A Class X boy who underwent surgery on Monday evening wrote his ICSE board exam at 11am on Tuesday.

Sk Sagar, 17, appeared for his English language paper from the hospital with the intravenous (IV) cannula on his left hand. He had an appendicitis operation.

A determined Sagar wrote the exam despite being in pain. “The pain refused to subside but I couldn’t miss my exam. That would mean losing a year,” he told Metro after the paper.

The student of Julien Day School, Kolkata, could not sit at a stretch and had to switch between the bed and the chair to finish the two-hour paper.

The ICSE exams began on Tuesday with about 50,000 students in Bengal writing the English language paper.

The schools have braced students for critical thinking questions in keeping with an announcement from the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) that said such questions would form 25 per cent of the questions this year. The exams end on March 27.

For Sagar, the ordeal began on Sunday evening with acute pain in the abdomen.

The doctor advised an ultrasonography but he was turned away from several diagnostic centres because it was a Sunday. He was finally taken to the emergency ward of Sri Aurobindo Seva Kendra.

“The USG was done on Monday morning and the doctor said my brother needed immediate surgery. We requested the doctor to wait till the end of the exam or at least till Friday, after which he has some gap between papers. But the doctor was not ready to take a chance,” said elder sister Muskaan Parvin.

While the family was worried about his health, Sagar was worried about his exams.

“The pain turned severe within a few hours. Despite medicines, it would come back,” Sagar said. “After the surgery, pain and discomfort was there but I could write the exam.”

Arrangements were made for Sagar to write the exam in the hospital’s conference room under CCTV coverage.

“The boy came to the emergency ward with a complaint of acute abdomen pain and vomiting. A USG was done on Monday morning and we told the family that given his condition, we could not discharge him,” said a hospital official.

The hospital then gave a health report to “whom it may concern”, so the school could make arrangements.

“The boy was keen on writing the exam and so, with his medical documents, we made an application to the CISCE on Monday,” said Siddhartha Dey, principal of the school.

The English literature paper is on Friday. “He will probably have to write it from the hospital,” Parvin said.