Chapter 15
Anatomical Observation
Arjun
Iam not jealous.
I want to be very clear about this, because clarity is the foundation of reasoning and I am, above all things, a rational reasoner.
What I am experiencing is not jealousy. Jealousy is a foolish emotional response rooted in possessiveness and insecurity, and I am neither possessive nor insecure.
I am a neurosurgeon. I have been published in The Lancet.
I have separated conjoined cranial vasculature in a sixteen-hour surgery that was later cited in three international textbooks. I do not experience jealousy.
What I am experiencing is a heightened state of situational awareness regarding a potential threat to our operational cover.
That is all.
The threat in question is currently sitting at the breakfast table wearing an unbuttoned white linen shirt, eating a mango with his fingers, and telling a story about polo in Argentina that has made Casey laugh four times in the last six minutes.
I have counted. I am counting because I am conducting a behavioural analysis of the threat’s social manipulation tactics, not because the sound of Casey laughing at someone else’s stories is producing a sensation in my chest that I would describe, clinically, as a localized inflammatory response in the pericardial region.
Rohan Mathur has been at the estate for less than twenty-four hours, and in that time, he has accomplished the following: he has charmed Kavita into giving him her private samosa recipe (a state secret she has guarded for thirty years), he has made Daadi laugh twice (twice, which in Daadi’s economy of laughter is approximately equivalent to a standing ovation at the Royal Albert Hall), he has played an impromptu cricket match with three of the household staff’s children in the courtyard and let them win, and he has touched Casey’s arm eleven times.
Eleven times.
I know this because I have been observing. Not watching. Observing. There is a distinction. Watching implies emotional investment. Observing is a neutral, data-driven process by which a trained medical professional catalogues environmental variables for the purposes of risk assessment.
Touch one: a handshake that lasted two seconds too long at their initial introduction.
Rohan’s fingers wrapped around Casey’s hand, and I watched, and the thing I was not thinking was: I know what that hand feels like.
I know the callouses on the palm and the scar on the index finger and the specific, overwhelming warmth of it, and you are touching it as if you have any right to know these things. You do not.
Touch two: a palm placed briefly on Casey’s shoulder while guiding him to a chair at dinner.
The shoulder that I wake up pressed against every morning.
The shoulder that smells of vetiver and cedar and sleep-warm skin, that is broad enough to block a doorway and gentle enough to hold a sleeping surgeon without waking him.
Rohan’s hand lightly caressed it for approximately one-point-five seconds. I catalogued each one.
Touches three through five: a series of casual, seemingly incidental contacts during the post-dinner gathering in the drawing room, including a brush of the knuckles against Casey’s forearm while reaching for a drink that I am ninety-seven percent certain was manufactured.
Casey’s forearms are covered in fine golden hair that catches the light.
I know this because I have spent two years not looking at Casey’s forearms during case consultations and I am aware of the precise colour and texture of the hair on them in the way that a person is aware of a thing they have been not looking at with sustained, dedicated, comprehensive focus.
Touch six: adjusting a non-existent crease on Casey’s collar while complimenting his shirt.
His collar. The collar that sits against the base of his throat, against the warm, tanned skin where his pulse is visible when he laughs, the skin I was pressed against at four o’clock this morning when my body decided that the appropriate sleeping position was face-first into the hollow of his neck.
Rohan’s fingers touched Casey’s collar and I nearly bit through the inside of my cheek, and the fury that detonated behind my sternum was not about the collar, it was about the fact that Rohan’s fingers were where my face had been six hours ago and the territorial response this produced was so primal, so far below the threshold of anything I can justify, that I frightened myself.
Touches seven through ten: assorted arm contacts during this morning’s breakfast, each one positioned slightly higher than the last, migrating from wrist to forearm to bicep with the methodical territorial escalation of a man planting flags.
Casey’s bicep, when flexed, has a circumference that I have estimated at approximately forty-three centimetres, which is not a measurement I have taken deliberately but which my spatial awareness has provided without being asked, in the same way that it provides the dimensions of a surgical field.
The comparison to a surgical field is clinical and appropriate.
The fact that I want to put my hands on it is neither.
Touch eleven: the one happening right now, where Rohan has placed his hand on Casey’s shoulder while leaning across him to reach the fruit bowl, a manoeuvre that requires him to press his chest approximately four inches from Casey’s face, and which could have been avoided if Rohan had simply asked someone to pass the mangoes like a normal human being instead of using tropical fruit as a pretext for physical contact.
I am not jealous. I am appalled at the lack of spatial boundaries.
I am also experiencing a blood pressure reading that would concern a cardiologist and a comprehensive, full-body awareness of every square inch of Casey Welling that Rohan Mathur has touched, because each of those square inches is territory I have been mapping in my sleep for days, territory my hands have memorized without permission, territory that I have no claim to and no right to and that I want, with a ferocity that is burning a hole through every structure I have ever built, to be mine.
“You should try the Alphonso,” Rohan is saying, holding up a slice of mango that is, I will grudgingly concede, a perfect specimen.
He offers it directly to Casey, holding it at a height that requires Casey to either take it from his fingers or lean forward and eat it from his hand, and the ambiguity is so deliberate, so perfectly calibrated, that I have to set down my teacup before I crack the bone china.
Casey takes it from Rohan’s fingers. With his own fingers. Like a civilized person. Something in my chest cavity unclenches by approximately seven percent.
“That’s incredible,” Casey says, and the genuine pleasure on his face is exactly the same expression he made when he tasted the Laal Maas in the kitchen at three in the morning, the expression I catalogued in extensive sensory detail while pretending to examine the spice wall.
It is the expression that involves his eyes closing and his lips parting and a low sound that originates somewhere deep in his chest and that I am absolutely not thinking about right now at this breakfast table.
“Isn’t it?” Rohan says, and his voice drops into that warm, intimate register that he deploys with practised ease.
“The Alphonso is the king of mangoes. Extraordinarily sweet. Incredibly juicy.” He leans slightly closer to Casey.
“Best enjoyed slowly. With the hands. You really have to get them messy.”
I stand up.
I stand up so abruptly that my chair scrapes against the marble floor with a sound that makes Priya, at the far end of the table, look up from her phone with the sharp, interested expression of a woman who has just heard the opening note of a symphony she’s been waiting for.
“I have calls to make,” I announce to no one in particular. My voice is perfectly steady. My posture is perfectly controlled. My face is perfectly composed. My ears are, I suspect, approximately the colour of a fire engine, but I am choosing to attribute this to the temperature of the chai.
“At eight-thirty in the morning?” Rohan asks, his dark eyes dancing with an amusement so thorough, so clearly delighted, that I am forced to reconsider my position on justifiable homicide.
“Time zones,” I say, which is not an answer, and I leave the breakfast table with the measured, dignified stride of a man who is absolutely, categorically not fleeing from a mango-based seduction attempt.
I make it to the corridor. I make it approximately fifteen metres down the corridor before the footsteps catch up.
“Arjun.”
Not Casey. Priya.
“I have calls, Priya.”
“You don’t have calls. You’re on vacation, visiting your family, or have you forgotten? Your hospital is eight hours behind and your patients are asleep. Stop walking.”
I stop walking. I turn around. My sister is standing in the corridor with her arms crossed and her head tilted and an expression on her face that I have known and feared since she was five years old and caught me hiding Brussels sprouts in a potted plant.
“You’re spiralling,” she says.
“I am not spiralling. I am making a diplomatic withdrawal from a social situation that was compromising my operational focus.”
“You’re spiralling because Rohan offered your fiancé a mango, and you nearly shattered a teacup.”
“The teacup was poorly manufactured. The handle had an inherent weakness.”
“Arjun.” She takes a step closer. Her green eyes are sharp, intelligent, and mercilessly devoid of patience. “I have been watching you, and I need to tell you something, and I need you to hear it without deflecting into surgical metaphors or pretending you have phone calls to make.”
“I genuinely have calls to—”