Chapter 31
CHAPTER 31
RANVIJAY
I saw Dheer lunge at Ayush Goel before he got to his feet, and I knew Veer had joined him. But I didn’t care. I couldn’t even register any of the chaos around me as our men clashed with the Goel thugs. It was as if the whole universe suddenly went on mute. Time and space froze. All I could see was Shivina’s body swaying with the force of the bullets that hit her.
She went down, but she still held the Durga Talvar upright, as if she still had a lot of fight left in her. I ran towards her, yelling her name, and I caught her just before she hit the ground. Her eyes were on me.
I picked her up as carefully as I could without jolting her and ran to the chopper.
“We’ll hold them off until the police get here. You get her to a hospital,” said Isha, as she aimed a mini rocket launcher at the army of thugs racing towards us.
She blew them to kingdom come with one shot and turned her attention to the other side, covering me as I placed Shivina on the seat and strapped her in carefully before I ordered the pilot to take off.
Her eyes closed even before we were airborne.
“Shivina, stay with me, damn it!” I yelled, but the sound of the rotors swallowed my words.
I didn’t know if she could hear me, but I held her hand tightly and prayed like I’d never prayed before to a deity I didn’t even believe in.
I had torn us apart. I had destroyed our relationship to keep her safe. And yet, she got caught in the crossfire as collateral damage. Isha was right. Ayush hadn’t spared her just because I wasn’t with her. And the last thing I’d said to her was that I wanted her out of my life.
I raised her head to whisper in her ear.
“Shivina, baby, if you can hear me… stay with me. Don’t go. Don’t leave me. I know I’ve been a big fool, and I know I should have said this sooner. I love you, baby. If you leave me now, I’ll be as good as dead. Please fight. Fight for your life. Fight for us because without you… there won’t be any me,” I begged, tears streaming down my face.
The pilot landed the chopper expertly in the hospital’s parking lot, and the ER team came racing out with a stretcher. They loaded Shivina onto the stretcher and wheeled her away. I held onto her hand stubbornly and kept pace with the stretcher.
A doctor began shooting orders right away.
“I can feel a pulse. Airway is clear. Start transfusion protocol. Six units of pRBCs stat, and prep her for OR. Sir, you need to wait outside. There’s nothing you can do. We’ll take it from here,” he said sternly.
It took three burly security guys to pry me away from Shivina, but it was a small hand that slipped into mine, which finally held me back.
Rajan had brought Zarna to the hospital. She looked tiny and lost as she saw her sister being wheeled away for emergency surgery.
“Is Di going to die?” she asked with the bleak acceptance of a little girl who had lost most of her family members.
“No! She will not die, Zarna. Because our Shivina is not a quitter,” I said fiercely, hugging her tightly. She just wept silently, her tears mingling with my own.
Within minutes, the waiting room was full of my friends, all looking bedraggled and gutted.
They took turns holding Zarna’s hand while I paced up and down the corridor, eager for any news from the OR. The surgery went on for more than five hours, and both Zarna and I refused to eat or drink anything until we heard from the doctor.
“This is my fault,” she whispered. “If I hadn’t gone with Kavya Baisa, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“You didn’t know this would happen, sweetie,” said Isha, holding her hand tightly.
“How could I have been so dumb? She said she felt bad about what had happened on the wedding day and wanted to make it up to Di. She said she wanted to buy her a nice wedding present and wanted my input.”
“You’re not dumb. She was just very cunning. Kavya played you, Zarna. It’s not your fault. You believed she’d had a change of heart because you’re a child and children aren’t as cynical as adults,” I said fiercely. “If anyone is to be blamed for this, it is I. If I hadn’t left you guys alone at the palace, Shivina wouldn’t be fighting for her life in there right now.”
“Are you going to divorce my sister?” asked Zarna starkly. “I’m not that much of a child. I know you guys were breaking up.”
“Never,” I declared. “You’ll have to pry me from her when I take my last breath.”
I sank to the ground next to Zarna and prayed for another chance to make it all up to my wonderful wife. Veer nudged me gently when the doctor came out, and I jumped to my feet in fear.
“Shivina made it through the surgery, but she’s still very critical,” he said gravely. “Three bullets entered and exited her body. The bullet wound to her shoulder wasn’t too bad, but the two bullet wounds to the pelvic area caused a lot of internal injuries and blood loss. Let’s see if she makes it through the next twenty-four hours.”
Thankfully, she pulled through the first twenty-four hours, and he allowed me to see her for five minutes.
She looked so small and frail in the hospital bed, with all those tubes and bandages.
I stroked her fingers softly and blew her a kiss.
“Hang in there, baby. For Zarna, if not for me. You can’t leave her all alone in the world. Fight back for her sake,” I urged.
It was a long, tough road to recovery, but ten days later, Shivina was moved into a private room. She was still in severe pain and extremely weak. But she was the most beautiful thing in the world, I thought tiredly. Because she was alive and fighting.
Zarna and I stayed in the hospital all day, and while she seemed happy to see her sister, Shivina only stared at me blankly as if she wondered why I was still there. She was too weak to talk but smiled at all her visitors. Except me.
I deserved it, I told myself. But I swore that I was going to prove to her that I loved her the way she deserved to be loved.
The day they started feeding her orally, she sat up in bed to drink some juice and finally spoke to Zarna and Ma. Her voice was hoarse and rusty from disuse, but she told them she loved them.
When she turned to me, I braced myself for a torrent of abuse. But she stared at me blankly for a minute before she spoke.
“I’m going to file for divorce as soon I’m discharged from the hospital. Please make the arrangements.”
Ma hustled Zarna out of the room to give us some privacy.
“Shivina, please,” I begged. “Just focus on getting better for now.”
“I am getting better,” she said matter-of-factly. “And I don’t have the strength or space in my life for drama. So let’s resolve this amicably.”
“I’ll do whatever you like. But you need to rest now.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she snapped, panting a little from the exertion of talking. “The doctor wants to speak to you before you leave.”
“I’ll speak to the doctor, but I’m not going anywhere,” I said stubbornly.
She closed her eyes, and I left her to rest. When I came out of the room, the doctor was waiting for me.
“Your Highness, I’m afraid there’s some bad news. As you know, two of the bullets hit Shivina in the pelvic area and caused a lot of internal damage.”
“Will Shivina be all right?” I asked as a wave of terror gripped me.
“Yes, she will be completely fine. But she will not be able to bear any children since we had to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes due to extensive tissue damage.”
“I don’t care! Will Shivina survive?”
“She will thrive, not just survive,” insisted the doctor. “But she has taken the news about not being able to bear children very badly. I have advised therapy, of course. Individual and couples therapy.”
When I returned to the room, Shivina was still pretending to be asleep.
“I know you’re awake, Shivina. We need to talk about what the doctor just told me.”
She opened her eyes, and I could see she was holding back tears.
“I’m sorry, baby,” I said, taking her hand gently.
“You don’t have to be sorry. This isn’t your problem. You’re free to start your family as soon as the divorce comes through,” she said coldly.
“There will be no divorce, Shivina Singh Rathore. You tricked me into marrying you, and now you’re stuck with me for life,” I said fiercely.
“I don’t need your pity, Your Highness,” she snarled.
“Good, because I’m not giving you any pity,” I snarled back.
She let out a bitter, mirthless laugh.
“The whole point of our marriage was for me to give you an heir. Now that it has been established that I cannot help propagate the Mirpur bloodline, why do you want to stay married to me? Get rid of me and have your heir with another woman.”
“But I don’t want a child if you’re not the mother,” I argued.
“Well, I can’t give you any kids,” she cried hoarsely.
“Shivina, you’ve been through major life-saving surgery, and I’m just happy you made it through. In the circumstances, I don’t think not being able to bear children naturally is the tragedy you think it is. As long as you’re alive and healthy, we can just adopt enough kids to make a whole cricket team. I don’t care how I have kids, as long as you’re the mother,” I said, trying to hold onto my patience.
“ Why? Why do you want me to be the mother of your children?” she asked, looking confused.
“Because I love you, you maddening, annoying, gorgeous woman,” I yelled. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, and I know I was all kinds of fool for telling you to leave me. But I was just trying to protect you from becoming collateral damage in this war. Instead, I fucked everything up and nearly lost you.”
She looked stunned and pale, and I wondered if I had given her a heart attack. It was just my luck to kill the woman I loved while telling her I loved her. I really was fate’s red-headed stepchild, I thought worriedly.
Then Shivina gave a loud gasp.
“You’re… not joking,” she said in wonder.
“Is this the face of a man who is joking?” I bit out, pointing a finger at my face.
She shook her head slowly.
“No. It’s the ravaged face of a tortured soul,” she said softly.
“What do you expect? The love of my life has been fighting for her life for the past two weeks, and while she smiles even at the ward boy who changes the flowers on her bedside table, she can’t spare a single smile for me,” I said plaintively.
Shivina gave me a tremulous smile, and it was as if the sun had come out again after a long time.
“Are you sure you’re not just feeling guilty about getting me shot?” she asked.
“I feel terribly guilty about that, but I knew I loved you way before you got shot, so there! Baby, if you had died on that operating table, you would have taken everything that mattered from my life. I would have lived on as a shell of a man, existing just for Zarna’s sake. Because I’d still take care of her. But I wouldn’t be alive.”
“This! This is what made me fall head over heels in love with you,” she said with a sob. “It wasn’t your smouldering good looks or your title. It was the way you accepted Zarna like she was your own little sister.”
“And I thought it was my skill in the bedroom that tipped the scale,” I teased, trying to hide how her words made me feel.
For the first time, it felt like life had purpose and joy. I pulled out my grandmother’s sapphire and diamond ring I had been carrying around for the past couple of weeks.
“Shivina Rathore, will you stay married to me?” I asked as I held it out. “And will you raise a cricket team full of kids with me?”
She nodded through a fresh torrent of tears and allowed me to slide the ring on her finger. It was very loose because she had lost a lot of weight, but I knew between Ma and I, we’d get her back to her fighting weight soon.
I bent and kissed Shivina gently, and her tears felt like a blessing against my skin. I rained kisses on her whole face. It felt like heaven to be able to do this again. Shivina grabbed my head and kissed me deeply, twirling her tongue against mine.
“Ranvijay Singh Rathore, get your tharki paws off that poor girl,” cried Isha from the door.
She and Diya looked suspiciously misty-eyed.
“I’m going to call security and tell them we have a couple of peeping toms,” I threatened. “Learn to knock before you enter a room.”
“Oh, please! How else will we get all the juicy gossip?” asked Diya as she came in with a large goody bag.
“What’s all this?” I asked sternly.
“The bare necessities,” she replied calmly as she pulled out a Kindle, a scented candle, a hair brush, some magazines, and a very intimidating make-up kit. I took that as my clue to leave them alone.
I kissed my wife again and left her friends to pamper her a bit.