IPKKND: All I want: Chap-5:43 - Page 31

5 – Two Steps back

Another day.

Another day without here.

Another day without her, being in hospital.

I haven't been going to work, and was laying in a odd manner on our bed. The stars which I brought her month on her birthday hung on our bed. I had gotten a stand fixed on the bed for her to hang the stars properly. It depressed me even further.

Or depressing was an understatement. Or was dead from inside.

It was odd, somehow to why she was having sleeping pills. Or was she having it on her own? Did someone feed her? It was when my arms started paining awfully, I realized I was in an odd position. I was drained, I needed a shower. Or her, maybe.

When my eyes cracked to give a way to the fierce stinging sunshine outside, I closed my eyes not being able to keep my eyes open. My skin burnt, I wanted someone to draw the curtains. I wasn't in the ICU any more, all I could hear was the faint sound of the people outside, and the doctors talking to patients, faint announcement, and the click of the metal plates when the nurse carried them hurriedly. Wasn't a nurse supposed to stay with me?

I felt weak, even to open my eyelids. To work hard on stretching them open to get a view of how my cabin looked in the morning. It was still raining, to my annoyance, the same pitter patter of the rain drops against the windows sills.

The same sickly sweet acidic smell of hospitals.

The fresh, strong smell of room fresheners.

The cold smell of air conditioner.

And something else, which I couldn't identify.

The small crook of my arm itched. Like something was pierced to it. I wanted to soothe it away, but my arms hurt.

In a few minutes, my nostrils were wafted by the smell of fresh roses, and finally doing the Herculean task of stretching my eyelids, I saw Arnav on the door, hair wet, shaved clean in a pair of casuals.

The best thing that could greet me this old acidic morning.

'Sweet roses for my sunshine, do you like them?' he placed them on the desk beside my bed, and himself sat on the corner of my bed, and traced my cheeks. Cold cheeks against his familiar warm hands.

But he furrowed his eyes, travelling to the crook of my arm and it turned to scowl as he stretched his hands and traced my arm. Just where it itched.

His furrow deepened, and to my surprise, for once I forgot the shooting pain in my hand and eased his brow. He smiled.

'Any new medicines, which I don't know off?' his voice wasn't any more like when he greeted me when he came.

Surprisingly, he had remembered all my medicines, from syringes, and steroids. Even when he tend to forget his own. I nodded my nod in negative.

'I'll be right back.'

When Arnav Singh Raizada walked, the people shuddered. Or else, rephrasing, when he was angry. No one liked to be in the same scene as he was.

He strode straight into the doctor's chamber, and the smiling doctor looked, and asked what the matter was.

'Did you check on Khushi last night?'

'No. Nurse did.'

'Call her, this instant.' The nurse was called. She took longer that it would take, and after good twenty minutes when she came, the poor girl wanted to run back home.

'Did you check on Khushi last night.'

She kept quiet. Her eyes casted down, and Arnav's nostrils flared up. 'Where were you all night?'

She kept quiet, and he punched the table.

'He paid me and I needed money!! I had to pay my house rent and I so took it, it was a lot for me, or more than a lot, and I planned to leave this job, but...I was late,' she drove her voice chords.

* *

I wanted to open my eyes and see what they were doing to me. I was tired though, and I kept them closed. I knew he was beside me, I needn't worry about what ever was going on.

I felt a sting on the other hand, and blood was sucked. And slowly, the sucking stopped. I felt another sting right after two minutes or so, and I slowly drifted to a sleep.

I dreamt of myself. Him. Us.

Together.

All I wanted was to be with him.

* *

The police had called him two hours back. Shyam wasn't living in the old house he used to leave, nor did his phone number worked. He had de-activated all sorts of accounts, and even his bank account was withdrawn.

Arnav should have known it all along.

Though he couldn't put his straying thoughts together. They were tangling somewhere in the air by a thin weak thread. He tried putting them in one frame, but it wouldn't just fit.

Why did he came back?

The phone beeped. It was a private number.

'I turned out to be a pianofied villain, didn't I? The notes performed over and over again ' the voice was no more obliging, calm, and measured. He sounded like someone else.

'What did you do to her?' I asked. In fact, I sounded helpless.

'Nothing much, just a few shots of something, won't do much harm.' He went cool. 'What was it?'

'Cocaine.'

I signed. The phone fell.

* *