Prologue"I'm sorry Mr and Mrs. Bhalla, but what your daughter suffers from more than her physical wounds is the emotional scars that she has. Her wounds from the beatings she got will heal in a week, but the impact it's had on her mental health is going to be a long road for recovery."
"Will she be okay? Ever since we've brought her back, she been silent. She used to sing to herself when we were still in Australia, but now ever since we've come back, it's just been silence." The worried father exclaimed wanting his daughter to be the girl she was years back.
"Please doctor you have to help us, my daughter doesn't say a word. She just sits in her room, not a smile, not a complaint, not a word from her...I can't see her like this anymore. She's in pain..." The distressed mother cried to the woman in front of her begging for her daughter.
"She's a victim of child abuse, she's had her childhood taken from her. And now when she returns to a loving family, she won't adapt in one day. She wants your love, yet due to the circumstances won't admit it. For her, Nidhi is the woman who gave her everything and you two, the ones who gave her away. Even though she may want to, she will never ask you for anything especially any love. The trauma she's gone through would be hard for adults like yourself to handle, then she is a child. It will require time, therapy and a lot of patience to bring her back to normalcy."
"Then what should we do?!" He asked exasperated as his frustration and helplessness as a father got to him.
"For now, try to get her to talk. Maybe not you two since she's not in a position to be comfortable with the two of again, but someone else she might forget the bad memories with for a while. Someone who can give her the love she craves and at the same time help her recover from the trauma she's been through."
"Her siblings?" She told her husband and the doctor trying to follow the advice given.
"That's a start. Try getting her to open up, maybe vent her feelings somewhere because right now she's keeping it all in her and it's only bothering her which causes the physical health issues she faces. Until then, find her a psychiatrist who she can start seeing to help with the trauma she's gone through. That's going to be the start to getting you daughter back in the true sense."
Shaking the doctor's hand, they walked out of her cabin. They slowly took steps to the examination room their daughter was in, but neither of them had the courage to step into the room. They stood at the door, unshed tears threatening to fall as their trembling hands met. They looked through the window of the room, where their now teenage daughter stared at the ceiling unaware of the injection that was put in her arm. She didn't show pain, she didn't cry, she didn't even seem to hate anymore. She was just there, and it broke them seeing what they had caused their child to go through.
Unable to stop her tears knowing that she couldn't be the mother who would shield her daughter from dangers around her, she rested her head onto her husband's shoulder who had taken off his glasses trying to wipe off his tears when he saw the daughter who he was supposed to protect and love yet never spent even half her lifetime with.
They continued to look at their still daughter crying silently until slowly their child drifted off to sleep needing the rest to recover from her high fever. As her eyes closed, their free hands reached over to the window of the room trying to grasp onto the daughter they unwillingly had let go of 7 years back.
"Raman, we've wronged her..." She could only whisper to him, both keeping their eyes on the figure that slept peacefully for the first time since she had returned to them, the first time in 7 years.
"Ishita I hurt you, you remembered every word and kept on hurting inside for years. I got hurt, I kept blaming myself on the inside and hurting myself for years. But, she was the one who was hurt in every single way. My little baby was beaten, she was used...she was broken...and we couldn't do anything. We didn't even know that our innocent, happy daughter was made to suffer so much..."
He looked at his child who was a small happy and now turned into a beautiful young teenager who he wished he would have given the childhood that a child deserved. His wife thought not differently as she remembered the small girl who had once called her Ishima now so grown yet so damaged due to a monster who snatched her happiness, their happiness...
"I had Aliya and Mani who tried to cheer me up when I would remember you and Ruhi, those harsh words, the memories of that night. Aliya tried to make me feel like I wasn't a bad mother like I was told I was, you had Pihu and Adi who never let you break down and stayed with you as a reminder of Ruhi and I...but who did she have...who told my baby that she was loved? No one...she had Nidhi who constantly reminded her that we tried to give her away and she didn't matter to us...Why?! Why did our baby suffer because of us?"
She cried unable to hide her emotions anymore and he was sobbing moments later as they sit down on the bench outside the room regretting the one mistake they had made which cost their daughter 7 long years of her life and the future she had ahead of her. They cried thinking about how she lived with the fact that the two people she loved most left her to the mercy of a monster, they cried at the thought of their baby who the apple of everyone's eye being forced to be a money making machine, the daughter they spoiled rotten and never lack anything not being given what she deserved. They cried at their failure as parents. They cried until they couldn't any further...
And once the tears stopped falling as they had dried off leaving the two parents feeling misery and helpless as they couldn't even cry for their child anymore, they looked at each other. They were helpless, but they hadn't lost yet. He looked into his wife's eyes and even after 7 years he could read them in a moment; she was determined. Her eyes had tears, yet they had confidence. He needed that one look from her. He only nodded before that same emotions appeared in his eyes. They would bring her back, they would bring their daughter back...
Edited by smilesforever98 - 8 years ago
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