“Oh, poor thing!” exclaimed Dr. S, shaking her head in empathy.

“It is very sad,” I chimed in.

Lalita lay on the operating table. A sterile green cloth hung perpendicularly, separating her, the patient, from Dr. S and me, the operating surgeons.

She was undergoing her first cesarean section in view of fetal distress.

It was indeed very sad. Not the cesarean part, but the fact that her husband had passed away when she was only seven months pregnant.

“I am really sorry about your husband,” said Dr. S.

A sentence Lalita had heard a million times since his death, and at least a hundred times that morning since she had been admitted.

“What was wrong with her husband? She looks so young,” whispered Dr. S.

“Ma’am, he was suffering from chronic liver disease. He had been in and out of the hospital multiple times before he finally passed away,” I whispered back, my head still shaking in sympathy.

A clean incision sliced the uterus open. Bouts of meconium-stained liquor flooded the operating field. Soon, the operation theatre reverberated with the loud cry of a healthy baby girl.

Lalita looked at her baby with emotions you only get to witness if you are an obstetrician. The expression on her face is why I became one. Everything feels worth it when you are the reason behind someone else’s happiest moment in life.

A tragic request

A few peaceful moments later, we heard Lalita’s voice from behind the green curtain.

“Doctor, please do my tubal ligation.”

“Tubal ligation?” we both cried out in unison.

Why did she want a ligation when her husband was no more? Did she not trust herself? Had Lalita lost her mind? For a moment, I even wondered if we had shifted the wrong patient, an absurd thought, but not entirely impossible in a hospital where more than 15 cesarean sections are done in 12 hours. I was hurriedly revising my surgical safety checklist when Lalita’s trembling voice interrupted my thoughts.

“Doctor, you need to do my ligation. It was my husband’s last wish. My dying husband wanted me to neither bear any more babies nor get remarried. He made me vow to get myself ligated after the baby’s delivery.”

Control from beyond the grave

Dr. S and I stood there aghast.

What kind of husband was this man?

When he was alive, Lalita’s life, pregnant as she was, had revolved entirely around caring for him, his alcohol-induced liver disease consuming her days. Now that he was dead, he wanted to control her life from beyond his grave.

In a country where being a widow and a single mother is difficult enough, he had ensured she would have no escape. His toxic possessiveness had almost made her Sati 2.0.

Dr. S and I communicated telepathically. Only our eyes were visible through our masks. We shared a shattered look of disbelief and decided to drill some sense into Lalita.

We told her that it was ethically, legally, morally, logically, and most importantly, humanely, unacceptable to ligate her. Her ligation could not and would not be done. Period.

The ethical refusal

At bizarre times like these, it is essential to maintain professionalism and decorum, I reminded myself. I resolved to stay quiet and keep my feelings to myself.

Apart from the intermittently beeping monitors, there was a haunting silence in the operation theatre.

A few seconds later, to my utter surprise, I heard these words come out of my mouth, involuntarily.

“Till a few moments ago, I was really sorry that your husband is no more, Lalita. But now I am really, really sorry that the man who is no more was your husband.”

Vartika Mishra is an obstetrician-gynecologist in India.