St. George Hospital serves both as a limited medical resource for the people Lin treats in the Colaba hutments and as the setting for the final days of Prabaker’s life. The hospital’s diagnostic clinic is where Lin sends patients whose illnesses exceed his first-aid knowledge, while its intensive-care ward becomes the place where Lin and Prabaker’s family confront a prognosis that medicine cannot reverse.

A referral point for the hutments

Lin directs patients with conditions he cannot identify to the diagnostic clinic at St. George Hospital. His training is in first aid, not comprehensive diagnosis, and he describes himself as working without enough knowledge to manage the range of problems brought to him. Referral is therefore a recognition of the limits of his informal practice, not a guarantee of treatment: many patients return without having seen a doctor or nurse.

That uncertain connection to formal care helps define Lin’s role in the settlement. He treats what he can and sends other cases onward, bridging a gap without being able to close it. The hospital is present in the slum’s medical life as a destination, but not one that every patient successfully reaches in a meaningful way.

Prabaker’s critical care

After Prabaker is gravely injured, Johnny Cigar finds Lin and tells him that Prabaker is in intensive care at St. George Hospital. The account relayed to Lin is dire: the doctors expect Prabaker to die, though he remains alive after an operation. At the bedside, Kishan and Rukhmabai sit together in grief, while Parvati, Sita, Jeetendra, and Qasim Ali Hussein stand nearby in silence. Machines monitor Prabaker, and hospital equipment supports his breathing and care.

Lin seeks a way to help. He offers the doctor in charge a bundle of American hundred-dollar bills and asks that further expenses be sent to him, but the doctor refuses the money and tells him there is no hope. The family and friends are allowed to stay because there is nothing more to do but wait with Prabaker. Lin gives the money, along with his recent courier earnings, to Parvati instead.

The vigil and its aftermath

The vigil lasts four days and nights. As Prabaker continues to suffer, Lin’s hope changes: loving his friend does not mean wishing for every possible extension of life, and he eventually prays for Prabaker’s death to end the ordeal. Prabaker dies after that vigil. The hospital is thus not a site of recovery but the setting of a painful limit to Lin’s capacity to help, despite his medical efforts and his willingness to shoulder the costs.

The loss continues beyond the ward. In the hut Prabaker once shared with Parvati, his mother, Rukhmabai, cuts off her long hair in mourning. Lin’s narration returns to his enduring love for Prabaker and to grief that persists after death, making the hospital vigil a turning point in a relationship whose emotional consequences outlast the treatment itself.