Chapter Twenty Seven
Asad had never been so scared in his life. Over the years, he'd been beaten, manipulated by a foster mom, abandoned and forgotten by his father. But this"this was far worse. He'd never had a woman of his own, and he'd never had to worry about anyone but himself. Samar and Rehaan had always been self-sufficient. If one of them had gotten sick, they'd sucked it up and yelled at anyone who dared approach. Only in the privacy of their rooms had they curled into balls of pain and rocked back and forth, moaning and softly begging for mercy. The manly way.
But by the time his friends returned home later in the evening, their laughing voices echoing all the way to the bedroom, Zoya had grown far worse. Asad had to carry her and anchor her against his chest, afraid she'd drown in the toilet otherwise.
"You're going to be okay," he told her. "You have to be okay."
She was too weak to respond.
When a few minutes passed without another incident, he carried her to bed and tucked her into the softness of the sheets. Her face was puffy from strain, her skin waxen and clammy. Locks of hair clung to her damp cheeks and neck. He dressed her in a clean T-shirt but it, too, stuck to her skin.
Priya and Khushi entered the room and flanked his sides.
"I heard she's been throwing up," Khushi asked looking worried.
"She'll be okay," he repeated. More to himself than to them.
Priya patted his arm. "Why don't change. Let us take care of Zoya for a while."
"No. I'm not leaving her side." This woman was the center of his world. He'd let her in, or maybe she'd burrowed her way inside. Either way, she belonged to him and with him, and damn it, he needed her to get better, and he needed to see her do it.
She'd been fine one moment and deathly ill the next. She wasn't feverish or exhibiting any other symptoms.
"Is there some kind of virus going around?" he asked, desperate for answers. He couldn't help her until he knew what was wrong.
"No, otherwise I would have gotten it long before now," Khushi said. "I always get sicker faster and far worse than everyone else. Could she have eaten too much junk food?"
A soft moan rose from Zoya"right before she vomited up a river of blood.
The crimson splatter on the sides of her mouth had to be the most horrifying sight he'd ever seen. Asad sprang into action. He scooped Zoya into his arms, her body utterly boneless, and shouldered his way into the hall. "Samar! Rehaan!"
Both friends came running.
"Help me get her to the emergency room."
Samar swiped up his car key, and Rehaan held open the front door, then the car door.
"Go to City Hospital." He wanted Zoya to have the best medical care, experts in every field at her disposal, and as much as he loved Ratibad Valley, he wasn't sure about the medical facilities.
As fast as they drove, they reached the city hospital in less than an hour. A true miracle, considering they didn't wreck or get pulled over.
Along the way, Rehaan made some calls, so, by the time they screeched to a halt at the curb, doctors and nurses were already outside, waiting for them.
Several people reached for Zoya at once. Asad almost couldn't bring himself to let her go. But he did it, his stomach seeming to twist around a knife. She was placed on a stretcher and wheeled away.
As Samar parked the car in the lot, Rehaan led Asad inside. They sat in the waiting room, and one hour after another passed, every second more agonizing than the last.
Asad checked with the receptionist at the front desk so many times she began to moan every time he approached. Priya and Khushi eventually arrived with food and bottles of water. Priya tried to get him to eat or drink something, but he refused, too unsettled. She tried to engage him in conversation, but there was only one person he cared to chat with right now, and she wasn't available.
Finally, a nurse came out to ask their entire group questions about her. What Zoya had eaten and drunk that day, what she had done. He answered as best he could, but when he asked questions of his own, the nurse rushed off without responding.
Another hour passed.
He couldn't lose Zoya. He just couldn't. He liked"no. Damn it, no. He loved her, and he wasn't going to hide from the truth any longer. He loved her with all his heart, all his mind and all his strength. He loved her, and he had come to depend on her. She was the best part of his life.
The only part that mattered anymore.
A burn of tears in the back of his eyes, He tangled his hands in his hair and tugged at the strands. Was it normal to be kept waiting this long? Damn it! Why the hell wouldn't anyone tell him what was going on?
He paced. He considered punching the walls. He tried to breathe as his imagination tormented him with a continuous replay of Zoya vomiting blood.
At long last the nurse returned to lead their group to a comfortable seating area away from the crowd. No matter the questions Asad threw at her, she replied with, "I'm sorry, but you'll have to ask Dr. Roy."
"I'd be happy to ask him. If he'd be kind enough to show his damn face."
She beat feet. Finally, a short, squat man with a no-nonsense gaze and a stern demeanor joined them, saving the building from the fury of Asad's fists.
"My apologies for the delay. I'm Dr. Roy," he said as he shook one hand after another. "I'd like to speak to Miss Faaroqui's next of kin."
"I'm her boyfriend," Asad said. "How is she? What's wrong with her?"
The doctor pursed his lips. "I'm sorry, but considering everything I've learned, I will only speak with immediate family."
"Why? What did you learn? Did something happen to her?" Asad nearly grabbed him by the shoulders to shake the answers out of him. "Is she going to be okay? You have to tell me. Please."
"Tell me. I'm the sister," Khushi said, pushing her way forward. "I'm Khushi Faaroqui."
Dr. Roy led her to the side, and Asad nearly burst out of his skin. He didn't have a right to know Zoya's condition because he wasn't her husband? Hell, no. Unacceptable. He would have joined the pair and demanded answers now, but Samar grabbed him by the arm, holding him in place.
"Let go, man. Now."
"Calm yourself." Samar motioned to the entrance. Two security guards stood in the doorway, and a forty something woman wearing a pantsuit entered, a notebook in her hand. A detective, guaranteed.
The blood drained from Asad's head. If the cops were involved...
Something bad had happened to Zoya.
Panic flooded him as he shook off Samar's hold and raced to Dr. Roy and Khushi. "She's okay. She has to be okay. You tell me anything else, and I will lose my head." His throat was closing, making breathing difficult. Dizziness hit him, and blackness winked over his vision. "She can't be...she just can't be... I need her!"
Gentle hands helped him into a chair. "Asad." Khushi's voice reached him through the length of a long, narrow tunnel. "You really have to shut your mouth and listen to me, okay. I know you're thinking the worst, but Zoya is alive."
The most profound sense of relief dulled the worst of the panic. Able to breathe again, the dizziness fading fast, he lifted his head and met Khushi's eyes brimming with concern. "Where is she? What's wrong with her? When can I see her? Why are the cops here?"
Khushi rubbed his back, saying, "Let me tackle this a question at a time, all right? They've admitted Zoya to intensive care. I'm sorry, but she isn't even close to stable. Dr. Roy said...he said she's slipped into a coma." Tears streaked down her cheeks. "You can't see her. Not yet. None of us can."
A coma. Zoya was in a coma. In intensive care.
But Khushi wasn't done. "You know eyedrops? What people use to make the red fade from their eyes? Well, the active ingredient is tetra something...something chloride. I'm can't remember the technical mumbo jumbo, I'm sorry, but whatever it is, it's great for the eyes but apparently ingesting it causes blood vessels to shrink and blood pressure to drop."
"Are you telling me Zoya drank eyedrops?" His tone was hard and harsh, cutting and loud, but he didn't attempt to moderate it, and he didn't apologize."
"Not willingly, I'm sure. Someone must have put the drops in her drink. The doctor said vomiting would have occured within minutes of ingestion, and since she threw up on the Ferris wheel, it would have happened right before you guys got on."
"No. Impossible." Before the Ferris wheel, she'd finished off her sweet tea"sweet tea he'd also ingested when he helped Priya set up her booth.
Zoya had nursed that damn cup for hours, savoring every sip, and she hadn't got sick. Neither had he.
Besides, who would do something like that?
"They've run tests," Khushi said, treading gently. "Plus, her symptoms fit. Vomiting occurs within minutes, and sometimes even seizures and a coma."
Seizures. Coma. There was that word again. Sometimes people fell into comas and never woke up.
His heart shriveled in his chest. "The symptoms fit other things."
"Yes, but they were able to question Zoya before she sank into...well, she mentioned her tea tasted funny. Tea doesn't go bad unless mold is starting to set up, so they ran tests for certain kinds of poison."
"You're Asad Ahmad Khan?"
In a daze, he glanced up at the newcomer. The detective. "Yes," he responded, his voice hollow.
"I'm Detective Sinha, and I'd like to chat with you."
She proceeded to ask him personal questions about his life, and about Zoya and her past, and about their relationship. He answered everything, leaving nothing out. Who cared about privacy at a time like this? Nothing mattered but saving Zoya's life. Nothing mattered but finding the one who'd poisoned her"and making him pay.
"Can you think of anyone who would want to do her harm?" the detective asked now.
He shook his head absently. "Everyone seemed to have gotten over their anger. They smiled and waved at her."
"Not everyone," Samar said. "Not Mahek and Chanchal."
The detective focused on him. So did Asad. The guy had done his rock-solid best to fly under the radar since being released from prison. As an ex-con with a history of violence, he was likely to be the first suspect in a case like this"Asad and Rehaan surely close seconds. The fact that he was speaking up meant more than Asad could articulate.
"That's right," Rehaan said. "Both Mahek and Chanchal hate Zoya. I was with Asad and Zoya when the two women approached. Soon after, a man named Akram drew our attention elsewhere. After that, I escorted Mahek and Chanchal away, but it wasn't long before they broke away from me to follow Asad and Zoya to the Ferris wheel, giggling about something. I'm sorry. I never thought""
Detective Sinha wrote something in her notepad and said, "They may not have intended this to happen. A lot of people have heard that putting eyedrops in someone's drink causes diarrhea, nothing more, but they are dead wrong. I'll speak with Ratibad Valley's police chief, and I'm sure he'll question Miss Mahek, Miss Chanchal and Mr. Akram. If you think of anything else he needs to know""
"I'm not Zoya's sister," Khushi burst out, as if she couldn't hold back the words any longer. "I just said I was to find out what was wrong with her. And I went twenty miles over the speed limit to get here. Don't arrest me."
Frowing, Detective Sinha handed everyone a card. "Dr. Roy, please call me when Miss Faaroqui wakes up."
After the detective left, the doctor adjusted the lapels of his lab coat. "You're all welcome to stay in here if you'd like, but visiting hours are currently over. They'll begin again tomorrow at eight, and at that time, we'll let you see Miss Faaroqui, one at a time." He strode from the room.
Just like that? Asad was supposed to stay away from the love of his life for an entire night? A woman who lay in a coma, hooked to machines? She could die before the sun rose. He could lose her. After everything, he could lose her, and it would have nothing to do with his past, or his issues, or not being enough for her.
Death didn't care about Asad's future happiness, or Zoya's young age and sweet heart. The bas***d took without prejudice and left the survivors to deal.
I can't deal.
Until Zoya, he'd had only half a life. He'd had friends and work and lots of sex, but no love. No real purpose. He'd hated change, and perhaps that was one of the reasons he'd resisted Zoya so fervently, and yet, where would he be without this change? Without her?
He stormed to the door, not sure what he would do. Leave not only the hospital but Ratibad Valley, hoping distance would ease the pain, make him forget? Drink himself into a coma? Sneak into her room? Hunt down Mahek, Chanchal and Akram"hurt them?
Arms banded around him, steel bands he would have to fight to break through. Rehaan and Samar had surrounded him, offering comfort.
He drew on their strength, and in a moment of startling clarity, he knew what he had to do. "I've got to go," he said, wrenching free of his friends.
"Asad, man. Don't leave," Samar said. "Stay. For her."
Rehaan grabbed his wrist. "If you're thinking about going after Mahek and Chanchal, don't. If you're locked behind bars""
"Don't you see?" He whirled on them, taking a moment to explain because he owed them and didn't want them to worry. "I've always expected the worst from everyone, so I've always cut and run. Except with you two, because I saw myself in you. But I see myself in her, too. I see her pain and her need to connect"needs I share"and I'm not going to hold anything back anymore. I'm not going to worry about the future, or what will or will not happen. I'm going to do what's right, what I should have done the moment I met Zoya."
Love Friendship Dating and Relationships
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