Chapter 26: Steady Hands

Dr. Rajesh Patel sat in his car in the Rhode Island Hospital parking garage, staring at his hands. They lay motionless on the steering wheel, perfectly steady for the first time in a week. But he knew the moment he tried to hold a scalpel, they would betray him again.

His medical leave had been approved—“temporary stress-related condition,” the paperwork said. Dr. Wells had been kind about it, professional, but Rajesh could see the concern in her eyes. Twenty-three years of flawless surgery, and now he couldn’t trust his own hands.

His phone buzzed with a text from Arjun: Coffee later? Have something I want to talk to you about.

Rajesh almost deleted it. After yesterday’s phone call, after his son had thrown away everything they’d built, what was left to say? But something in the message felt different. Not the careful politeness Arjun usually used with him, but something more direct, more real.

He walked into the hospital through the main entrance instead of the staff entrance. Strange how different the building looked when you weren’t rushing to save lives. Patients moved through the lobby at their own pace, families clustered around waiting areas, the whole place humming with the particular energy of people facing mortality.

In the cardiac unit, he found Carmen Santos finishing her shift. She looked up when she saw him, and her expression was gentle, understanding.

“Dr. Patel. How are you holding up?”

“I’ve been better.” He studied her face—something had changed since the last time he’d really looked at her. She seemed more present, less driven by the manic energy that usually characterized their ICU nurses. “Carmen, can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“The patients who’ve been healing faster than expected—what’s different about them?”

Carmen glanced around the unit, then gestured for him to follow her to a quiet corner. “They’ve stopped fighting,” she said simply.

“Fighting what?”

“The healing process. Usually patients resist—they’re scared, they want to control outcomes, they argue with their bodies about what’s possible. But these patients… they just trust. They listen to what their bodies need instead of what their minds think should happen.”

Rajesh thought about his own body, how it had started shaking the moment he tried to force precision from hands that were telling him to slow down.

“Dr. Patel, what if your hands aren’t malfunctioning? What if they’re trying to tell you something?”

Before he could answer, his phone rang. Meera.

“Raj, can you come home? I think we need to talk. All of us.”

He found the family gathered in the living room when he arrived—Meera on the couch, Arjun in the chair by the window, Priya cross-legged on the floor, Dada in his usual spot with his cane propped against his knee. The afternoon light made everything look softer, less defined than usual.

“I called everyone,” Meera said. “Because I think we need to stop pretending we’re fine.”

Rajesh sat down carefully, feeling like he was joining a conversation that had already been happening for years.

“Arjun told us he dropped out of law school,” Meera continued. “And instead of being angry, I felt… relieved. Which made me realize how much I’ve been pretending that any of this makes us happy.”

She looked around the room—at the perfectly arranged furniture, the achievement photos on the walls, the careful displays of their successful American life.

“When did we stop asking what we actually wanted?”

“When wanting became a luxury we couldn’t afford,” Dada said quietly. “When survival became more important than living.”

Arjun shifted in his chair. “Dad, yesterday you said you wanted to be a teacher.”

Rajesh felt his throat tighten. “That was a long time ago.”

“But you still want it.”

It wasn’t a question. Rajesh looked at his son—really looked at him—and saw something he’d never noticed before. Arjun looked like himself. Not like the perfect son performing success, but like an actual person with his own thoughts and desires and fears.

“I’m fifty-four years old, Arjun. I have responsibilities. A mortgage. Your mother’s medical insurance depends on my job.”

“What if there were other ways?” Priya said. “What if the system that made you choose security over happiness is the same system that’s breaking down right now?”

Rajesh thought about his hands, about the way they’d refused to perform surgery while his patients healed in impossible ways. About Carmen’s question: what if they weren’t malfunctioning but trying to tell him something?

“I don’t know how to be anything other than a doctor.”

“That’s not true,” Meera said. “You’ve always been a teacher. You taught medical students, you explained procedures to patients, you helped me understand difficult concepts when I was finishing my education degree.” She paused. “You just never let yourself think of teaching as enough.”

The room fell quiet. Outside, the humming that had been growing stronger all week seemed to pulse through the walls, through their carefully constructed life, asking questions they’d been afraid to answer.

“I’m scared,” Rajesh said finally. “I’m scared that if I stop being Dr. Patel, I won’t know who I am.”

“I’m scared too,” Meera said. “I’m scared that I forgot who I was before I became Dr. Patel’s wife.”

“I’m scared that you’ll hate me for not being the son you sacrificed everything for,” Arjun said.

“I’m scared you’ll try to make me into someone safe and small again,” Priya added.

Dada smiled. “Good. Fear means you’re paying attention.”

He looked around at his family—four people who had spent twenty-five years building a life that looked successful from the outside but felt empty from within.

“In India, we have a saying: ‘The bird in the cage thinks flying is an illness.’ Maybe what feels like everything falling apart is actually everything falling into place.”

Rajesh looked at his hands again. Still steady, still capable, but no longer willing to perform the same motions that had defined his identity for two decades.

“What do we do now?”

“Now we find out who we are when we’re not performing who we think we should be,” Dada said.

As if summoned by his words, the late afternoon light shifted through the windows, and for the first time in years, the Patel house felt like a home where real people lived instead of a museum displaying their achievements.

Rajesh reached for Meera’s hand, and when she took it, neither of them was shaking.