed the tube from the nose. The monitor did not sound. Maybe it was unplugged. Maybe it no longer worked. He did not look at the monitor. He bent down. He took his father under the arms and under the knees. His father was light as a sack of rice weighing fifteen kilos. Seventy-six years of a man who had been a primary school teacher in Sitamarhi. Fifteen kilos. Anand had not asked anyone's permission. He had removed the tube. He had taken his father. He had gone to the door.

The corridor was a grey cloud. Anand walked along the wall. He knew where the stairs were. You memorise these things, the first day. He went down one step at a time. His father coughed on his shoulder. To cough was to live. He coughed, so he breathed. Five floors. On the third he stopped. Not because he was tired. Because he had heard a voice behind him saying: you can't take the patient down without the doctor. It was a nurse coming down. It was one of the nurses from before, the one who had passed in front of him without looking at him. Anand did not answer. He went on.

On the ground floor there were ten, fifteen people. All alive, all standing. Anand laid his father on the step of a shop closed on the other side of the street. He sat down beside him. The sun was not high yet, the grey dawn of June. Anand had no jacket. He had the treatment sheet in his hand, crumpled. He looked at it. He read it again. He looked for the line: continuous oxygen. He tried to understand whether he had removed the right tube, whether that was the oxygen tube or the tube of the other thing, the tube they attached afterwards. He did not remember. He did not know. The question was there, sitting on the step with him and with his father. His father coughed. Anand took his hand. His father coughed once more, more softly. Then he coughed no more. Anand stayed sitting beside the body. He held his father's hand until the first man came from the other pavement. The man asked if he needed help. Anand did not answer. He looked at the crumpled treatment sheet in his hand. He tried to understand whether he had removed the right tube, whether that was the oxygen tube or the tube of the other thing, the tube they attached afterwards. He did not remember. He did not know. The question was there, sitting on the step with him and with his father. He had done right. He had done quickly. Rightness and quickness, this he knew, are not measured on the same scale.