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~3~
A steaming cup of coffee was thrust into his hands. Well, at least she had trusted him to drink it himself. Cause the way she was going for the drill, she may as well have jammed the cup to his mouth and forced the scalding dark liquid down his throat to make sure it was all inside him at the count of three.
Meanwhile, the five words 'how', 'when', 'why', 'what', and 'who' were featuring generously in her endless chattering, of which he could catch only the overall essence - given both her speed and the bubbling content. She skipped topics and back traced them, going from feeling guilty about having kept him freezing outside to justifying herself on account of his incomprehensible secret keeping, to interludes of going all mushy about how touching, albeit twisted, his way to surprise her was and how she now understood why he'd been laying low for these two days ... her complaining rant and affectionate wonder, pondering speculations and self drawn conclusions continued in an all out defiance to any chronological conformity, while also remaining predominantly one sided, cause the few several times that he did open his mouth to correct her, it was to no avail.
Consequently, Abhimanyu Modi's big confession was not getting its deserved big break. The second, big break.
For his earnest utterance on the doorstep, he concluded with little to doubt, had been superseded by the trance his presence had seduced her better senses with. Now he would have to introduce himself all over again, and by heavens, if ever an introduction had seemed half as daunting. The sense of foreboding, which had quickly reestablished its tantalizing grip over him, post that initial relief of reunion, was of a magnitude that its life altering gravity could stand to challenge the history making potential of say...a Bush-Osama introduction round...or Bush-Saddam...
"AM!" She exclaimed, breaking into his secret thoughts.
"Nikki what would you do if you met Saddam Hussain?" The words left him aloud in a careless overflow of his unbridled chain of thoughts, before he could check himself from committing the idiocy.
"WHAT!"
She nearly burned his hand as hot coffee promptly jumped out in a spill from his loosely held mug, to match her own startled jump. It ended as a rapidly spreading brown blot upon a pile of gossip magazines which lay hastily gathered next to the couch. Either that was irrelevant damage in her opinion, or she couldn't sacrifice the chance to stand up in all her element, and look down upon him. Abhimanyu mustered a smile that looked crudely sheepish.
"No, no, ignore that." He muttered, "I just..." and shrugged. The unconvincing excuse resulted in a frown, a tad more concerned than disdainful now, flitting across her features.
"Did you hit...head...or the cold...chill..." her words were too stray to become a structured sentence, but she didn't waste her time with them, springing to action instead as her soft cozy palm came to cup his forehead, which was only just beginning to warm up. It didn't stop there, as her other hand went on to rake through his thick set hair.
"Nikki..." he urged quietly, taking hold of her wrists, gently, but firmly, and prying them away from himself to consequently pull her wholly to himself, so she was squeezed in to the snug little gap beside him on the couch.
"You don't have a bump." She concluded, almost sadly, like she'd have preferred for him to have one. A new moon cut smile marked his lips. "But you totally hit your head somewhere, didn't you?"
He clucked his tongue, denying. Hint of amusement crept into his slowly forming expression, which ultimately settled for a small, plainer smile, and throwing his arm around her, he drew her closer such that she had more space to sit than just the very edge of the seat.
"I was just being random..." he said, off handly. Not that she bought it anymore than before.
"Random doesn't even begin to explain!" she told him in a voice that tried to be reprimanding, but ended up sounding uncertain. "Retarded might be closer." Then just as if mocking him was her means to de-stress, she turned to him, a glint in her eye. "Or how else was my dear boyfriend expecting late Mr. Saddam to rise from the dead? Simply because he'd missed making acquaintance with the phenomenal Nikita Malhotra!"
"Its the 'smitten in love' psychological disorder! Makes you wana show off your girl to all alike, living or dead!" he stated, in a matter of fact tone. Nikki bit onto her smile. He was one crazy man. And she was so in love with him.
"That sounds much more like it. I was making silly assumptions of your being overcome by a.... a sudden paroxysm of...partial amnesia... or something!" He chuckled softly at her play-along retort, rolling his tongue, especially at her accompanying hand gestures and animated little frowns. Shaking his head, he drew one of her hands into his and begun playing with her delicate fingers which looked like a little girl's, in his very masculine hand.
"Don't let the med school professors brain feed you with such BS darling! There's nothing like a 'sudden paroxysm of partial amnesia'." He told her, in a cheeky tutoring manner. Rubbing his thumb lightly over her knuckles, then drawing out the fingers and running it over the nails painted cherry red. Not once, she observed, meeting her gaze directly.
"Yeh? And what kind of medical authority may you be to make such declarations?"
"Oh trust me I'm a..." he almost did say it in the flow of jesting. Before biting back the words - 'senior neural surgeon'. "A doctor. Well, almost."
And he laughed a little. A hesitant laugh. He was nervous, she didn't know what about, but he was. She knew it already when he begun fiddling with her hand. It was one of his signs. Instinctively, Nikki linked her fingers into his, and gave his hand a light squeeze. Making him look up, into her eyes.
Which did all the talking on her behalf, as she didn't speak up, right away. Her smile was urging, and somewhat urgent. It was evident she had had enough of a wait. Everything about her presence right then assured him to make peace with doubts and speak his mind. Abhimanyu knew for a guarantee, this was his chance. Now, or never.
"I'm a senior neural surgeon." He said. And all her expressions froze into momentary stillness. Before transformation in them began to take over.
Apprehensively, his breath was hitched somewhere inside, in his dire need to comprehend this change. Had he fallen prey to betraying signs?
***
A knock on his door brought Abhimanyu out of the mire of memories. Swiftly, he replaced the pristine gild frame into the top drawer before grunting the customary 'come in'.
"Dr. Modi, the surgery was successful." he was informed by the resident doctor who looked unusually bright right out of a 5-hours long operation. "These are the pre-op tests diagnosing the hemorrhage and the post-op vital statistics, an hour after surgery."
"Hm."
The resident doctor stood waiting for his senior to peruse the file, with subtle signs of restlessness.
"Have a seat."
"I... yes... thank you."
"No anomalies I can spot. Of course there's still the night ahead to be monitored."
"I did detail out everything about the case to Dr. Grewal." Abhimanyu looked up, surprised.
"But I thought you were on call another 12 hours?"
"Actually, I took an off for the long weekend. Dr. Grewal is filling in for me." A brief nod, and his eyes were back to the file.
"Traveling?"
"Yup. Headed east."
Abhimanyu cleared his throat. Then tipped the mid-frame of his glasses sightly up the bridge of his nose.
"East."
He said, hoping not to sound inquisitive, and yet, the question had been asked.
When he heard the destination spelled out in response, his breath felt caught somewhere midway on its way out. With an effort, he cleared his throat again, as if to mobilise a stuck up jam in there. Some tens of seconds later he shut the file, which he had stopped paying attention to about a minute ago. Handing it to the resident doctor he pulled up a smile that was politely curious.
"Tailgating with mates?"
"Er, no. My girlfriend. She's goes to med school there."
Resuming the ordinary task of breathing became all the more tedious. A part of his numb brain detected a muffled scream inside, asking him to get the damn name. But Abhimanyu quit without putting up a fight, just as the words seemed ready to tumble out. Instead, he gave a final single nod. And a bitter smile, which was luckily too faint to betray his emotion. Then, turning his chair around, he came face to face with the blank wall behind his desk, which offered me no answers, whatsoever. The agonized expression of discomfort was kept a secret by his back upon the exiting resident doctor.
Dr. Armaan Malik.
***
quick notes before i proceed
A) i got delayed cause i wanted to add a little surprise something to this thing. which will come along on as you proceed reading =)
B) just in case you were confused and didn't figure out with the little part of this chapter that i posted earlier (before the chunk i'm posting now) there is use of different fonts to distinguish past and present. whatever is italicized in comic sans font is the past - to be precise, all those bits are scene flashes from that evening - all that is non italicized and in plain arial font is present, a year after that evening. this is just to clarify any doubts you may have had about the situation.
C) heavy duty emotional atyachaar ensues here on. please bear 😆 i asked myself why i'd made this piece so sad, when i was finishing up this chapter and i remembered the 'song' given for theme - blame it all on khusiiii! 😆
D) i hereby shut up. enjoy reading!
** Contd... from where it was left last time **
"Abhimanyu...Modi...?"
The name rolled off her tongue in an alien voice. She sat physically stunned. The inside of her head, in contradiction, an Atlantic storm; the inside of her heart, a drum off-rhythm, losing beat. Seconds ticked away. The raging tempest and the dull thudding overlapped. She felt like she was drowning a 1000 feet under, into deep waters that had punctured her lungs, muffled everything into a deafening silence, and eventually, clouded her mind... and vision.
Actually, it was the welling of tears. She couldn't feel them really, as they stung and filled her eyes, suspended in there but they were blinding everything into a blur of colors. She couldn't feel the choking in her throat either, but it was rendering her breathing extremely laborious.
"Abhimanyu Modi.." he confirmed sounding hollow, his expression, on account of hers, already dreading the worst. She was snapped out of the involuntary dead weight feeling.
The sound of that name. Only minutes ago, it would have meant nothing. Just another name... Now it was like the sound of glass breaking into a million shards. And the pain that seared through her was like walking bare feet upon those million pieces.
And she couldn't say what was more unbearable - the numbness from drowning, or this spasm of pain.
How could he? All this time. So many months. Everything was suddenly a lie. He was a lie. They, were a lie.
She'd met this man.
Become friends.
Fallen in love.
Shared her life.
Bared her soul.
Given herself.
Pined for him her waking hours.
Longed for him on long nights.
Loved him with all she had...
Because it was only with his coming into her life, that she'd ever discovered hope and care. And trust. That was it! All her insecurities from growing up in broken homes had been tossed out of the window, and the reclusion that had seemed eternal had been dispelled. He'd made her want to believe. And she'd believed him alright. More than anyone, and anything in the world. Recklessly!
And all that while, she'd been played for such a fool!
She'd been called the naive country girl from South by many. She'd laughed it off. The east coast lacked candid innocence, she'd mocked back. And laughed more as others did on that too. But even he'd said the same. He'd told her she was too simple. Unassuming. Uncorrupted. Then he'd said that it was what made her special, for him. And she'd felt special...
But what he'd really been meaning was this! Oh she was such a fool!
Countless crisscrossing thoughts went round in circles inside her mind at dizzying paces. It made her feel faint. She hoped she would faint, and not wake up... for a long, long time. A paroxysm of partial amnesia...the cute joke suddenly turned a cruel shade , and a soundless, mirthless chuckle escaped her through pained expressions.
"Nik..."
She pushed him, an unbelievable bout of energy surfacing in that instant. Or maybe it was vehemence. Or wrath. Or all of them. It rose rapidly inside her, like bubbling sulphuric acid. Refusing to be calmed. His hand only just made to touch her upon the arm, when she jerked it away, jumped to her feet and then, fled from the room. All in the blinking of an eye. To get away from him.
As far away as she could.
***
***
Can't stop the rain from falling down, oh
Can't stop the world from turnin' round, oh
Can't stop my heart from loving you
No,
no [No, no], no matter what you do, baby ...
A sudden silence fell over the room as the stereo was knocked off the shelf, its cord coming lose. The lyrics ahead however continued, as an echo inside her head.
An echo of that evening. Another trivial detail mocking at what she was far from getting over. It had been more than a year since...
In the residents' lounge, she sat slumped, head held between her hands, fingers pressing against the temples, hoping to bring some relief from the tiresome headache. And then this song had begun streaming from the currently tuned station on the portable stereo stationed across from where she sat. Although the radio had been playing in the background all this while, it was only upon recognizing the wretched lyrics that her attention had been sought.
And so a heavy hard bound from the library had gone flying at the player - in an uncontrollable moment of anguish.
She didn't need any more freaking reminders of that evening for heavens sake! It was what she'd been thinking of anyways, again. Cause that was what Nikita Malhotra usually did with whatever time she ever had to herself, when she wasn't just driving herself into sheer exhaustion with work. Not that she wanted to have anything to do with this hollow nostalgia. What would she not give to wipe off that chapter from the book of her life. If only, it were so simple...
If only, she'd ever stop hurting...
There was just no riddance of his haunting confession. Because all that her empty days, and nights emptier still ever brought her, were memories of times with him.
She had had days, weeks, and eventually months to retrospect. And although time had not mellowed the pain, it had certainly enabled her to view facts with lesser prejudice and greater rationality than she had been capable of initially. She had come to concede that it was unlikely he had been simply fooling her. Because in hindsight, she could not deny that the evening had been tumultuous for him too. He had genuinely cared.
However, the assurance of not having been his little toy was small compared to the consequent realization. That he had compromised their relationship from the very point of its inception, by being less than candid. To have been involved with a man she had never really known had blasphemy written all over it... like an infamous affair from a Vegas holiday. It made her genuine, deep love seem like a caprice, a passing adventure between anonymous chance lovers who eventually moved on with their respective lives, with nothing more but a little out-of-line-experience to pocket... It was like having to discover that the reality she had been living so sincerely, was trapped inside a cock and bull tale woven to maintain a farce for seemingly harmless fun. And that feeling, she could not brush away.
He had betrayed them.
Because she couldn't forget that, she also couldn't forgive it.
Not forgiving him, it turned out, was not synonymous with not loving the man she had taken to be the one...for her. No matter what she tried to tell herself, a weak little part of her head always gave in to wondering if, just in case, she wasn't misunderstanding. If indeed, listening to him that night could have cleared her doubts for good. If neither giving him that chance, nor holding onto 'their thing' had been a hasty decision. If staying apart actually made sense because her life hadn't really worked out without him, after him. If, in fact, she genuinely neither wished, nor willed to start all over again.
This time with Abhimanyu Modi.
As that name entered her thoughts, her jaw hardened. It could not however, suppress the immense self pity that rose within and moistened her eyes, leaving her slightly breathless. Absently, she pulled at the top of drawers from the desk she was seated at. And brought out her inhaler. From habit she shook it, then pumped in three puffs, before replacing it to its original spot. Then, sighing, she shut her eyes - which increasingly stung - while tiredly massaging her aching head. Who was she punishing anyways - he who had ruined everything that was wonderful in her life, or herself to have given him the right. Resignedly, she gave up on trying to fight the vivid memory.
For what had felt like a long time, she had heard him banging upon her bedroom door that evening, after she'd locked herself inside. Endearing, pleading, swearing, imploring that she open up and listen to him, only listen... He had even offered her sporadic, in-explicit answers from the outside, but although the words had even reached her for a while, she had been utterly incapable of processing information.
And it was some weeks before she could actually brave the depressing reminders and bring herself to mull over his words - or whatever little she had heard of them. Sadly (or not) there wasn't much she could recall that he had said to her. Except the basics. His real name. His real professional designation. That he really loved her. That he was never cheating. However, what drew her attention the most, in retrospect, was the scenario as such. Like how she had not wondered that evening, given her devastated state of mind, why he had not just left her alone. Why he was so bent upon being let inside, and fixing the damage. Why, he had flown all the way to her campus only to reveal the truth... if he really gave as little shit about her, as she had initially made herself believe. Quite simply, she admitted in hindsight, she had been too distraught herself to be aware of his breakdown. Much less empathize with him.
It wasn't much her fault though. His words had been like a bolt from the blue, and as soon as she'd fled him and receded into her recluse, a chain reaction of notions had self triggered inside her head, all of which had led her to this ugly, and cheap, and very trashy revelation about her position in their 'relationship'. Her self esteem, so to say, had plummeted to an all time low; her mind was befuddled out of proportion, and her heart pained like it was physically stabbed. The initial unfeeling but incessant flow of tears had eventually worked themselves into hollering cries, till she was far too enervate for the effort. Her breathing had become dangerously ragged, her head spinning had zoned out and gradually the sobbing had muffled down until she really did pass out.
When she had come around again, she wasn't sure what had woken her up. The apartment had been bathed in an eerie stillness. In a flash, the events preceding her passing out had come back to her and although she was a medical student, she'd never have known how to diagnose the pain inside, nor how to subside it. It had killed something inside her to admit that she had still thought about him, wondered if he had left or...Hastily, she had forced her mind shut.
Looking at the sky out side the window by her bed she had found it laden with more snow to come. It did however look on the brink of dawn break, and although her eyes had stung, her throat had felt parched and her entire body had ached, she had dragged herself out of bed. After a quarter hour of blankly staring at the bathroom mirror, another hour of trying to drown herself in the bath tub (in vain), and mechanical ten minutes of dressing herself in work formals without much care to how spent she looked, she had unlocked her door - and found him half leaning in the uncomfortably sprawled position against the wall right by the door.
Her hand had flown to her mouth, to cover the cry that would have escaped otherwise, and she was almost decided upon locking herself back in the room till somehow, life would desert her body. Just the memory of the sight of him in that form made her eyes sting now, in the residents' lounge even a year later, and she buried her face firmly into her hands.
In an objective perspective, she may have appeared to be making too much fuss over a mere name. But even as time had passed her by, the clouds of misgivings and gloom had never quite cleared out. Over and above all thoughts was one - him having hidden his identity from her, amidst the kind of unrestrained intimacy that their bond held. And every time she thought of it like that, the idea repulsed her. That self judging predicament did not let her drop her guard anymore. Even under the influence of occasional weak moments.
Months had passed, and never could she think of that night and its series of events and consequences without arousal of this complicated mix of emotions within her. Her initial determination to close the chapter always seemed to find temptation to waver, and honest to herself, she just didn't know what she wanted anymore.
After several seconds Nikki finally looked up. Eyes bloodshot from the tears she had stubbornly held back on. As if! A glance at the wall clock announced 6AM, and it made her groan. Two hours, to her next shift. She had no hope for sleep to oblige her anymore than it usually did, and resigning to thoughts of him, she made some effort to deviate them to happier times... say for example, the time when it had all begun..
The Christmas ball - a masquerade - two winters ago.
***
Edited by spln - 14 years ago
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