Delhi, a city reminiscent of medieval splendour and behind it, a hereditament of a colourful history in abundance.Yet the colour that currently painted it with was a red full of dread.The wailing of the ambulance faded away as the sobbing kith and kin became more audible.I had been in the room for twenty-four minutes, with another to go before I had to put on the PPE yet again, a ten hour vigil lay ahead.My gaze shifted to my version of Pieter Brueghel the Elder's bee painting that I had begun before COVID-19 had incapacitated the train of thoughts as well as had hijacked the proceedings of a normal day at a hospital. I suited up and ascended along the stairs for the lift was being disinfected.There I saw her, clad in bright yellow and eyes partly open.Entering the ICU, I found her being prepared to be ventilated.Frail as the situation was, it was parallel in strenuosity.Something that any emergency physician would have done a thousand times before, yet the delicate nature of human life and the weight it impinged upon the concentrating brain was disparate. Once she attained stability, it was time to attend to the first of the three more emergencies that arrived in the meantime. It was all facile a month back, three physicians ever present and never more than three emergencies in a span of an hour. Soon two of them were down with the virus.And now, as the Sun rose and made its way right above my vertex, there would be a dozen fatalities and as the Moon waned, the figures would triple. To my way of thinking, it seemed the subsidence of an already decrepit medical system.Along with that, the fear component had crippled the effectiveness of action.A quarter of an hour later, when there arrived no fresh entries, I walked over to the woman in yellow.She seemed better, her eyes fighting the bright sunlight and as I drew the curtains down, she scribbled something on a piece of paper.Expecting a routine courtesy of thanks, I read it and was left confounded.I bowed in response, folded the note and carefully placed it in a pouch I carried and diverted my attention to the other invalids. After my routine rounds at the assigned block which had twenty-six critical cases, I made way to get my head down, the length although obscure.A loud knock broke my slumber and at the door was the head nurse, her eyes inundated with quandary.Acquainted with the picture, I took three minutes to get myself wrapped in a ton of plastic and raced ahead.The yellow lady it was, her heart shutting down and the urine bag heavy with red no more just a tinge, the kidneys failing.A Doppler ultrasound would have taken a painful five minutes and the climacteric scenario demanded a quicker display if she were to live.The limited knowledge science had been in possession of so far about the virus, yet a prothrombotic milieu was well known of. The beeping of the monitor clashed with my thoughts, a war between all possible interventions ensued and in half a minute, I knew what to do. There was no use checking the D-Dimer levels.The incessant thought of the three minutes roamed all around my thinking capacity.If I were suited at the time or maybe even a thirty second head start would have been convenient.The dose had to be heavy to restart her crashing heart.The history her kin provided had no mention of any previous instance of bleeding and the risk was ineluctable. A minute later, her heart rate improved and the beeping ceased.A smile saw premature abortion and as I stood still, a paroxysm of shock had sent my sanity into a deluge. She was bleeding.The history was wrong. Time proved a a hoodwinker, for a simple test of twenty-five minutes would have saved her.My attire no more white, as I washed my hands, the mirror of catharsis in front refused to let my pain see the daylight that was breaking in, taking all the visible darkness with it. The concealed darkness and the discernible voices remained deep inside, forming another memory in the tenebrous gorges of the gyri and sulci. This one the deepest. Between sunrise and sunset, with more and more bodies being buried or cremated, cemeteries running out of space, ambulances and cadavers, and as healthcare crumbles, doctors and patients infected alike, hope seems to be on the platter of the disease.As I retire at night, the afflicted relatives, the affrighted healthcare workers and the affectionate eyes of the woman in yellow hover around in circles. The paper read: Dear roll number 88, Yes, how could I forget those eyes, teeming with curiosity for the entire six years.I know it will shatter you, but remember the thesis, the bavardage, discussions and the plan to visit Egypt for our interest in the place.Life was and is short.Dreams many.Death solitary.A multitude of memories to accompany.Take care.Madam yellow as you named. Tears flowed, wrestling each other, the space very little to let out a sigh when the beep sounded again and the peregrination recommenced.