"Tell me she is lying..." Giovanna rushed to him even as he crossed the threshold of his room with an icepack held to his head.
"Of course she is lying...", he gritted out the words, "What did you think? She is just desperate...", he said and Giovanna's puckered forehead visibly eased, relieved of the tension there.
"Argh!" Wincing, for his body was a sack of junkyard parts shaken together, he sat and leaned far back in his chair, so as not to face Giovanna who was seated across from him, or Thor who was stretched on the chaise along the wall with his laptop.
After the paroxysm of emotional spasm, his body had eventually regained control. A cut lip and a throbbing head as being filled with hot silvery lead had kept him from thrashing the van driver and anyone else who had helped him to get out of his volvo. In the drive back to the agency's headquarters, he'd attempted to will back a necessary indifference to the significant new piece of his life that had come into light from their phone call; the truth was that it had always been there, only he'd been blind to it owing to his own withdrawal from her life.
They speak of storms and calamities that wipe out villages and wreak havoc on human life, he thought. What of words then? that erase the ignorance at heart and steal for itself the feigned bliss that had made living bearable.
"There was no mention of her pregnancy in her medical records from that time...", he had his eyes closed and rubbed his forehead, appearing to contemplate his own statement, while he mentally tried to recollect the dusty memories that were years old in his head.
"You would have found it...", Thor said, lost in his rapid stroke of keys, "That is, if that tiny piece of information had made it to her records...Check this out..."
Maan looked up, his head resting into the cradle of his palm.
Thor's fingers pinched the screen of his laptop and swiped it out to project the display as a hologram.
"You see that..." Thor got up and pointed at the top left corner of the projection.
"The attending Doctor was Meghna...", Thor said and Giovanna shrugged, turning to Maan for an explanation.
"Meghna was her best friend from a time even before I had anything to do with her life..." Maan sounded more weary than a moment ago; now that his mind began to consider that she wasn't lying after all. But that didn't make it good news at any length and the discovery did nothing to lighten the denseness that continued to descend over his chest.
"Its possible that she kept it off the records to protect her friend. And only fair that she had her doubts when she didn't know Geet was seeing anyone at that time. A cover up out of her loyalty and then later perhaps, guilt took over and she felt obliged to tell Geet" Thor deliberated as he went circling the room and walking through the projected hologram, tapping a pen at his palm, "Are you sure she hadn't confided in Meghna about where she would be gone when you were planning to elope?"
"No...", Maan shook his head and let out a sigh from the sudden on shoot of pain from his neck and shoulder, "She'd told everyone that she was flying with Doctors without borders for the next couple of months. Meghna, never knew about us, nor did anyone else in her family..."
"Now...there is no telling what the truth was..." Giovanna slumped into her chair from an annoyed resignation.
"Well! we could run a search for Meghna and question her...", Thor came to stop by his desk and paused for emphasis, while Giovanna took over for him, "Or take the car to Geet's apartment..."
His eyes narrowed with doubt. The two arch enemies finishing off each other's sentence came across smooth as a well rehearsed play. But he didn't care to delve into their ploys when he would be forced to confront them if things were to take a turn for the worse.
"Did you give..." Maan started with a scowl that had taken permanent seat on his face; but Giovanna cut him off.
"Don't give me that look, Maan...I gave her the right pill this time and she was sleeping even before she was out the interrogation room..."
"We will stick to our agendas..." Maan said, wondering he was still capable of speech with his usual tenor and without slurring when the mass of ice that was numbing parts of his mind began to spread to his throat and downwards, "Enough damages have been done for one day. No one will reach out to her or Meghna. Nothing can be saved now...Is that understood?"
Getting up from his chair, he threw the ice bag into the trash. "If there are no other reports to be discussed, I would like to go home and sleep..."
"Hell with you Maan..." Giovanna looked sullen. Thor simply nodded as he walked back to the window.
"Good night to you too...", Maan responded, oddly pleased at her vexation and reached for his jacket.
"You said home..." Thor spoke low, still in thought.
"Yes...", Maan said.
"You sleep in our bunker underground...", Thor folded his arms and turned to him, "You haven't gone home like in ages... "
Giovanna's eyes shifted from Thor to Maan again and he felt the palpable anticipation in the room.
"Just sleep it off Thor...", he shrugged into his jacket, his eyes careful not to meet theirs as he spoke, "Your long hours of video games are making you read too much into everything I say..."
"If it counts for something..." Giovanna stood from her seat with an abrupt vehemence, "Then you should know that she panicked for you when we all heard the crash through the speaker..."
Her tone was soft, filled with the same emotion he often heard when she spoke of Geet, "So much so that, she lost her voice for a few minutes and yet she was speaking your name...Looking at me and mouthing 'Did I do this?' when she couldn't even realize there wasn't a sound escaping her throat"
Why don't you all just put me under the ground and bury me alive?, he wanted to yell at them; for at that moment, he felt an intense chocking while he pictured his lungs fill up with a steady flow of mud and dust.
"Thanks...", he mustered a steadiness in his voice, as he took the keys that he kept in the runner "But no thanks...That was one detail I could have lived without..."
When he was at the door, Giovanna spoke interrupting his leaving the room, "You are scared...aren't you?..."
He couldn't help but stop at her claim; which must have been offending, but it wasn't then. However, he refused to face her as she continued to address him.
"Scared that she would have access to her past if you told her everything and still not love you as she did before...", she spoke at a slow pace, modulating herself such that her motivations behind her intent to hurt him would trickle down direct as a saline into his veins, "Scared of that rejection...scared that you might just end up kindling expectations for a life with her again..."
He stood there for a beat longer and prayed for composure to outlive the animal urge at wanting to tear something apart with his bear hands.
"I'm scared G...scared that she will end up inside a box", he said without looking and added after a moment's repose, "I will see you tomorrow...then...", before walking away.
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