EPILOGUE The Tale of Nilay, Doctor & the Army
— RITU —
SUMMER
“What’s the verdict?” Her husband sauntered in, hands behind his back.
“Why are you walking like that?”
“Like how?”
“Like you are overseeing your Pattern Team and planning to open your sarcasm 101?!”
“Easy, Tiger.” He smirked. “What’s the result?”
“40 more seconds to go.” She gaped up at the clock. “30 now.”
“Ritu, relax.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“How? I am the other half of this team.”
“Who contributed nothing but…”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa… it was a tough moment in that room without you.” He held his hands up, a cup of ice cream in each hand.
“Why do you have ice cream already? We are not even 30% sure. Nilay…” her eyes began to blur.
She wasn't a crier, not an emotional person generally. But the hormone shots for this round of IVF had made her lose it. She couldn’t predict what she would do in the next second.
She hated it and also loved it, that the shots had brought some semblance of normalcy to her ovulation and hope to their life.
“Don’t cry, Doctor…” he strode to her and engulfed her in his arms, cups held away from her body. She burst into tears on his shoulder, the one place that always made it so easy to let go — “I don’t even want to cry!”
“Shhh, it’s ok.” He kissed her head, the one thing that always made her tears trickle to a close. Today it made them heavier. “I am scared and excited and… I will fly off this spot, Nilay!”
“I am holding on,” he laughed, crossing his arms across her shoulders. His head bent behind her.
“Did you just lick ice cream behind my back?” She pulled out.
“It would have melted on you.”
She grabbed the first cup she could reach. Malai Dark Chocolate Chips. The other was Mango. Sitafal was out of season.
“It can go either way…” She stared at the blurry cup in her hands.
“And that is why ice cream. If it goes as per our wishes, we celebrate. If it doesn’t, we cry into these. Win-win.”
“How many times will we do this?”
“This is the first time, Ritu. Stop talking like that.”
“I know,” she sniffled. “I’ll be upbeat again, give me a minute.”
“It’s time,” his gaze went to the clock behind her. She jumped.
“Should I go and see or you want to go?”
“I’ll go.” She squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, opened the bathroom door, and marched in.
The stick was just as she had left it. No Stork had taken it as ‘confirmation of order,’ as Nilay had joked earlier. The reminder of that joke itself brought a smile to her face. That is why, when she saw the negative on the window, it didn't cut too deep.
“It’s negative,” she announced, suddenly not as rundown as she had expected she would be.
There was always another month, another try, and another ‘attempt to order,’ as her husband so eloquently put.
She wanted this. Really wanted this. In just six months of knowing this man, she wanted everything and more.
She needed it. He had made life so wonderful.
Even with conversations around conceiving through IVF, tests, ovulation cycles, hormonal shots, and regular visits to their gynaecologist, he had made life a party in true obnoxious Nilay fashion.
Case in point —
“Cry,” his hand came under her nose with the Malai Dark Chocolate Chips ice cream.
She burst out laughing, plucking the cup from him, scooping out a bite and turning the spoon so that the ice cream rested smack in the middle of her tongue.
Ritu turned, spoon in mouth, only to see him with his own spoon in his mouth, turned down.
He had started to eat ice cream like her.
She had started to eat vagharelo rotlo and khichdi for dinners.
They had so easily melded into each other, something she had never expected to have at this set age.
Teenagers and youngsters could easily flow into one another, accept each other’s personalities and traits, be flexible enough to bend.
When she had agreed to marry Nilay Patel, Ritu had expected friction to be a steady companion of their lives.
With love, respect and the unique brand of bonding between them, she had also anticipated the practicality of two strong individualities from different walks of life colliding.
Instead, she had found them more similar than different, and ready to blend instead of holding their own.
And, let’s face it, they had bigger fish to fry.
The fish in question had not materialised this time.
See? Even her thoughts had become obnoxious like his. A baby was a fish to fry? Since when?
Ritu chuckled, eating ice cream quietly, looking at him.
“Happy?” He asked.
She nodded.
He offered her his half-finished cup like he always did. And she took it shamelessly, like she always did.
“We will try again when you are ready.” He cupped her face and kissed her cheek. “And if you decide to hit Pause or End, we will do that too. Ok?”
She smiled — “I’m ready for the next round already."
His face, that beautiful obnoxiously handsome face that became breathtaking when it went tender, went even softer. And then it stretched into a smile from beard to forehead. His facial muscles changed every time he smiled at her like that.
“Alright,” he kissed her mouth, stealing some of that ice cream. “Now, I am leaving for the store. What time is your OPD?”
“Dr. Shravan is seeing OPD today. I am taking over at Lilavati.”
“Nicking your way into saving another heart?” He went into his walk-in wardrobe and returned with his ensemble for the day. Even her vocabulary had changed living with him. Couture, ensemble, faux pas, blasé… Ritu rolled her eyes.
“Not good?” He held the muslin cream Mandarin shirt up to his chest. It was paired with a blinding white pair of pleated pants on a hanger in his hand and she didn't know how he would make this combination work. Except, Ritu had given up doubting. Or questioning. He always did make it work.
“Wear it and show me.” She lay back on their bed.
“Don’t you have to get ready?”
“I have an hour to go.”
“Then you show me what you are wearing first.”
“My scrubs.”
“Hot!” He came and sprawled out beside her. “The runway’s yours, Doctor.”
“Nilay.”
“What?”
“We don’t have time for what happens when I wear scrubs at home.”
His eyes darkened.
“No. No. I have to leave in twenty minutes.”
“You just said an hour!”
“To the procedure. I have to get in and see the patient. Now move!” She pushed. He let her push him out and bounced back, making her scream and opening her up for his tongue’s invasion.
“Sandwich date today?” He asked.
“At home.”
“Outside. We haven’t gone to Raju since January.”
“Fine. Only because you are obedient otherwise.”
“My incentives are to die for,” he grabbed her face and kissed her again, jumping up and running away when she grabbed his pillow.
————————————————————
MONSOON
Mumbai monsoons! Oh the rains and oh the pains and how she was ready to wade through both.
Literally. Ritu opened the umbrella over her half-open door, collected her car keys and phone, and ran, pushing the door shut with her back.
She dashed up and towards the porch of The Nilay Patel House of Couture. And crashed with a panicky Kedar.
“Ma’am! Sorry! I was coming to get you!” He held out his umbrella.
“Why?”
“NiP said you will be parking by now.”
Ritu chuckled, pulling the umbrella closed. “You don’t have to listen to all that NiP says.”
“Ha, sure…” he scoffed. “I mean… never. Especially where it concerns you.”
“Was he like that with all his previous girlfriends?” Ritu inquired conversationally, walking into the store that was immaculate, with a few customers and a trial going on in the back room.
“Huh…ha ha, you want me to lose my job, no, Ma’am?” Kedar laughed, calling for the elevator.
“Why?”
The lift door opened.
“Because if he finds out I have talked to you about previous girlfriends, he will…”
“I will what?” Nilay stepped out of the lift, shirtsleeves rolled up, measuring tape around his neck, looking like the hottest manifestation of her warmest dream. Ritu couldn’t take her eyes off his chest.
“I didn't say anything!” Kedar jumped on the spot. “Really!”
“It’s ok,” Ritu whispered in his ear. “Run. I’ll handle from here.”
He didn't even wait for her last words. He was out of the alley and had disappeared into thin air.
“You have kept him so terrorised.” She chided to her husband, who was looking at her with that stern frown in his NiP-the-designer-in-his-cave avatar.
She loved this one the best out of all his work avatars.
Mainly for those rolled shirt sleeves and the measuring tape.
A man who made the world do his minutest chores was only caught slaving over his annual capsule collection. And only in front of her.
“What do you want to know about my previous girlfriends?” He curved a hand around her waist, turning and ushering her into the elevator.
“Aren’t you going out?” She asked.
“No.”
“Then why are you down?”
“For you,” he held up the umbrella in his hand that she had failed to notice.
When Ritu looked up at the closing doors, she found a few customers, all women of different age groups, ogling them. Her husband, to be precise. Sorry, ladies, I won him.
“For me?”
“You told me you didn't have an umbrella and Kedar hadn’t responded to my message to go get you.”
“I found one under the seat.” Ritu leaned into him, allowing herself this closeness at his workplace because they were closed in the elevator. “Were you like this with them as well?”
“My girlfriends?”
“Ex-girlfriends.”