Day 7

One of the first victims of this creeping layer of gas was the cripple Rahul on his wheeled plank. Because of his robust constitution, he did not die right away but only after several minutes of agony. He coughed, choked and spewed up blackish clots. His muscles shook with spasms, his features contorted, he tore off his necklaces and his shirt, groaning and gasping for something to drink, then finally toppled from his board and dragged himself along the ground in a last effort to breathe. The man who had always been such a tireless source of moral support to the community, who had so frequently appeased the fears of his companions in misfortune, was dead.
...
In a matter of minutes the emergency rooms of Hamidia Hospital looked like a morgue. The two doctors on duty, Deepak Gandhe and Mohammed Sheikh, had thought they were going to have a quiet night after Sister Felicity’s visit. All at once the department was invaded. People were dropping like flies. Their bodies lay strewn about the wards, corridors, offices, verandas and the approaches to the building. The admissions nurse closed her register. How could she begin to record the names of so many people? The spasms and convulsions that racked most of the victims, the way they gasped for breath like fish out of water, reminded Dr. Gandhe of Mohammed Ashraf’s death two years earlier. The little information he could glean confirmed that the refugees came from areas close to the Carbide factory. So all of them had been poisoned by some toxic agent. But which one? While Sheikh and a nurse tried to revive the weakest with oxygen masks, Gandhe picked up the telephone. He wanted to speak to his colleague Loya, Carbide’s official doctor in Bhopal. He was the only one who would be able to suggest an effective antidote to the gas these dying people had inhaled. It was nearing two in the morning when he finally got hold of Loya. “That was the first time I heard the cruel name of methyl isocyanate,” Dr. Gandhe was to say later. But just as Mukund had been earlier, Dr. Loya turned out to be most reassuring.

“It’s not a deadly gas,” he claimed, “just irritating, a sort of tear gas.”

“You are joking! My hospital’s overrun with people dying like flies.” Gandhe was running out of patience.

“Breathing in a strong dose may eventually cause pulmonary edema,” Dr. Loya finally conceded.

“What antidote should we administer?” pressed Gandhe. “There is no known antidote for this gas,” replied the factory’s spokesperson, without any apparent embarrassment. “In any case, there’s no need for an antidote,” he added. “Get your patients to drink a lot and rinse their eyes with compresses steeped in water. Methyl isocyanate has the advantage of being soluble in water.”

Gandhe made an effort to stay calm. “Water? Is that all you suggest I use to save people coughing their lungs out!” he protested before hanging up.
...
This was only the beginning of his night of horror. Quite apart from haemorrhaging of the lungs and cataclysmic suffocation, he found himself confronted with symptoms that were unfamiliar to him: cyanosis of the fingers and toes, spasms in the esophagus and intestines, attacks of blindness, muscular convulsions, fevers and sweating so intense that victims wanted to tear off their clothes. Worst of all was the incalculable number of living dead making for the hospital as if it were a lifeboat in a shipwreck. This onslaught gave rise to particularly distressing scenes. Going out briefly into the street to assess the situation, Gandhe saw screaming youngsters clinging to their mothers’ burkahs, men who had gone mad tearing about in all directions, rolling on the ground, dragging themselves along on their hands and knees in the hope of getting to the hospital. He saw women abandon some of their children, those they could no longer carry, in order to save just one—a choice that would haunt them for the rest of their lives.

~~Five Past Midnight in Bhopal -by- Dominique Lapierre, Javier Moro