Chapter 7 Simi
Seven
Simi
What do you mean, she’s gone?” I ask as Sheena runs up to Prem and me in the hospital cafeteria.
“I mean we went into her room, and she was no longer there,” Sheena snaps, as though I’m the one who’s run away from the hospital and not my sister.
“Did someone discharge her?” I’m already jogging toward Rupi’s room, my heart outracing me.
“Of course not.” Sheena pants on my heels.
I run up the wide staircase. A doctor dodges me to get out of my way and snaps something at me that I don’t hear. Doctors here tend to expect their path to clear before them like the parting ocean.
I ignore him and keep running, imagining Rupi yanking out her own IV and stumbling out of the room.
I imagine her passed out somewhere. She has critically serious bacterial food poisoning.
What if she goes into electrolyte shock?
Or worse, it induces cardiac arrest. It’s more common than people think.
My already raging panic doubles when we reach her floor and find two uniformed policemen standing there. “Did someone call the cops?”
“No,” Sheena says, studying my terrified face. “But maybe they can help.”
“No!” I squeak too loudly. The cops are here for someone else. I better calm down, or I’m going to do something stupid.
“No need to bother them,” Prem says quickly. “She’s probably just gone looking for a restroom?”
Sheena throws him an exasperated look. “Why didn’t she call a nurse to take her? How could you leave her alone like that?”
Prem and I exchange confused glances before it strikes us both at once: In Sheena’s head, Prem is Rupi’s fiancé.
Prem drops my hand like it’s turned hot. I hadn’t even realized we were holding hands.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say, patting his shoulder as though comforting him. “We’ll find her. Don’t worry.”
We pass the cops and make our way to Rupi’s room. The bed is disheveled, but the plastic bag with her clothes is still there.
Where are you, Rupi?
The deep sadness in her eyes when she told me to go away has been sitting on my heart like a boulder, but now it flattens me.
Every single word she said was true. Every single word I said was unfair.
“She’s got to be in the hospital somewhere,” Prem says.
My aching heart fills with gratitude. He’s helping me. Even when he has no idea what’s going on, he’s in my corner.
I am so incredibly tired of being alone.
Tears spring into my eyes. I swipe them away.
I want to be angry with her for the terror that’s racing through me.
She raised me. She was fearless every time she threw herself in front of me to protect me.
If not for whatever happened in California, she wouldn’t even have looked my way for fear of hurting me.
In return, I turned away from her.
For the past four years, I’ve ignored her existence to survive. But I’ve always known she’s there—a twin soul who knows me fully. I’ve always known that if I ever needed help, all it would take to summon her was to reach out.
She hasn’t had that. I’ve never given her that.
“We’ll find her,” Prem says, rubbing my back. Sheena can go to hell. Your sister’s fiancé can comfort you if he wants.
“Just give me a little time to find her,” I say to Sheena.
I don’t know what she sees in my face, but she nods.
I make my way back to the cafeteria. Prem follows me silently.
I go straight to the vending machine and start selecting things: nut bars, cheese-and-cracker sandwiches, chips, candy. I fill my hands with them, then grab an orange soda. It’s her favorite.
I take it to my Honda Civic, dump the snacks on the back seat, and get in the driver’s seat.
Prem gets in next to me.
“Are we running away?” he says.
I want to smile. I really do, but I can’t. “She doesn’t have money, so she’s walking.” When she’s sick and starving.
Memories of her feeding me and pretending she’d already eaten fill me.
“She can’t be moving too fast right now.
” Although I know that Rupi’s stubbornness gives her supernatural strength.
I try not to think about the time she broke open a door when one of our stepfathers locked us in a room, and the time she climbed out our balcony with me on her back when she wasn’t even twelve.
Fortunately, there’s only one road that leads out of the hospital. We drive past parking lots and doctor’s practices. At the end of the street, I turn right on a whim, my eyes scanning everything.
Prem is doing the same, but I can tell he’s filled with questions that he’s holding in.
“She couldn’t have walked more than two miles in this much time, even if she were perfectly healthy. In two miles we’ll turn around and go the other way.” Working things out logically is how I handle a crisis.
“She could have turned off into one of the side streets,” he says.
“She hasn’t.” I know she’ll stay on this street because she knows I will come looking for her. “Ask me what you want to ask me,” I say. Might as well get this out.
Before he can respond, his gaze catches on a slight figure walking along the sidewalk. I slow down, but it’s a young boy. He turns and glares at us, daring us to approach him. When we drive away, he flips us off.
“You told me your sister threatened to kill you,” Prem says. “Now we’re driving around, trying to find her.”
How did I forget about that conversation? But everything that happened before Rupi showed up seems ages ago. Prem bringing up marriage feels decades ago. Can I even remember the person I was when I sat at that table, stretching the truth?
I make a U-turn. “It wasn’t that simple.” There are advantages to being the kind of person who documents every fact she skews to save her ass. “She did threaten me, but she wasn’t actually going to take my life.”
He doesn’t point out how absurd I sound. He scans our surroundings, looking for my sister. “You also said she took your mother’s life.”
“No, I said she was responsible for our mother’s death.” We’re driving in the opposite direction now, and the setting sun is blinding me as I search the sidewalks. “That wasn’t a lie, but I might have spun the truth a little.”
For the first time since we met, I can’t find worshipful devotion in the way Prem is looking at me.
Let’s put him to the test. See how far he’ll go for love.
Caring for Ma was another thing Rupi got stuck doing for the both of us. “Rupi had to be the one to take our mother off life support. I wasn’t there to help.”
He reaches over and squeezes my hand. The worshipfulness in his eyes might have dimmed, but he’s here, and everything about him says that he wants to be.
For one second, I want to tell him everything. Pour it all out. But I have to focus on finding my sister.
Please, please let her be okay. Let me find her, and I’ll do everything to make sure she’s safe. Please.
I chant the word as we drive down the blessedly uncrowded street. The memory of running around our building shouting Anyone seen Rupi? Anyone seen my sister? comes back to me.
“I think I see her.” Prem sits up.
My gaze follows his, hope rising too fast. I struggle to manage it, even as the chant of please please please hits a crescendo in my head.
A figure in scrubs is sitting hunched up against the wall of a strip mall, her slight body curved into itself.
I swerve the car into the parking lot, grab the snacks, and run to her.
“Rupi.” I squat in front of her. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a disorienting volume of relief or guilt in my life. Then again, those are the two emotions that are never far when I’m anywhere near my sister.
It takes her a whole half minute to look up at me. “Go away.”
I shove the orange soda at her. “I got you Fanta.”
“Is it poisoned?” Her chest is heaving. She wouldn’t have dropped here unless she was out of every bit of energy. The scrubs she stole from the hospital are wet with sweat. She’s shaking.
She takes the bottle and gulps it down too fast. Then presses a palm against her sternum as though trying to keep from bringing it back up.
I hand her the snacks.
“I don’t need your charity.”
“You can pay for it. I’m keeping a list.”
She snatches the packet and tears it open. “Of course you’re going to charge your own sister for plastic snacks.”
“You’re not supposed to eat the packaging.”
She almost cracks a smile, but then she narrows her eyes. “Why are you here?”
“To take you back to the hospital.”
“You’re really going to hand your sister over to the authorities to save your job?”
“Don’t give me ideas.”
Finally, she huffs out a laugh.
“Can you please get in the car? We can figure out what to do next together.”
“No, thank you.”
“Rupi, I know that I’ve been missing. That I abandoned you. That you’ve sacrificed everything for me all my life. I get that. But can you trust me? I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.”
“Why do you want to help suddenly? What’s changed?”
I throw a look Prem’s way. His face is shuttered. “Can we talk about that later? Right now, we need to get you back inside the hospital before Sheena calls someone.”
“And then what? What happens when I can’t pay the bill and they call the authorities?”
“That’s not going to happen. The hospital treats people even when they don’t have paperwork, and they don’t report people for it.”
“Yes, but those people don’t look like they were born in a different country.” She runs her fingers through her hair and winces. There’s a splotch of dried blood on the back of her hand from the IV.
“You were in critical care. I need you to be checked out before they release you. We’ll figure everything else out.”
She’s looking at me a little differently now. It’s my day to change minds and influence people, I guess. “What happens when someone can’t pay their bill?”
“They hound you with collection calls. But we don’t have to worry about that. I’ll figure out a way to pay.” I do work three jobs. I have loans and rent, and this wasn’t in my budget spreadsheet, but my sister is sitting on pavement, and suddenly nothing else matters.