Chapter 10 #2
“A break and all is ok, but losing momentum on profession is not a good idea. Go back and make sure things speed up.”
“Ok.”
“Rasesh bhai!” Somebody called out, and her father raised his hand, nodding.
“You go and sit. Our table is at the front.” With that, her father left her to meet other men in suits.
Ritu finally felt a breath leave her mouth.
It had been years. She still became stilted and stiff in front of her father.
It wasn't trauma. He wasn't a bad father.
She knew that now, after years of soul-searching and growing up.
He was just not equipped to deal with daughters.
There was no love lost there because she had never found love there.
Just respect, and care, and worry, now that he was getting old and frail.
Ritu shook her head and turned in the direction opposite to that of his table.
“Oops!” “Ritu ben!”
Her stilted body jerked to life at the excited squeal. Dimple’s arms went around her. “You really came!”
It took Ritu a second to reciprocate. She hadn’t seen Dimple in person since she was a kid. Now it was her wedding. She patted her back, pulling away to look at the girl who had grown into a woman.
“You look very good, Dimple. Congratulations.”
“Doesn’t she?” Maya stood beside her.
“Thank you so much for coming! I know you guys are happier away from this,” she moved her eyes around them. “I am also escaping it. But thanks for coming. It’s been so long! I want photos!”
Ritu chuckled, shocked but not surprised.
The Instagram generation saw nothing but reels and selfies.
She posed with them both, smiling through the introductions with her fiancé, his family, his dog and a horde of her friends.
The dance floor opened up with liquor, and a whole crowd left the seaside seating area to groove in waves like they were already drunk. The party started in its true form.
Ritu felt her potli vibrate. She pulled her phone out.
NILAY PATEL
Nilay Patel ECG.pdf
Nilay Patel Lipid Profile.pdf
Worried, she toggled one report open and skimmed through the chart. Then exhaled.
RITU
Don’t scare me like that
NILAY PATEL
More incoming
Typing…
She bit the insides of her cheeks. This was the first time he had reached out after Patan.
She hadn’t expected anything, but was touched by his need to send his reports over.
She caught a chair by the sea and began reading, waiting for more reports to pop.
They did, one by one, and she reviewed them, one by one.
Her breaths came easier and easier with each.
He was on a good road back. In fact, she would go as far as to say that he was back.
That euphoria got her to text him back.
RITU
Wrong chat
Here’s Dr. Shravan’s number
CONTACT CARD
DR. SHRAVAN (INDIA)
DR. SHRAVAN (LONDON)
NILAY PATEL
Just needed a second opinion
RITU
I am not as experienced
NILAY PATEL
I know
Her mouth dropped open.
RITU
Your heart might make it, your baby brain is doomed
NILAY PATEL
Sequin-sized but works like magic
You saw it in motion, along with other things
RITU
You were supposed to forget it
NILAY PATEL
Sequin-sized brain retained it
God knows why
Her dropped mouth touched the floor. Ritu laughed. You obnoxious man. She didn’t know what got her to become a middle-schooler like him and press ‘BLOCK.’ She would give it 60 seconds and see what his sequin-sized brain came up with.
“Ritu!”
She glanced up at that familiar voice, and Nalini foi, her father’s youngest sister and Dimple’s mother stood in front of her. The mother of the bride, glowing in every way. Ritu tried to smile back but the shadow beside her made her body lock up.
“Ritu, how are you?”
Jimmy fuva. The father of the bride.
She felt her body, mind and mouth shift to autopilot.
“I am fine. How are you?”
“It’s been years,” Nalini foi patted her shoulder. Ritu did not stand up for her. She was supposed to stand, fold her hands, maybe even touch their feet. She did not. She kept sitting, staring at them with callous shamelessness — courteous, but that’s it.
“Thank you for coming,” Nalini foi kept talking, sensing the company they were in. “Dimple mentioned she sent you the invite and kept calling.”
“Yes. I came for her.”
“Please don’t go without eating, alright?” She patted her arm again. “Come, Jimmy, I wanted to introduce you to my botox clinic friends…”
Ritu sat unmoving as her husband turned with her and followed, but not without turning over his shoulder and eyeing her. Once.
Nothing registered. The air itself stilled in front of her. Her hands and feet became cold. She knew what it was. She knew what hormones, what muscles, what mechanisms were working inside her. She analysed it all clinically. But she couldn’t break free.
And then her phone’s ringtone tore through the haze.
Ritu reached for it in panic and plastered it to her ear, scampering from her chair and walking away towards the sea.
“Hello.”
“You stop being a teenager now. Unblock me.”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice sounded broken. She snapped out of herself and pulled her phone screen down to check. It wasn’t Nilay. Some random number.
“Hello? Who is this?”
“Doctor?” It was his voice. “Ritu? What happened?”
“Nothing. Can I call you back?”
“Why are you crying?”
Was she crying? Ritu tapped her cheek. Nothing. Dry.
“I am not crying.”
“Where are you right now?”
“At a function.”
“Alone?”
“Maya and Gautam are here too.”
“Is something wrong?”
“No. Nilay, let me call you back in a while…”
“Where are you? I want to see you.”
“I am not at home until this afternoon, I am in town. But I saw your reports. they are good…”
“Where in town?”
“Thacker…” She saw Jimmy fuva’s eyes catch hers from across the ground and her throat closed. “Nilay. Bye.”
She ended the call, pushed her phone inside her potli and turned to leave.
The path itself ran under her feet. She planned the logistics in her mind, pulling her phone out again to book an Uber.
She would have to call Maya but she would do that from the Uber.
She wasn't in the mood to go for Pizza By The Bay.
She stepped out of the club and into the parking.
“Ritu!”
She kept walking.
“Ritu, wait.” Jimmy fuva came running behind her. She stopped. Turned.
“Ritu.” He had aged. Of course he had. Life had moved and the world had changed. He must be in his sixties now.
“How are you?” He smiled. She kept blinking at him. His hand reached out to her shoulder and her body tautened.
“You look good,” his palm moved to her arm.
“I wanted to get in touch with you… but I didn’t have your number.
Good that Dimple called you here. You can’t imagine how proud I am of you.
The doctor you have become,” his eyes widened.
“I tell everybody we talk to about you. My friend Kush in Canada was going to New York for his angioplasty and I told him to go to you. Now my mother is ill. I told Nalini that we must send her reports to you. Now that you are here, can you come see her? Or we can bring her to you. You are staying with Maya?”
“No.”
“Oh. Then where are you staying?”
“I have to leave,” she began to pull away from his hand. It tightened — “Ritu…”
Her control snapped. She grabbed his hand and twisted his fingers to the point of snapping.
A satisfying crunch, and he screamed in a silent cry.
Ritu jolted. She had never done that. Never been violent.
She did not know what came over her. She didn’t even know how to do it.
How to break those fingers. She just did it.
And saw as if she was seeing it from outside her body — the man trying to gnarl at her, then turn and run inside at the pain that must be tearing through him.
Her eyes teared up. Ritu glanced around at the security and valets.
She turned and began to stride. She would find an Uber outside.
Or walk back to the suburbs if she had to.
This place, this area, this entire part of Mumbai was her prison.
She hated it. She hated it. She was so scared of it…
tears scattered down her face and she kept her head down, trying to suck them back, walking, seeing somebody barring her way.
She raised her eyes enough to see a man’s shoulder and began to side-step to keep moving, head down.
The shoulder moved with her and she glanced up in time to collide with it.
Familiar dark eyes were staring down at her. Nothing more registered as the tears scattering and sucking back into her eyes burst free. Her face crumpled and his shoulder caught it. Ritu let those tears spill free, in a place, in a scent that felt familiar.
His palm came to the nape of her neck, tamping her hair — “You are crying, Doctor.”
“You can’t tell anybody.”
“Can I take a photo for safekeeping?” His hand was replaced by the crook of his arm, winding around her neck, hiding her face in his chest.
She chuckled, even through this misery.
“Who was he?”
“Nobody. I need to go.”
“I am going with you.”
Ritu looked up. Her tears wouldn’t stop. And he wouldn’t give up looking at her.
“I need to leave.”
“I am leaving with you.”
“Why are you here?”
“To show you my reports.”
A smile broke free from her mouth and her tears intensified.
“Come here, Doctor.”
And she went.