Chapter 45
Samar glanced down at the stuffing.
“Don’t give it your rude looks, it can’t feel anything.”
“This is ridiculous. I never wear seatbelts.”
“You will, now.”
Samar did not have the energy or the heart to tell her his dark thought — that if he had worn a seatbelt on that day, the ejection would have been that much later.
“You are driving my Innova like you own it.” She was doing a phenomenal job of handling a car she had vowed to never touch.
“Who has been taking it for rounds all these months?” She sassed. “Your engine would have died on you otherwise.”
I would have died too,
but anyway.
She turned into Nehru Nagar and his building came into view. The bright morning sun and the life on the road outside felt surreal. She parked and got out just as he undid his seat belt and opened the door. The smell of dust, of sun, of the air was… surprisingly good.
“Come on.” She held her hand out, like she was ready to clasp his.
Samar glanced at it and then at her face, eye squinting in the sun, sunglasses pushed into her hair, red, round mouth pouting in the heat and popping a smidge of that dimple.
Samar was above many things, but humbled enough through his last weeks of physiotherapy to accept that he couldn’t walk without support.
He clapped his hand upon hers.
“Good boy.”
A bark burst out of his mouth and she broke into a grin. Samar grabbed the handle over him with his other hand and got down, the compression clothes covering his entire body feeling like a tight vice.
“Bags.” He began to open the door behind him when she snapped it shut with her free hand.
“I’ll come back for them later.”
He glanced at the reports, scans, his own hospital bag, the pack of compression clothes, all overflowing on the backseat.
“I told you we should have called Adil.”
“Adil is a minister.”
“He is also Adil.” And he had offered to come drive him. But Samar knew it would have been a logistical nightmare.
“Stop distrusting my abilities and just walk.” She commanded.
“I don’t distrust your abilities, Amaal.”
“Then walk.”
Samar sighed, accepting his plight for now.
He curved one arm around her shoulders and took as much of his own weight as he could while he limped.
The first few steps were the hardest. As momentum built and his muscles loosened, he was able to go easier, and even lose the support if the ground was flat and a handle in sight.
She pushed the gate open and they stepped in, the interiors cool and drafty.
The building was quiet, smelling of wet mud.
He looked at the pots of plants. They had been recently watered, leaving the fresh scent in the air.
The scent of Amaal. Samar turned his head discreetly and inhaled.
Lilies. Not sterilisation anymore. Amaal.
“You creep.” She deadpanned. Samar smiled into her hair and did it again.
“You have stairs to climb, Daaxsaab, save your energy.”
His nose dived into her hair, unable to stop the snort. And his next big test came and stood in front of him. The stairs.
She bolstered up and clasped her fingers with his over her shoulder — “Let’s go.”
Samar didn’t have to count it as a test because she kept huffing and puffing every three steps, making him laugh, supplying sound effects to his panting, and then, when they had cleared the first landing, breaking into applause.
“You annoy me and amuse me in equal measure.” He managed, feeling the entire surface area of his skin stretch taut.
“You do the former to me.”
“I annoy you?” He turned the landing and they began ascending again, making this ordeal into something else. Something good.
“Do I need to cite the last two months?”
“Since you stayed, I assumed you enjoyed it.”
She rolled her eyes, making him smile. “Slow, slow,” he coughed.
“We are here.” She held him the last three steps and then she left him to navigate the corridor on his own. Samar slapped one hand on the wall, lingering there to catch his breath as she rushed ahead and unlocked the door.
“Quick, I’ll close it on the count of three.”
Samar leaned on the wall. “Go ahead.”
“One,” she stepped inside his flat. “Two, three.” She shut the door.
His eyes widened. He stood there, knowing she would open it.
A minute passed. She didn’t. Two minutes.
She didn’t. Samar didn’t want to break yet but his limbs were getting tired of holding his body up and she was clearly not showing mercy.
Was this his karma of the last two months coming to bite him?
He pushed off the wall and limped to his door. Samar latched onto the grille with one hand and depressed the bell with the other. She didn’t open the door immediately. And when she did, she was drinking water from a glass.
“Oh hullo, fancy seeing you here, sir.” She smiled, turning the latch and opening the grille. Samar glared at her, holding the frame of the door to step inside before her hand caught his and helped him in.
“You frustrate me to no end.” He walked inside his house, the lobby bright with the sun. He frowned. This lobby had always been dark.
“How does waiting feel?” She asked, taking his arm around her shoulder again and walking him to the hall.
There he saw it, why his lobby was now bright.
She had moved the only mirror stand of the house to a place where it reflected the sunshine to the lobby, brightening up the hall too.
She had done a number of changes in the hall without doing anything but moving stuff around.
The furniture now looked set, as if in their right corners and spaces.
“Sit.” She began to push him to the sofa but he resisted, moving to the window and standing with his hands on the sill.
“I’ll be back.” She left his arms and was gone. Samar stood there, looking out of the window of a flat that he had spent a total of thirty days in. It had been rented for a year, but he had not stayed here for more than a day or two at once on each trip to Kashmir.
Now, he thought, seeing the crows jumping on electricity poles and tree branches, he was here for the foreseeable future.
How long that would be yet, he didn’t know.
What he would do after this never-ending break, he didn’t know.
How able he would be to take up the work, the travel, the gruelling schedules, he didn’t know.
His legs were already shuddering after standing for a sum total of two minutes.
The noise at the door made him turn. Amaal walked in, bearing all his belongings from the hospital.
She set it on the small dining table and raised her eyes to his.
The sun glinted off her, illuminating the anomaly in his routine life.
Amaal took one step towards him, two steps, three steps and then she kept coming like a train, rattling until her head was buried in his chest. Samar circled his arms around her, slower than she had come, creaking, taking his time winding them around her shoulders.
“I am not crying or anything, but let me just stay here like this, please,” she whispered into his chest.
“Hmm.”
“We can sit.”
“Stay.”
He felt her arms begin to pull out from between them but then they stopped. Samar took them and circled them around his waist. Her palms did not touch his back.
“It’s ok,” he murmured. “It’s all numb.”
Tentatively, slowly, trailing and moving away, then touching again, her palms cupped his back. Her head moved on his chest, burying deep enough that he could feel its contours even through the numb skin and the three layers of clothing. Samar tightened his arms around her, as much as he could.
And they stayed.
————————————————————
That evening, he ate a terrible bowl of rajma made by Amaal.
Samar swallowed every bite, sitting through the one-sided conversation that she valiantly carried forward.
It wasn’t as if he was averse to talking.
He had never talked more than he had to her and that hadn’t changed after this ordeal.
It was just that the thought of the night, of lying down, of being in a real bed in a real home, his home, after two months, was jarring.
More jarring was taking off his compression clothes and being open to her.
“Amaal.” He stopped her mid-rant about something related to Qureshi and Sarah.
“Hmm?” She looked up from spooning her rice.
“I am still serious, you can go home and come back. Don’t disturb your routine, or whatever little is left of it.”
“I’m fine here. Got my bag too. See?” She pointed to the corner of the shoe cabinet.
“Dr. Pir suggested a male nurse, and I said no. But if it’s going to get too much for you then I am not against doing that…”
“You don’t want me here.” She stated it, but her face had already fallen.
“Ama…”
“Say it, say you don’t.” She challenged.
“I don’t!”
She startled.
“Don’t cry,” he bit out, not able to soften himself because if he did, she wouldn’t leave.
“I will make you cry!” She shot to her feet, tears streaming down her face and eyes spitting fire at him.
“Sit down.”
“Fuck you!” She pushed off the table and stormed out of the hall. “Clean everything up!”
A second passed where he cursed himself a hundred times. She had not left, and now she was angry at him. What kind of hell was this!
“And!” She stalked back in, a kitchen cloth in hand. “Call that male nurse and keep him in your room. I am taking the hall. Don’t fucking dare come out here.” She hurled the cloth at him and stormed away again.
Samar stared at the cloth, defeated.
He let a few minutes pass. And then, he decided to face the firing squad.
He got up and took a second to gain balance.
Once he was sure, he set out one hand on the wall and limped his way down the hall and the corridor.
He glanced into the bedroom. It was empty.
Of course, she wouldn’t venture there even at gunpoint now.
He ought to have been grateful for the reprieve but his chest burned. Was it her rajma?