Chapter 1 #3
I close my eyes, take a fortifying breath, and swipe to accept the call, holding the phone up.
“Arjun, darling!”
My mother's voice fills the office, sharp, polished, and cheerful.
Blinding, golden sunlight overwhelms the screen.
She is sitting on the sprawling veranda of our family's estate in Rajasthan, India, framed by vibrant pink bougainvillea.
She is wearing a vaguely expensive-looking sea-foam green silk sari, with a massive diamond catching the light on her finger as she holds a delicate bone-china teacup.
The contrast between her sun-drenched, aristocratic paradise and my bleak, sleet-battered Toronto reality is staggering.
“Hello, Mother,” I say, keeping my tone neutral. “I’m at the hospital; I really only have a minute...”
“Nonsense, I tracked your surgical schedule through the online portal. You're done for the day,” she cuts me off smoothly, taking a delicate sip of her tea. In the background, I can hear the faint thwack of a croquet mallet and the polite applause of my British-Indian cousins. “I’m calling with wonderful, wonderful news, darling. Dev is flying in from London on Tuesday.”
My stomach drops out from under me. “Dev?”
“Dr. Dev, darling. The cardiac surgeon? The one with the spectacular cheekbones and the massive flat in Kensington? Do try to keep up, Arjun.” She smiles, a terrifying expression that usually precedes a tactical family strike.
“I’ve spoken to the family astrologer. He ran the numbers, and your charts are magnificently compatible.
He says the stars are practically demanding a union.
I expect you here by Wednesday. We will have a small, informal engagement dinner.
Just seventy or eighty close family members to celebrate. ”
“Mother, stop,” I say, rubbing my temples where a massive headache is rapidly blooming. “I am not marrying Dev. I've told you this. We had a single dinner in London three years ago, and we spent the entire time arguing over the efficacy of beta-blockers versus surgical intervention.”
“A shared passion for medicine! It's deeply romantic,” she counters seamlessly.
“Arjun.” Her voice loses its cheerful, lilting quality, dropping into the icy, aristocratic tone that makes even the toughest, most resilient aunties in our family tremble.
“You are thirty-three years old. You haven't brought a man home since your residency. You spend one hundred hours a week at that freezing Canadian hospital.”
“I am saving children, Mother. It requires focus.”
“You are hiding,” she corrects ruthlessly.
“If I leave it to you, you are going to marry your scalpels and die alone in a sterile room. Dev is perfect for you. He is handsome, he is from an impeccable family lineage, he understands our world, and most importantly, he is even willing to relocate to Toronto for a year to sort out the visa paperwork after the ceremony. It is decided.”
I snap, my renowned composure finally cracking, “It has not been decided!” The walls of my office feel like they are actively shrinking, closing in on me.
Between Gabriel telling me I am a repressed tragedy and my mother aggressively planning my arranged marriage across the globe, I feel like I am suffocating.
“Be reasonable, darling. Daadi has already approved the caterer,” she says, as if picking out appetizers is the binding legal contract of matrimony.
I turn away from the phone, looking desperately through the glass of my interior window, down into the ER below. Down there, amidst the bright primary colours and the turmoil of the afternoon shift, is Dr. Casey Welling.
Casey is a paediatric generalist, the frontline defence of the emergency room, and he is the undisputed, universally adored golden boy of the floor.
He is massive, standing six-foot-three with broad, sweeping shoulders and the sturdy build of a lifelong Canadian hockey player.
His chest and muscular thighs strain against his scrubs.
His blonde curls are a chaotic, unruly mess spilling out from beneath his surgical cap.
Right now, he is squatting in the middle of a suturing bay next to a crying six-year-old boy with a split eyebrow.
There's nothing about his look that suggests a sterile or detached environment.
His presence feels grounded in the here and now.
He is effortlessly applying purple Dermabond across the laceration with steady hands while delivering a booming, chest-deep laugh that echoes all the way up to my office window.
He finishes the glue, pulls a brightly coloured sticker out from behind the child's ear like a magician, and slaps a holographic T-Rex right onto the kid's hospital gown.
The child instantly stops crying. He giggles, his face lighting up. Casey stands up, his own face radiant, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners as he high-fives the profoundly relieved mother standing nearby.
He is exactly the kind of warmth Gabriel was just yelling at me about. He is walking, talking sunshine. And for the last two years, I have harboured a secret, fiercely guarded, and humiliating crush on him.
My chest tightens so painfully I can barely breathe. It is a reckless and uncharacteristic impulse. I am a man of science, of logic, of meticulously planned surgical routes. But right now, I am fuelled by pure exhaustion, my mentor's biting words, and the desperate need to escape my mother's plans.
I look at the phone screen. My mother is tapping her manicured fingernails against her teacup, waiting for my surrender.
“I can't marry Dev,” I blurt out, my voice slightly breathless. My gaze is wholly fixed on Casey, two floors below as he adjusts his ridiculous dinosaur-print scrubs.
“And why on earth not?” my mother demands, her exquisitely drawn eyebrows pulling together in a sharp frown.
I swallow hard. My throat is sandpaper-dry, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. Once I say it, there is no taking it back. It will require a level of deception I am unqualified for.
“Because,” I say, my voice steadying with sudden resolve, “I'm already engaged.”