SS:Bongbala (Ch8 THE END pg 38) - Page 12

Chapter 4

"You buy off my girl and then, you tell me what's up? Na'an. This ain't gon' work like that. Let me tell ya tiger. I own her, you hear me?" The words came out of Madhu's mouth but, the tone, the anger, the meaning, was all Storm. Rishabh was taken aback by the suddenness of it all. The meek Bong damsel he'd married just weeks ago, to dig his way out of a PR mess, was verbally threatening him in a man's voice.

He firmly gripped her shoulders in his large hands, shaking her out of whatever nightmare she was living.

"Madhu, what is going on?"

The pain radiating from his bitten lip was now overwhelming. He wet his wound with his saliva and rubbed on the cut in vain. All this while, Yvette had been mumbling inaudibly, on and off. Storm had brought his friends- the No-Named Earworm and Nice Ghosty. Usually, the latter two were relatively calm, letting Storm do most of the talking. But today, each one was getting louder than the other. Almost as if they were on a mission to destroy the new bond growing between Rishabh and Madhubala. If Yvette came to like being the submissive wife- if she gave up on her love for Storm, they would lose power over her. She would become Madhubala and that wasn't going to happen under Storm's watch.

The deafening noises in her ears reduced Madhu to a slave to her own body, the shackles growing stronger with the decibels.

"I need to get to the hospital". Her mind was racing in paces, causing her breaths to come out shallow and stretched. Her eyeballs darted across the room, in frantic search of a cornered freedom, away from the voices that were eating at her sanity. Her gaze finally settled on the wooden closet where she kept her more elaborate costumes. She jumped out of the sofa she was seated in, and crashed on top of a pile of saris. Storm's voice was a lot lower, on the tail end of inaudible.

Rishabh sat across the room, pizza still in lap, dumbfounded. What was happening? Surely, there was a logical explanation to his wife going from shy to strange to assaulting to bonkers in a matter of minutes. Right, she need medical attention. Or, maybe a witch doctor? No, definitely a real doctor. She sounded manic.

"What do you need me to do?" He walked up to the closet door, treading carefully around an already agitated Madhu.

She swallowed the dryness in her throat, trying to gather her thoughts and gave whatever half decent reply she could, "take me to the psych ward, please. Touch my girl andIwillcutyou. Hearmebitch? Hurry!"

Rishabh jolted whatever anger was building up inside for his wife hurling insults at him every few minutes, in favour of action dictated by the urgency of the moment. He scooped her up and only settled once she was comfortably seated on the shotgun of his sedan. Well, as comfortably as she could be in the midst of an unidentified episode. Between prolonged bouts of talking gibberish, he would see a glimpse of Madhu in the woman. She would look down on the ground, helpless, embarrassed of herself. She'd started crying somewhere on their way to the hospital. Rishabh was worried he would crash the car caught in the chaos. Thankfully, they got to the emergency in one piece.

Madhu's sobs were now contained, she seemed to be aware of her state, relaying pertinent facts to the medics on site.

"What's going on sir?" One of the medics carried Madhu out of RK's hands and the other inquired the cause of the visit.

"I am not sure. She hasn't been acting okay. I think she may be hallucinating", RK was surprised by his own ability to deliver brief answers. But, now was not the time to get a pat on the back.

"I am schizoaffective. Episodes dormant for a decade now", Madhu relayed, twitching in the grip of the medics. RK had no idea what those words meant, some medical jargon that would have gone right over his head, even if he took on that Munnabhai MBBS spin off movie project he was offered last year. But, the medics sure took Madhu seriously. They were now rushing around her, going bananas, in the most professional, non-panicky freak out a film diva like him had ever seen. The hospital staff had brought over a wheelchair to transport Madhu into the examination rooms, whilst RK waited outside. This got him thinking what the happenings of the night meant. Schizo could mean schizophrenic. Then again, she would have said the word, and not a variation of it, if she had the disorder. It sounded serious. Could it be? He married a mad woman?

This was it! The end of life as he knew it. He would have to divorce her and the media would make a mess of it, because leaving her in this state would be equivalent of kicking out a spouse for having cancer. Then, he would be on every magazine's bad publicity cover. He would lose his film offers and his life would go down the drain- all because he left this mad woman.

The other side wasn't so sunny either. When he married Javett-or-Yvetee-or-whatever-the-hell-her-name-was, it was a winning deal for him. He got the house and he got the girl. Apparently, this woman was the epitome of a well rounded Bong girl. He was starting to see that, he'd envisioned a whole public acceptance campaign around her. She could be the key to changing his image from a bad boy to a family man. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. She turned out to be damaged goods, and that too broken in place that cannot be fixed- wrong in the head. Her Jew father had robbed him, not the other way around.