Random meows in my head (drabbles only) 8th up pg26 15/2/2022 - Page 19

Because the lost possibility of Raavi's memory loss was way too tempting. And because Min wanted me to explore this. For you, Min! ❤️

Also, completely unedited!

Disclaimer: ~1.5k words. This is set after the hospital kaand, when Raavi has an accident and Shiva is in jail.

Medical facts- The kind of memory loss ITV normally gives us, where the complete identity is lost is called dissociative fugue, and yes, it's a rare yet real thing. Amnesia is usually just retrograde or anterograde, where only recent memories or everyday things are forgotten.

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A Chipkali and her Dark Knight.

He had been looking for her for three days now. Three. Add the two days he'd been languishing in jail to it, and she'd been missing for five days total now. Please just let her be safe, he prayed again. It had become a chant in his head. Behind the thoughts of which of her friends to call next, or should I check with her Papa's relatives or not, and 'Hey Bholenath, not another hospital please please please', this had become a chant in his mind. That she be safe. Because the thought of anything other than that made him shake in his sturdy Bata's, his knees having moments where they refused to keep him standing strong.

"Mr Shiva Pandya?", the receptionist called out to him, and he looked up from where he'd been staring at his dirty chappals against the clean, white marble of the hospital lobby. Hospital. Raavi. The lady was going through some papers, cross checking them with something on the computer screen in front of her. "Ji?", he called out, wanting to get this over with soon so that he could move on to the next place. He had to look for her. To find her.

"Naam kya kaha tha aapne?", she asked and he repeated himself. "Raavi. Raavi Shiva Pandya. Shaadi se pehle Raavi Narayan, aur usse bhi pehle Raavi Vyas", he answered, running a sweaty hand across his face, rubbing at his eyes and moving his unruly hair off of his forehead. "Hmm... ", she hummed, before nodding at him. "Please, haath sanitise kar lijiye", she requested, nodding towards the bottle of alcoholic hand rub placed on the table, and he did it, his brows furrowing in confusion at why she was asking him to do so.

She called someone else on the landline, having a quick conversation before placing the server down and looking straight at him. "Seedhe jaayenge tho elevator hoga", she said, pointing to the corridor to her right. "Third floor pe jaake Doctor Abishek ke cabin pe jaayiye. He will guide you from there".

What? Why? Every hospital he had visited so far had given him a clean no and sent him off, so why was he being told to meet a doctor? Unless Raavi was here. Here and hurt, maybe. He rapped his knuckles on the table, grabbing the woman's attention once more. She looked annoyed now, but he didn't care. He didn't. "Kyun doctor se milna hain? Matlab Raavi yahaan hain kya? Meri wife yahaan hain?", he asked her. The woman stayed quite, waiting for him to finish his panicked questions before responding in a calm voice again. "Yahaan Raavi naam ki ek patient admit hue hain, yes. Unke surname entry nahi hui hain, par unke Attending Doctor ne kahaan ki aapko unke paas bech de. Isse zyada information mere paas nahi hain, Mr Pandya," she said. He had simply nodded before walking away.

Two minutes later, he opened the translucent door to, who's room was it again? Right. Dr Abhishek. The man was young on first sight, definitely less than thirty, but the clarity in his eyes as he looked up from the bundle of papers on his table made Shiva's own twenty two seem much younger now. "Mr Pandya?", he asked, his eyes noting every move and voice low yet carrying well. "Ji", he answered, moving to sit in the visitor's chair across the table as the man gestured to it. The doctor fiddled with his phone for a moment before placing it on the table, then pointed at it. Shiva looked down to see a picture of a smiling girl in a hospital gown, some kind of bandaid on her forehead but otherwise seemingly well. A muffled voice reached through to him with questions, "Aap inhe jaante hain? Yeh aapki wife hain?", but Shiva paid no attention to anything.

He had found her. He had found his Raavi. His chipkali.

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Raavi sat up in her bed. Freshly showered, new hospital gown on. She had hated the green one from yesterday and had convinced the regular staff nurse to get her a blue one for today. She looked much more pretty in it, and less sick. Sweet Miss Latha!!! She grinned, pressing the buzzer for her Latha Di to come in. She needed to change the medical tape covering her stitches, and she needed her breakfast before she could have her tablets. The vitamin C still tasted weird to her though.

Only, after two minutes of impatient waiting in which she had tried to half heartedly towel her hair dry before giving up and settling into the chair by the window, in came not Latha di, but Dr Abhishek. With someone else. A man. He looked to be a little older than her from the way he carried himself. Loosely. Perhaps a little too loosely? He was tall, but not too tall. And lean despite the hard muscle she could sense lying beneath the loose, dirty clothes. He seemed tired, what with his bowed head and hunched shoulders, yet tense. And his hair was too long, covering his forehead and curling around his neck, hiding more of his face from her.

"Raavi?", Dr Abhishek called out to her, and from the look of it, not for the first time. "Ji Doctor?", she asked, before getting out of her chair and moving towards the bed. Wasn't the doctor's rounds usually after breakfast? And just WHO was that man? Dr Abhishek gestured towards the man, "Yeh Mr Shiva Pandya hain", he said as he moved forward towards her, taking his torch out of his pocket. Shiva Pandya. Shiva? She heard an echo of the name in her own head. Shiva!!! Kya kar raha hai tu?!! Raavi shook her head, ignoring the echoes in her head, and knowing the routine, she let the doctor examine her eyes, tongue and stitches. He asked her a few of the usual questions, headache, nausea, sleep, weakness, before moving away, letting Mr Pandya enter her field of vision once again. "You're healing well! Jald hi aapko yeh tape ki bhi zarurat nahi padegi, aur bas stitches ki dissolve hone ka intezaar karna padega".

She nodded half heartedly, before her eyes went back to the man, who's head was still bowed. Well, she was staring, wasn't she? Maybe the poor man was just uncomfortable, she realised. Just as she was about to tear her eyes away from him, he looked up, his eyes meeting hers, and the pain in them caught her off guard. Who was he?! What had happened in his life that his eyes held so much pain?

He clenched his eyes shut, then, his hands fisting at his sides. And there was something about the way his brows furrowed and the bright sunshine from outside hit him as the sun came out from behind the clouds. The bronzed skin, the echoes in her head, the too long hair and those biceps. "Mere kahaani ka villain!!!!", she screamed, getting up to kneel on the bed and point an accusing finger at him, her hands shaking in rage. And then the weirdest thing happened, because she was sure people normally had a different reaction to being called a villain. Hope. Hope lit up his eyes like a beacon, pulling her in to them.

"Raavi? Aap inhe jaante hain? Do you recognise him?", Dr Abhishek asked her. She peeled her eyes away from the greatest rival in her remembrance, turning towards the doctor. "Yeh?! Yeh bandar insaan haina doctor?! Yeh hi mere sapnon ka villain hain! Jiski vajah se main ek dragon se ek choti si, daraavni si chipkali ban jaati hoon! Aur jiski vajah se main uss tower ke andar kabhi jaa hi nahi paati! Aa jaata hain yeh jab main khidki tak pahunchti hoon! Knight in shining armour? My foot! Dark Knight hain yeh! Dark Knight!", she screamed, her finger shaking at him again. "Aur main tho iski story ki Joker banke rahunga!", she declared, sitting back on her legs and glaring at the amused look in his eyes as she tried to control her furious breaths.

Hearing no sound of support or encouragement from the good doctor, she looked towards him only to see him staring at her with wide eyes. Had she perhaps gone a bit overboard, she wondered, before shaking her head in a decisive no. The man deserved it for being the pain in her dreams that he had been ever since she'd come to this hospital, ever since she remembered. Dr Abhishek cleared his throat, and she saw a sudden vulnerability in his eyes, fear of something. She simply hummed to show that, yes, she was listening, not wanting to miss a single emotion that flitted across his face. "So, Mrs Raavi, meet Mr Shiva Pandya, your husband. Discharge ki formalities puri kare?"

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I know this is pretty open ended, but I have a second part planned that i'll write and put up if enough people are interested.

Lambe reviews would be much loved!