I dream of You

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oh nakhrewaali

@oh_nakhrewaali

Huge thank you to LizzieBennet for literally working magic on this one. 

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I dream of You

Blue. The first thing she saw was blue. The brightest shade of blue that somehow eluded warmth. Suddenly, it was pitch black and then she saw copper red. She just saw those shades over and over, in a loop.

Priya gasped aloud as her eyes shot open. Her dream felt so vivid! It was as if the colors surrounded her completely - she could feel and touch them as if they were a tangible entity. 

"It's just a dream." She chided herself and pulled herself out of her bed. 


She freshened up, went to the kitchen, wished her mother a good day, and grabbed an apple, rushed off to her car. But as she took a hurried bite of the apple and pushed her car into first gear, the colors flashed before her eyes again. 

They had always been there, haunting her since her eighteenth birthday. Even after all these years, the dreams terrified her. They felt like some kind of a premonition - a foreshadowing of bad news.

The dreams had been more persistent when she had gotten engaged to Neeraj. She remembered it being so bad that they had robbed her of sleep. The engagement had broken off when she had decided not to give in to Neeraj's pressing demands. Then, magically, the dreams had become less frequent. It was almost as if they were a warning - telling her that being with Neeraj was a mistake.


Brushing off her thoughts, she focused on driving, trying to ignore the uneasiness in the pit of her stomach. The traffic wasn't that bad, and she thanked the heavens for it, calming down somewhat. At least she wouldn't be late for her early lecture.


But when she finally hit the highway, her uneasiness intensified. The highway was deserted, except for an overturned car at the side of the road. Against her good sense, she slowed down, stopped her car and got out, peering into the wreckage. 

That's when she saw the blue again. This time, it was real. Blue eyes - wide open, panic-stricken, looking in her own brown ones, pleading for help. It was a man, and he was injured. His eyes weakly fluttered close as blood trickled down from his forehead.


Priya struggled to breathe; her body seemed to forget how to function. The blue eyes kept flashing in her head. Her throat went dry, her blood turning to ice.  She simply stood there, immobile. Just then, there was a small pop sound from somewhere within the car, and she quickly snapped out of it. Breathing hard, she jogged back to her car, pulled out her phone and punched in the emergency number, giving them the details of the accident. She then dialed the police and let her colleague know that she was held up.


The ambulance arrived in about twenty minutes, followed by the police. 

When the emergency care unit pulled the man out of the car, she got a good look at him. He had multiple injuries on his face and body, and was clearly unconscious. 

"Isn't that Ram Kapoor, the businessman?" Someone from the emergency care unit spoke.

Priya looked at the man again, now that his face had a name associated with it. Her thoughts were interrupted when a policeman approached her to take her details and statement. He then gave her the green signal to leave. She considered waiting around, but the ambulance had driven away with the man, and the police were inspecting the vehicle. There wasn't anything left for her to do, so she drove away. 


Days passed, and the dreams had become a constant fixture. Her sleep was getting affected again, just as it had been when she had been engaged. She couldn't explain it. Things got more complicated when the police began to suspect foul play in the accident. Ram Kapoor had slipped into a coma, and someone had tried to kill him. They called in Priya for a witness statement more than once. It was as if the man was now irrevocably tied to her and wouldn't let go. 


Some irrational part of her felt like her recurring dreams were related to Ram Kapoor, even though she knew it was absurd.

But the nagging thought - absurd or not - just wouldn't leave her, and one day, she found herself walking into the hospital Ram Kapoor was in. 

"Relation to the patient?" the receptionist asked her, and Priya looked at her blankly. 

She was here purely on instinct, she hadn't given her actions much thought. But now she considered her reasons for visiting Ram Kapoor.

"I... I was the one who reported the accident," she stammered. The receptionist dialed a number and spoke to someone - probably someone in authority, and then gave her a visitor's pass.


She walked to the ICU and saw a woman about her age, her face pale and drawn sitting with her shoulders hunched on the uncomfortable chair outside the ICU. She stood up when she saw Priya. 

"Hi, you must be Priya? I am Brinda, Ram's sister." 

"I am so sorry for what happened." Brinda simply nodded, but Priya could sense she was holding back her emotions, trying hard not to break down. 

"How is he doing?" Priya asked needlessly, knowing the answer. 

"Multiple organ failure, multiple bones broken, and the brain took a hit too," Brinda said, her voice cracking. She placed her arm around the other woman's shoulder, leading her to sit.

"Can I see him?" she asked. She expected Brinda would refuse -after all, she was just a stranger, a passerby who had done little more than call in the emergency services. But to her surprise, Brinda nodded.


She approached the bed, her heart thudding against her ribcage. She glanced at the man on the ventilator. Surrounded by machines that were aiding in keeping him alive, he looked vulnerable - like a broken, lost child. Although she guessed he must be in his late thirties, about five years older than her. He seemed so lifeless yet she could sense him fighting desperately to stay alive . A part of her wondered how he would look when he wasn't lying unconscious and helpless like this. How he would look when he smiled. Would those cool, blue eyes light up with warmth? Priya closed her eyes as felt tears pooling in. 

She was filled with a sudden urge to shake him awake. To tell him he wouldn't die. That he wasn't supposed to die. Though they had never spoken to each other, Priya knew this. As surely as she knew her own name. She stood there mutely for a while, listening to the rhythmic hum of the machines. 


Then she walked slowly out of the ICU, her vision blurred with tears, her mind in a daze. She sank down heavily on the chair beside Brinda, who was staring blankly at the wall opposite her. There was a tense silence for a few moments until the other woman broke it.


"You know, a few years ago, Ram's only worry was this dream he kept having, some nonsense about a pair of brown eyes and a strand of hair covering them. The dreams were so frequent that we all thought they were alarming, but not Ram. He would say that the dream brought him peace, as if it was anchoring him to life itself."

Priya gaped at her slack-jawed, bewildered and stunned. 

"Did he always get that dream?" she managed to ask.

"Oh yes, almost every night. We just laughed it off after a point, because it was plain absurd. Then we met this woman at a friend's birthday party, she was into divination and stuff like that. When she heard about the dream, she said it was Ram's first meeting with his soul mate. It was hilarious, not going to lie." She chuckled dryly. 

Priya realized Brinda wasn't really interested in the anecdote she had just related, she was just fulfilling her need to talk about her brother.

"I cannot lose him." Brinda gave her a desperate look. 

Priya gripped her hands and then pulled her into a tight embrace. She didn't want to say, "It will be alright," because she didn't lie or make empty promises. So she just patted Brinda's head and gently withdrew from the hug. The two sat in silence for a while when a man approached them. Brinda's eyes lit up on seeing him, and she introduced him as her husband, Aditya who was also Ram's best friend. Priya greeted the man and then decided it was time to leave.

"Take care," she said to Brinda.

"You too." 

Priya smiled weakly and walked out, her mind still numb with shock at what Brinda had told her. Was there some truth to this soulmate thing? Was Ram's dream somehow connected with hers? It seemed foolish to believe in such things, given that she was a teacher who always taught kids to question everything. But how could she ignore the fact that a man she had never met before was having dreams that so closely paralleled hers?


She visited Ram almost every day for two months. She would sit outside the ICU for a few hours and leave. She never went in to see him again. It had become a routine of sorts, one that she almost looked forward to. She could never explain to anyone why she visited him. She couldn't explain it to herself. She was dreaming that dream on fewer nights now than ever, but it was etched in her memory forever. Like Ram's eyes.

Two months after the accident, Ram gave up the fight. Priya didn't go to the condolence meet. She never mentioned Ram Kapoor to anyone ever and she never had that dream again. She missed it, like she would miss a close, loyal friend. Sometimes she would wake up in the middle of the night with an agonizing ache in her chest. It was as if the dream had left a deep void inside her heart, which now felt just as dead as him. The man with the startling blue eyes. The man that had robbed her of her sleep first, and now her dreams. 

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