Chapter 47
PRASHANT
SIX MONTHS LATER
MILITARY HOSPITAL – DELHI
They told me I was lucky. Lucky to be alive. Lucky to have survived. Lucky that the bullets hadn’t torn deeper, that the infection hadn’t spread beyond the cracked ribs and shredded muscle.
But I didn’t feel lucky. Not even for a moment.
When I first opened my eyes in the sterile white walls of the Army Research and Referral Hospital in Delhi, the world felt too silent.
The sheets were stiff with antiseptic. The air smelled of phenyl, of medicine, of a controlled environment where chaos had been locked outside.
It was the exact opposite of the pit I had lived in for months beyond the LOC.
And yet I flinched at every sudden sound. When a door slamming, when Boots strikes the polished floor. A fluorescent tube flickering overhead. Every one of them felt like trigger, a whip cracking against the scars inside me.
The doctors worked tirelessly on my body.
They reconstructed my shoulder, realigned my ribs, stitched my wounds with threads finer than hair.
It took weeks before I could sit upright without collapsing into the bedframe like a sack of broken bones.
Six months before I could walk the hospital corridors, dragging my IV pole like a reluctant shadow.
But no one had the cure for the nightmares.
Every night, I returned back into the cell, back into the stench of gasoline water, the screaming voices, the shadowy figures pressing boots into my ribs.
I woke drenched in sweat, gasping, my heart racing as if the guards were still outside my door.
Nurses rushed in, their faces kind, but to me, every silhouette in the dark was an enemy.
I had forgotten what laughter sounded like, even my own.
It was during one of those nights, when sleep refused to come and the silence had turned unbearable, that I met her.
Dr. Riddhima Kashyap.
She didn’t enter like the others. There were no clattering trays, no brisk footsteps, no clinical authority that reminded me of the precision with which I’d once followed orders.
She came in quietly, carrying no stethoscope, no clipboard, just a small notebook in her hand and her eyes that had already seen too many broken men trying to become whole again.
“You don’t have to talk,” she said the first night when she sat next to my bed. “Not until you want to.”
I didn’t reply. I couldn’t because my throat was a desert of unsaid words, and trust was a currency I no longer traded.
So she sat in the chair beside my bed silently and breathed the same air as me, but not intruding. I noticed sometimes she would write something in her notebook, sometimes she would simply sit, as though keeping watch over a soldier who no longer knew how to stand guard over himself.
Days blurred into weeks with her. She returned, always at the same hour, between the long shadows of evening and the false calm of midnight. I began to wait for her without admitting it to myself.
It started with questions.
“Did you eat?”
“Did you sleep?”
“Do you want the window open?”
I gave her nods, shakes of my head. And then, one evening, the words came out, brittle and unwilling, but real.
“It was a nightmare.”
She looked at me, not with pity, but with understanding. “Of course. That’s your mind replaying the trauma, hoping to finish what was never finished. You survived the torture, but your brain hasn’t caught up yet.”
Her voice was calm, steady, like the low murmur of a river that refused to dry up. She never forced me to share. She simply waited, patient, steady, until I began to pour pieces of myself onto the cold air between us.
I told her about the cell. About the screams. About the photographs they used to show me. About how they whispered lies into my ears, planting doubts that had taken root inside my soul like weeds.
She listened, didn’t interrupt, didn’t correct, didn’t flinch at the ugliness. Only when I fell silent did she speak.
“What they did wasn’t just cruelty,” she said. “It was a strategy. They broke your body to weaken your mind, and then they attacked your mind to make sure your body never rose again. That’s psychological warfare. But you’re still here, Prashant. That means they failed.”
Failed. The word felt foreign on my tongue. Had they really failed? Or was I still carrying their victory inside me?
It was in one of those sessions that I mentioned Ira.
It slipped out without planning, a name I had held too close to my chest for too long.
“She’s always more,” I whispered, staring at the IV drip instead of her face.
“Tell me about her,” Riddhima said gently.
And I did.
I told her about Ira’s laughter, how it rang like temple bells in the early morning, unshaken even by the uniform’s weight on her shoulders. How she was a lieutenant in the Indian Army. How her smile was the first thing that came to me when I thought of home.
I told her how I loved her. Not the kind of love that needed constant words or promises, but the kind that anchored me, made me believe in something larger than uniforms, borders, and endless wars.
When I spoke of Ira, the ache in my chest shifted. It didn’t disappear, but it softened, like the edge of a wound when healing begins.
Riddhima listened. And for the first time in months, my voice carried something other than anger or despair. It carried longing, memory and love.
“You don’t smile when you talk about her,” Riddhima observed once. “But your eyes change. They soften. That’s a good sign.”
I wanted to tell her I didn’t know how to smile anymore. That my lips had forgotten the curve, that my laughter had been buried in the rubble of that prison cell. But I stayed quiet, because some truths are too heavy to release all at once.
______
Rehabilitation was its own battlefield.
They strapped braces onto my legs, pushed me into exercises that left me breathless and trembling. Every step was war. My shoulder resisted every stretch, my ribs screamed at every twist. Sweat pooled across my scarred skin, and I cursed under my breath as physiotherapists urged me on.
Some days, I collapsed back into the bed, chest heaving, convinced my body had betrayed me forever. But Riddhima reminded me: “Every step you take is defiance. Every breath you fight for is victory. The men who hurt you would want you to give up. Don’t hand them that win.”
Her words echoed in my ears during the endless drills. Slowly, my body remembered. I could stand. Then I could walk, first with support, then alone. Each milestone was small, but each one carved a notch in the wall of my despair.
But the nights were still heavy.
One evening, after another nightmare had left me gasping for air, I told her the truth.
“I don’t know if I can ever be who I was. They didn’t just break me but they erased me. When I look in the mirror, I don’t see Prashant anymore. I see a ghost.”
Riddhima leaned forward, her eyes holding mine. “Then stop trying to be who you were. You’re not that man anymore. Trauma doesn’t erase you...it reshapes you. The question is, will you let it make you weaker, or will you let it forge you into something stronger?”
Her conviction was iron. At that moment, I realized she wasn’t just healing me. She was challenging me. Forcing me to confront the man I could still become.
_______
One year after my rescue, I walked the hospital courtyard under my own strength.
The winter sun warmed my skin, the air sharp with Delhi’s chill.
Other soldiers saluted me as I passed through them.
Survivors, all of them. Men missing limbs, men with burns, men who carried scars deeper than any visible wound.
For the first time, I didn’t feel alone.
That night, I spoke to Riddhima about Ira again.
“She doesn’t know what they did to me,” I admitted. “She knows I was missing, that I was tortured. But she doesn’t know how much of me they broke. I don’t want her to see me like this.”
Riddhima shook her head, her voice quiet but firm. “Prashant, she’s a soldier too. She understands more than you think. And love isn’t about showing someone your strength. It’s about letting them see your scars and still believing you’re worth standing beside.”
Her words stayed with me, reverberating in my chest long after she left. That night, for the first time in months, my dream of Ira wasn’t twisted by smoke or screams. I saw her clearly, standing tall in her olive-green uniform, her eyes shining with quiet pride, her hand reaching out for mine.
______
I waited. I kept waiting, hoping she would show up, hoping she would prove she still cared. Not a single day passed without Ira in my thoughts: how I would speak to her, how I would tell her about the hell I’d survived, about what they did to me.
Would she feel my pain? Would she understand? I wondered how she would look at me, how her emotions would surface when we finally met.
But one year passed and she never came, not even once.
She was in the army, I knew she had heard the news about me, about my condition but still, she hadn’t come to see whether I was dead or alive.
My heart longed for her face, her smile, her teasing words. I wanted to see her so badly that I could hardly function. Ira consumed my every thought. And when I heard she had been posted in Delhi not far from where I was I could no longer wait.
The military vehicle dropped me at her unit. Two soldiers accompanied me, though I didn’t need them. I could walk on my own now, but the senior officer had insisted. I was due to be transferred to Jammu in a week, and I wanted to spend these last days with her.
As I was about to step into the office, I heard it. That laugh. The laugh I had been dying to hear again. My head snapped toward the sound.
Ira.
She was walking with Aryan, her hand looped with his. But something in her steps faltered, and slowly, she turned to face me.
“Prashant!” she gasped. Her eyes swept over me from head to toe, as if making sure I was still in one piece.
Aryan looked at her, confused. “You know him?”
“Of course,” Ira said quickly, still staring at me. “We were batchmates.” She stepped closer. “How are you?”
My gaze lingered on their entwined hands before I forced myself to meet her eyes. “I’m doing well,” I said, trying to smile, but my lips betrayed me, trembling instead.
“I’m glad to see you again,” she said, her voice softening. “I mean…” She broke off, her throat tightening, and then she pulled me into a hug.
I drew in a sharp breath, closing my eyes. She held me a little longer than she should have, longer than was fair with her boyfriend standing beside her.
When she finally pulled away, her perfume still lingered. For one fragile heartbeat, I let myself believe nothing had changed. But then Aryan’s hand slipped back into hers, and the truth cut sharper than any blade.
“Ira,” I said quietly, my voice weighted with all the months I had waited. “I waited for a year.”
Her eyes flickered, glistening with something she fought to hide. “Prashant… I couldn’t,” she whispered. Then she squared her shoulders, her officer’s composure falling into place. “You're well aware of the duty schedule. I was just busy."
Busy? That’s what she called it. It only showed how little she really cared about me. She had all the time in the world for her boyfriend, yet she couldn’t even make a moment to check on me.
She drew in a breath, then met my eyes. “Prashant… Aryan and I...we’re getting married.”
The words hit harder than any boot, any lash, any blow I had endured in that cell. While I had been clinging to her memory in the dark, she had chosen a new life. My anchor, my reason to survive, belonged to someone else now.
I forced a smile, though it felt carved from stone. “Congratulations.”
Her face faltered, as though she heard the fracture in my voice, but I didn’t give her the chance to say more.
I turned away before the weight in my chest crushed me in front of them.
Outside, the Delhi air seared my lungs. I had survived torture, bullets, starvation but this felt like the wound that would never heal.
______