Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
AMAY
Amay leaned against the wall in the empty hospital corridor and stared at the shut door of Suite 402. He shouldn’t be here. He was at the end of a hellish twenty-hour shift and had just finished checking on a patient in ICU. Every bone in his body ached with exhaustion, and his mind felt as though it were wading through quicksand. He should head home, collapse into his bed and forget about the world for a few hours until it was time to get up and do this again.
But he hadn’t done that. Instead, he’d called the nurse in charge on this floor and asked her if Dhrithi had walked. She hadn’t.
And so, he’d found himself here, standing like a ghost in the hallway, trying to summon a rational excuse for why he still cared so much. But there was no reason—at least none he was ready to admit.
With a disgusted grunt, he pushed off the wall and opened the door to her suite, his eyes adjusting to the dark room, the only light coming from the softly beeping machine by her bedside. He looked over at the attender’s bed and was grateful to find it empty. And then finally, he looked at her.
She was looking right back at him.
For a heartbeat, neither of them moved. The weight of her gaze struck him like a current, dragging him under, water lapping over his head, cocooning them in a world that was only theirs. Whatever words he’d rehearsed on his way here dissolved, leaving nothing but silence and the sound of the machine’s soft beeping in the background.
And then, he exhaled and stepped closer.
“How are you feeling?” he asked roughly. It was the first time he’d spoken to her directly since she’d woken from surgery.
She swallowed hard, her eyes widening, the significance of the moment not lost on either of them.
“Better,” she whispered finally. “The pain has eased and my body doesn’t feel as hot and sensitive.”
Amay nodded. The antibiotics were working which meant they were on the right path.
“You didn’t walk,” he said, his eyes still caught in hers, a hundred unspoken words hovering in the air between them.
“I couldn’t.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and tried to push herself into a sitting position.
Amay surged forward, placing one hand on her raised shoulder and stopping her before she ended up opening up any partially healed stitches. Her gaze dropped to his hand, to where it touched her, seemingly riveted by the innocent contact.
And for a moment, the past settled over the present, a vintage overlay of emotions and memories.
He should stop touching her, he thought dimly even as his hand stayed right where it was. Slowly, ever so slowly, she raised a trembling hand with the cannula still attached to the back of her palm and placed it over his.
And Amay’s heart shuddered.
He pulled his hand away, ignoring the way her fingers tightened over his before letting go, and straightened. “You’ll hurt yourself,” he said gruffly. “Let me call someone to help you.”
“No.” Dhrithi stopped him with a quick shake of her head. “I’ll do it myself.”
Sighing, Amay reached for her again, one hand bracing her back and another holding on to her outstretched hand. With a gentleness he hadn’t known he possessed, Amay helped her into a sitting position, adjusting the cannula so the tube didn’t kink.
Dhrithi’s breathing was choppy and ragged as she struggled to get her body to do something as basic as sit without support. Amay sat down beside her, one arm going around her shoulders, silently offering his own for her to lean on.
He felt more than saw her head turn towards him as she looked at him, a question he couldn’t answer in her eyes. Slowly her shoulders relaxed and her head settled onto his shoulder, her breathing steadying. Amay didn’t move, he barely even breathed. To have Dhrithi beside him, after all these years was something out of a dream. To have her head resting on his shoulders was tipping into fantasy territory.
They sat in silence, in the dark room, neither willing to address or even acknowledge the ghosts of their past.
“Are you ready to walk?” he asked, forcing himself to break the moment. This was dangerous and neither of them could afford to dabble in it for too long.
Dhrithi groaned, her breath feathering over his collarbone and sending a shiver down his spine.
“No, Amay.”
“Yes, Dhrithi.” Her name on his lips felt both awkward and familiar. Unsettled, he got to his feet and took hold of her IV stand. “Come on, let’s go.”
With his free hand, he wrapped an arm around her waist and helped her to her feet. She grunted softly, staggering a little before finding her balance.
“I can’t do this,” she whimpered, taking a small, shuffling step forward.
“Sure you can,” he answered, slowly herding her forward. “Aren’t you the same girl who once climbed a tree to retrieve her scrunchie?”
“Aren’t you the same boy who threw my scrunchie into that tree and got it stuck there in the first place?” she asked, some of her old fire shining through in the small smile on her lips.
Amay dragged his gaze from her lips and stared straight ahead as they took another few shuffling steps. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. You shouldn’t make any accusations without proof.”
“I know what I know, Ams.”
The old nickname made his heart ache but he forced himself to ignore it. They needed to stop this walk down memory lane. It led nowhere.
“Where’s your mother?”
“Home.” Dhrithi grunted as she placed her right foot forward and leaned heavily on Amay’s bracing hand.
“The thread count on the hospital sheets don’t live up to her standards?”
Dhrithi laughed, an aborted huffing sound. “Nothing lives up to her standards. Not even her daughter.”
Silence fell again as they continued to hobble along the long, hospital corridor.
Until Dhrithi broke the quiet. “He’s dead,” she said, her voice flat and emotionless.
Amay kept walking, one arm wrapped around her, the other pulling her IV stand along, his gaze on the far wall at the end of the corridor. “He is,” he agreed.
“And you’re here.” She glanced up at him, her eyes raking over his profile.
“I am.” He turned to look at her, forever drawn to the pull of her gaze. The moment spun around them like a web of fine gold, infinitely precious and heartbreakingly rare.
“How did this happen, Amay? How did we end up here?”
And just like that the web tore, fragments drifting away on the pain of the past.
“You did this to us, Dhrithi. That’s how this happened.”