Chapter 26
Atharva, Iram, Fahad and Samar are being airlifted from Matayen. They will land at Sher-i-Kashmir and be transported to Paras Health.
Amaal ran.
She got into the first Innova she found and drove like she had never driven in her life. Durganag was not too far, Dalgate was within reach, the morning traffic did not slow her, and yet the speed felt crawling. She gripped the steering wheel tight.
Their train was hijacked and Iram was kidnapped. Atharva and Samar went after her.
Amaal raced the car through the hospital gate, scratching out her old Press card from her purse as the security ran to stop her. She flashed him the card and pointed to the KDP sticker of the car before parking it and running up the atrium. She walked straight to the Help Desk.
“Atharva Singh Kaul, Iram Haider, Sam…”
“Yes, they have been airlifted and sent to Emergency.” The nurse pointed towards the elevators, apparently aware of their VIP status. Amaal sprinted to the busy elevators and ran smack into Fahad.
“Fahad!” She gasped, holding onto his shoulders. “Oh my god! Are you ok? You are ok!”
“Fine…” he was panting. “Fine. I need to go to…” he pointed in some direction. “…accounting… go to first floor ICU.”
“Where are they?”
“Iram is still being looked at…” he panted, pressing a pass into her hand. “Atharva Bhai and Samar Bh… in ICU.”
An elevator pinged open and like a crazy psychopath she ran through the waiting crowd.
She got looks and murmurs but Amaal stared straight ahead.
The door pinged open and she ran again, crashing into the people waiting outside.
She didn’t care. The ICU’s Waiting Room was dense with people.
She meandered through them and ran to the Help Desk outside.
“Atharva Singh Kaul and Samar Dixit.” She flashed the ICU pass.
“Inside.” The nurse pointed to the door.
Amaal pushed it open and froze. The chilled air and heavy scent of antiseptic of the deserted alley arrested her feet.
She jerked her footwear off like everybody else’s there and ran, her feet slapping the floor.
Murmurs ensued around the corner and she turned it, frightened of finding what was there on the other side.
And then she saw him.
Standing, talking to a doctor.
Amaal ran faster than she ever had in her life, faster than she had through the hospital atrium and this alley.
Samar looked up, and he didn’t even have the time to catch her as she crashed into him, throwing her arms around his neck.
Amaal didn't know what would happen, what was accepted and what was not.
But a second later, his arms came around her and she found herself lifted into his shoulder.
She buried her face there and huffed, sobbing in relief, without tears.
Her body rattled, spitting it all out. And his arms kept tightening around her back, squeezing it all out.
“You are ok, you are ok, you are ok…” Her hands crossed and held the back of his head tight. His hands found the back of her head, and he nodded. Her lips puckered into whatever there was beneath them. Cloth, skin, him.
“You are fine.” She finally caught her breath.
“Hmm.”
Amaal grinned, having never heard a better word in her life.
She pulled away and found herself settled back on her feet.
And she saw into a Samar she had never seen.
His face was tired, gaunt, his eyes not meeting hers behind those specs.
Amaal caught his cheeks and lifted his face enough for his eyes to meet hers — “Where is Atharva? How is Iram?”
He remained still, silent, staring into her eyes. She smiled, her thumbs caressing the tired, warm skin of his cheeks. A swallow worked through his throat.
“ICU,” he croaked.
“What happened?”
Samar slowly stepped back, sliding his arms down from her until she had to slide hers from him.
“Iram has a concussion and a fracture…”
The door behind them opened, and he turned. Another doctor in scrubs walked out — “We have put him on bronchodilators. His airways will open up.”
“His heart?” Samar questioned.
“Sinus tachycardia is common. ECG still shows mild stress.”
“Test him for all attack markers. Troponin I and T, NT-proBNP and ABG with carboxyhemoglobin.”
“Dr. Dixit, we are working on him, we will take care of him. ABG results will come in the next twenty minutes…”
“He is the most susceptible to heart attacks right now, I don’t want to take a chance.”
“He is under observation but stable…”
“Put him in the ICU.”
“He is refusing.”
“It doesn’t work like that, I will talk to him.”
Amaal stepped back as Samar opened the sliding door and stormed inside. She blinked, finally taking a full breath and letting the last ten minutes seep in. Her eyes met Atharva’s doctor’s, and then she turned, smiling sheepishly at the doctor behind her, who had been in conversation with Samar.
“You are with Dr. Dixit?”
“Yes. How is Iram?”
“You will get an update from her Orthopaedic Surgeon. Please wait outside, we keep the ICU…”
Samar stormed out, enraged. “Keep a nurse inside his room. Don’t let him escape,” he pointed over his back, looking the doctor in the eye. Both the doctors were taken aback.
“Samar.” Amaal moved to his side. “Relax.”
His eyes met hers, and stuttered. His mouth was pressed tight, his jaw clicking.
“What happened?” She asked.
“He wants to get discharged,” Samar bit out. “No letting him go until all his tests come clean, not a single trace of CO. He will try to talk around it, but do not let him leave.”
“I think you need to sit down, Dr. Dixit.”
“Yes,” Amaal agreed with the doctor. “We will go outside and…”
“I am sitting right here.” Samar marched to the line of three chairs and plopped down on the first one. “I don’t trust him.”
Amaal nodded apologetically to the doctors, and they quietly filed down the alley and out the door. She heard the tiny click, and turned to the man sitting there, seething. When the silence of the alley finally embraced them, she saw Samar’s forehead fall into his hand.
She walked to him on quiet steps, and bent down on her haunches in front of him. His tired, heavy head lifted. And deathly red eyes stared at her from behind fine specs. Amaal smiled. Samar was ok. Atharva and Iram would also be ok. Everything else would be dealt with.
“There must be something good…” he muttered.
“What?”
He went silent. But his gaze remained on hers.
Amaal couldn’t see him like this again. Like he had been when talking about Chaturvedi.
She knitted her brows, asking him quietly what he meant.
But his head shook, the veins in his neck standing stiff as his head fell back into his palm.
And Amaal pushed forward, clutching the back of his head.
He did not resist. She patted it. He stayed still.
When nothing was said for a long moment, she asked — “What must be good, Samar?”
He pushed off with a gasp. His eyes were wide, shocked, staring unblinkingly into hers.
The opening and closing of the door jerked her to her feet.
Fahad turned the corner, files in hand. He handed them over to Samar and strode inside the door where Atharva was kept.
Amaal crossed her arms across her chest, looking at Samar.
He was alert now, turning pages on the hospital file.
“Where is Atharva Bhai?!” Fahad came running out.
“He is not there?” Samar shot to his feet. “Where the hell did he…”
“I’m here, don’t panic.” A hoarse voice came from the ICU door at the end of the alley. Amaal gasped. Atharva looked… destroyed. His skin was dark, sooty, moulded to his bones. His voice was not his. His hair was mussed. He wore a hospital scrub top over his pants.
“Fucking give me a break!” Samar pushed to him.
“I just went to see her…” he cleared his throat.
“Do not get up from your bed. Go take your oxygen.”
“I’m fine.”
“Fahad.”
Amaal looked on as Fahad grabbed Atharva by the bicep and pulled him towards the examination rooms. Their eyes met — Be with her, he mimed, tipping his chin to the ICU door. Amaal nodded.
“Sit down,” she told Samar.
“Don’t fucking tell me to sit down!” He raged.
“Keep your voice down,” she hissed, stepping into his chest. “This is an ICU.”
All the bluster left his mouth. Samar nodded, and took a seat on the chair.
“I am going to go see Iram now. Sit here quietly.”
He nodded. Amaal walked to the door, sanitised her hands at the station outside and pushed it open.
Samar watched her go.
Sitting here outside the ICU, with Atharva not understanding the repercussions of his smoke poisoning and reports on Iram’s sexual battery still not out, he found himself reduced to the smallest pest in the universe.
What had he been thinking? What part of him had been operating?
How could he have let this happen? How could he not foresee this possibility?
How was he so blind? Whatever that girl was, whoever her father was, however she had trapped Atharva — she did not deserve this.
Samar stared blindly at the half-open door of the ICU.
He was not this man. He had not been this man.
His harm was towards himself, not the world.
He had wanted Iram Haider away, not brutalised.
He was spiralling in this need for something to slake the thirst of his revenge, but the repercussions of that were his.
Only his. Not somebody else’s. Not even Iram Haider’s. And definitely not Atharva’s.
Atharva had hidden from him, pushed him into a corner, taken him off the equation, chosen Adil, not trusted him.
Samar hated all of it with a vengeance. And even now, even in Atharva’s pain that made him guilty, a small, cruel part of him revelled.
How was he guilty and glad all at once? Why was he glad that Atharva was suffering but also needed Atharva to be ok? What was this madness?
Let Atharva live, but let him know how it feels! Some sick, deranged part of him screamed.
“Iram Haider?” Amaal’s soft voice penetrated his ears. And his vision cleared. He focused on the back of her head. She stood at the nurse’s station inside. The ICU door pulled close on its own behind her, cutting her voice and the sliver of her shadow.
The echo of her voice, though, remained.
Samar breathed in.
He stared at the closed door.
All the bad, all the mad, all the sad inside him rose from his emptiness.
In that emptiness, where nothing had been able to take root, Amaal’s voice now remained.
It refused to go.
You are ok.
The door was shut between them, but she was on the other side.
She was.
Sit here quietly.
There must be something good inside him, that she had come running into his arms. And stayed.