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Superb story...just finished reading it so far.
Waiting eagerly for the next part
Waiting eagerly for the next part
I slither in and out of consciousness; images around me are blurred and sponged. Blurbs move around me and everything is foggy. It is too bright to keep my eyes open and the sounds from various equipment along with a woman shouting "He is coding" absolve me from the white. In darkness I find peace and my body doesn't hurt as if I am rolling in needles.
In this darkness, I sleep.
I open my eyes and find my right hand immobilized. Horror creeps within me but before I resort to panic, the weight on my hand shifts and I can feel my fingers again. I shift my head and turn towards my right slowly to see a pair of eyes blinking at me in confusion.
"Hey little man," I start to cough as the words are out of my throat and my tongue feels like sandpaper. The little boy scrambles and fetches me a cup of water and holds it near my lips. I scoot closer and crane my neck and moan in relief when water quenches the dryness in my mouth.
"Do you want more?" Arav asks looking at me. I can see that he is confused and hasn't fully understood the situation but he is doing is level best to be useful. I shake my head.
"Where are your mom and dad?" I rasp. Maybe I should have had that second cup of water, I think belatedly.
"They went outside to talk to doctor." He fidgets around unsure of what needs to be done. I feel exhausted as if I have been running in desert for several days and my head is pounding. It could have been after effects of poison. Whatever it was, I am at least glad that I am alive. I twist a little and look around the hospital room. It's eleven in the evening. No wonder Arav curled up beside me as it was way past bedtime. Anjali would have tried hard to keep him at home but the little boy has inherited my stubbornness.
"Come on," I pat the space on my right. Arav's eyes have sleep in them and I know that within three minutes he would be out like light. He nods happily and climbs next to me, his little arm around my neck and he falls asleep in couple of minutes. The smell of his baby powder, the smoothness of his skin, the innocence he exuberates calms down my raving nerves. My breathing slows down and a surreal calmness envelops me.
I lie awake looking at the ceiling remembering my last conversation with Khushi and wondering how much time had passed. I remember it was somewhere in afternoon and it was probably eight hours since the attack on me.
"Arnav, are you awake?" I hear my sister looking at me worriedly. I hadn't noticed her coming inside and she must have been shocked looking at me staring the ceiling unblinkingly. I turn my head to my right and smile. There are dark circles around her eyes and her signature elite look is gone. She looks tired and is probably exhausted looking at the way she clutched the bed.
"I am hungry, I think." I tell her jokingly. A laugh bubbles out from her throat and she is torn between sobbing and laughing. She looks ridiculously happy and finally gives into a heartfelt laughter.
"You scared us." I hear Shyam's voice from the foot of the bed. I look at him as he walks towards Anjali.
"I scared me too," I reply lightly. But they both know that it was far from being a joke. I have taken gunshot wounds, gang related beatings and even knives. Danger was a part of my job and I anticipated them during the cases on which I worked on. But poison was a different thing altogether. One can recover from any sort of wound with scars and bad memories. But a carefully crafted poison was potent enough to give you pain and leave no scars. I have no idea the extent of internal damage it had done.
"I'll call the doctor," Shyam squeezes my hand and left the room.
Thirty minutes later the doctor convinces Anjali that I am fine and I can be discharged out once the test results are out. I don't feel as exhausted as I was when I woke up and I ask the doctor to fill me in. Anjali and Shyam step out understanding my look and Shyam carries Arav in his arms. There is a lot I have to ask him but I am in no hurry to take up that conversation.
"You were poisoned, Mr. Raizada. Honestly, I have never heard or seen anything like that before. The poison has architecture to attack on the immune system. The poison basically cheats the immune system to believe that your body itself is the enemy and antibodies start attacking the body. The white blood cells' starts dropping, tissues deteriorate, red blood cell count drops leading to various problems. However unlike Lupus and other autoimmune diseases, which work with similar design, the rate of attack in this case was a lot faster. Since you were injured..." The doctor trailed.
"That small injury became worse as bleeding couldn't be stopped and it just exploded from there. Looks like someone has weaponized the autoimmune diseases concept," I finish dryly.
The doctor nods gravely and gives me a hard look.
"Technically you should have been dead Mr. Raizada. Given the deadliness of the poison, you should have died within twenty minutes of the attack." He looks at me calculatingly disbelief in his voice.
"I guess I was admitted to hospital fast enough to make it doctor," I reply gratefully.
The doctor chuckles mirthlessly.
"In this country pizza gets delivered faster than arrival of ambulance Mr. Raizada. It took almost forty five minutes for you to make it here and the woman who brought you here was distraught. She was the one who told us that you were poisoned." The doctor looked at me unblinking. I looked back keeping my face neutral. "It was strange that the poison that should have killed you was slowing down its activity with every passing moment."
"Maybe it was designed to be that way - sort of self-destruction mechanism after an initial scare and enough impact," I quip steering away from the implication the doctor was making.
He wouldn't let it go. "Or someone administered an antidote at the right time," he raised an eyebrow. I sigh deeply.
"I have no idea what you are on about doctor." I don't want a questionable incident in my report. "Can I get something to eat? I am kind of hungry." I divert his attention to more important problem at hand - me.
"I will arrange for soup and crackers." The doctor smiles and nods at me. "We will run tests tonight just in case and you should be good to go by tomorrow afternoon."
I nod and he leaves wordlessly and a thought makes me call him out. "Doctor?" He turns around and looks at me expectantly.
"What is the name of the woman who brought me here?" Under the sheets, my left hand crosses fingers.
The doctor ruffles the sheets of paper on his arm and comes up with an answer. "She gave her name to the paramedic in the ambulance - Khushi Gupta. You know her?" He asks.
My mouth goes dry and I nod anyway.
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