I am a master in India

Chapter 463 Evil
"He is a very good person. We lived together for thirty-three years, which was wonderful."

Few people can say that nowadays: "I married a man who has always thought of me and taken care of me."

As Arti spoke, Ron couldn't help but think of that generous overseas trader.

Seven or eight years ago, he looked like he was only in his forties, with a strong physique and a warm personality.

“His family is very prestigious, with famous scholars and journalists in his family, but he just happens to like doing business. His business is very successful, and we have also entered a very good social circle. I know all the powerful people in Delhi.”

Artie spoke softly, even her expression was elegant. It was clear that her marriage to Ranant was a perfect match.

“My family is also very prestigious,” she said. “Both my maternal and paternal grandfathers were knights. My grandfather came from Jalandall and later became the chief engineer of the National Railways, was knighted, and received the Order of the British Empire.”

Their family is very well-known in Delhi and used to be close to Indira Gandhi. My maternal grandfather was very successful in business; he bought a very impressive house in the embassy district, and it was under his patronage that Ranant's business began.”

Tsk, Arti talked for several minutes just about his class status.

Ron thought she was too Delhi-esque, definitely old-money.

Yes, may you be blessed, Master Jing.

“My husband has never been sick. He is 1.85 meters tall and very strong. He never wears glasses, has never seen a dentist in his life, and all his teeth are his own; he doesn’t have a single denture.”

He played badminton, and even at fifty, he often couldn't beat thirty-five-year-olds. He never took an afternoon nap. In our thirty-plus years of marriage, aside from a few colds and one serious injury, I don't remember him ever being sick.

“In August, everything went wrong. He was hospitalized in September, and he passed away a couple of days ago.”

“So what exactly is his problem?” Ron asked.

“I still don’t understand it. I’ve shown his report to many doctors. At first, they said it was a viral fever, but then he became very weak and had a low-grade fever for a while.”

We did a lot of tests, and they directed us to an endocrinologist. The doctor prescribed very expensive medication. After taking the medication, he initially experienced cold sweats, and then he had a stroke.

Arti shrugged. "You see, he's never taken any medicine in his life. If he had to take aspirin before, he would cut it in half; he can't take that much medicine."

They started injecting him with antibiotics four times a day, charging him 5000 rupees each time.

I said, "What are you doing? All you care about is making money off drugs, but I love him, and I can see how these things work on him."

"They started chemotherapy without even making a diagnosis! They had no idea what was wrong with him. The doctors were all very famous, and I felt like I had to do whatever they told me to do."

But every time I listen to them, my husband's condition gets worse. He only gets a little better when I don't listen to them.

"I took him from the hospital to another hospital. I brought all his reports with me, but they still wanted to retest every single indicator, which was an absolutely excessive amount of testing."

They said they wanted to do a lymph node biopsy, but because he was taking too much medication, his lymph nodes were swollen. This examination should have been a simple procedure performed under local anesthesia.

"The night before I had that test, I was sleeping in a hospital room. I suddenly woke up in the middle of the night. The room was dark, and I saw a nurse in the room."

She was standing by my husband's bedside, holding a form for him to sign, agreeing to have the hospital perform a much more expensive test under general anesthesia.

Can you imagine? My husband was almost driven insane by those medications. How could he possibly wake up in the middle of the night, see this nurse in the room, and sign a piece of paper?
I told her to leave, that's not what the doctor said. The next morning, I left the hospital with my husband.

These hospitals all operate in the same way: cold and covered in blood.

India's healthcare system is a sinister combination of exorbitant prices and a lack of transparency, causing extreme panic among patients.

This will only make things worse; patients will see twenty doctors because they feel they can't trust any of them.

So they discontinued treatment and changed hospitals, resulting in a lack of continued care.

“We went to another hospital, the one we're at now. My husband started to get better, and they prescribed less medication.”

Before we arrived, his platelet count had dropped to 45,000 per microliter, while the normal value should be above 150,000. However, his platelet count has started to rise again.

A few days later, he was eligible to be discharged. But they wanted to make more money off him, so they falsified his blood test results.

"He was getting ready to be discharged, and he was wearing a scarf. He hated being in the hospital and was happy to be leaving. Usually, the blood test results would come in quickly, but not that morning."

He had already put on his coat; we couldn't leave until the test results came back. There was no reason to worry; his platelet count had recovered to 90,000 the day before.

"I went to ask why the results weren't out yet, but no one could answer me. The doctor said: I'll call the lab."

He looked at me, completely ignoring what was being said on the phone, and then told me, "My husband's platelet count has dropped to 43,000; he needs an emergency blood transfusion."

"I panicked immediately. If his platelet count dropped so much in just one night, he would definitely faint when he got home."

"I'm sorry, darling," I said, "but you need a blood transfusion." I was panicked and had no idea that anything might be wrong.

I need to find someone to donate blood right away. My nephew came all the way from Gurgaon to donate blood. He's so thoughtful, doing everything he could to get here.

When he learned that he needed to donate 300 milliliters of blood, his face turned pale, but he still did it.

"By evening, all the preparations for the blood transfusion were complete. Before starting, they checked the blood again according to procedure."

This time I insisted on seeing the results, and they showed my husband's platelet count was 90,000. That means his platelet count hadn't decreased at all from the beginning! That morning they wouldn't show me the test results so they could sell me a blood transfusion procedure that costs 50,000 rupees.

"A Sikh doctor who treated a friend of mine reviewed the general course of his illness and advised, 'He may have fluid in his lungs; you should be careful.'"

So I told the doctors here, but they didn't care what we said at all. Those bastards! Later, fluid filled his lungs.

The Sikh doctor also told us that we absolutely must not use steroids, but this hospital gave him a lot, causing his entire physiological system to fail.

"This hospital killed him. They were too fond of prescribing medication indiscriminately, and that's how they killed him. He had started to improve before, but after coming to this intensive care unit, this ward ended his life."

I was only gone for a few minutes, and when I came back he was covered in tubes. He was groaning loudly, panting heavily, and had burn marks on both sides of his neck, which no one had ever explained to me.

I took him out of the intensive care unit and told him he would die in my arms, not in front of these strange faces staring at him.

They inserted a central venous catheter because they didn't have the patience to manage the edema caused by the IV fluids. Two minutes after the tube was in, he was almost gone.

“We don’t have health insurance, so we have to pay for everything ourselves. The hospital wants him to use a ventilator for a month so they can charge 300 million rupees.”

They also wanted to put him on dialysis because they had a new dialysis machine, but his kidneys were perfectly fine.

Ron's coffee went cold, and the coffee grinder behind him roared for a few seconds, but no one spoke.

“My husband used to dance the tango and waltz; he was a very strong man. When he first got sick, he told me: If I lose my legs, I don’t want to live anymore.”

But in the end, when I saw him covered in tubes in the intensive care unit here, I broke down.

I said: Go, go, my dear, don't stay in this world any longer, this is not the life you want.

I took him back to my room, played our favorite music, and massaged his head all night.

He passed away peacefully, without muttering to himself or making a fuss; he simply left quietly.

I stayed by his side all night, but he hadn't left yet. He knew that if he left, I would be all alone.

He waited until the afternoon of the next day, when everyone arrived and surrounded us, and he knew he could entrust me to these people who loved me.

Even in his death, he was so thoughtful.

Artie was calm; at least she had given him a happy ending.

“I never expected a private hospital in Delhi to be like this,” Ron sighed.

This was indeed beyond his expectations; many of the people who came here were high-ranking officials and dignitaries.

But the hospital dared to do this; it was insane and inhumane.

“They are money-making machines,” Artie said. “They pursue revenue maximization in a simple and pure way, which leads to the dangerous decline of medical judgment and ethics.”

She gave an example of a friend who was the chief surgeon at a public hospital, but left to work at a large private hospital.

The company offered him an annual salary of 2400 million rupees, ten times his previous salary, but he was responsible for generating 1.2 million rupees in revenue for the hospital each year.

The reality is that even if he performed a full year's worth of surgeries, he wouldn't reach half of that number, so other performance was contributed by diagnostic tests.

This is why the number of laboratory tests has increased significantly; patients are required to undergo repeated MRI scans so that doctors can meet their targets.

Some cases show no signs of needing surgery at all, but anyone experiencing upper abdominal pain will be scheduled for gallbladder removal surgery.

Most surgeries are unnecessary, but patients are unaware of this and cannot detect any signs of improper treatment.

There aren't even any hospitals in Delhi that offer vaginal births anymore, because cesarean sections are more profitable.

The medical device industry plays a significant role in the decision-making process regarding treatment options.

Because many doctors work directly for these companies without the patients' knowledge.

Pharmaceutical companies give oncologists a 10% rebate on chemotherapy costs, with a typical rebate of 1000 million rupees for a one-month course of treatment.

Pancreatic cancer is a favorite among doctors because if it has progressed to chemotherapy, you only have six months to live anyway, so the doctors can treat you however they want.

Some private hospitals are very corrupt. If you pretend to be a patient and tell them you want to buy a kidney, see where you'll be taken.

Some anesthesiologists are connected to the black market for kidney transplants; they often go out to earn extra money, and they can do it in ordinary apartments.

There are also medical corpses. Not to mention hospital morgues, in some cases, the body disappears before the funeral is even over.

Just as Ron was shocked by the “evil” of the private hospital, the sharp siren of an ambulance suddenly blared outside.

A commotion arose, and people flocked to the doorway to watch the spectacle.

Ron and the others also stopped talking and looked outside.

Holy crap! He rubbed his eyes. That was... Satya?
(End of this chapter)