Two
Anika
Almost a year later….
‘You give the best back massages in the whole world, you know,’ Vikrant murmured.
‘I know.’ I dug my fingers at the edge of my husband’s vertebra where L4 met L5, and he let out a groan that mingled pain with pleasure. I kneaded at the knot lodged firmly there which came from hours bent over patients in the ICU, marveling at his taut skin and sexier back.
It didn’t have too much hair but was ‘dusted’; which made it all the more fun when he was on top, and I could run my hands all over the territory I called mine.
I grinned … it was fun now too.
I ran a lazy hand down one side of his oiled back.
‘I should give up paeds and go become a professional masseuse,’ I mused out loud.
He squirmed under me. All lean muscles and hard length.
‘Fuck, no.’ Vikrant reached out with one long hand and caught my knee with his rough fingers. He squeezed. ‘This is all mine. I am not sharing.’
His voice was sleepy, pleasure-filled; a little lazy. He was rarely like this, my intense husband.
I still could not believe that Vikrant and I were actually married. And that too, straight out of medical school. It was the most divine of fates that the hospital we both applied to had accepted us both, so getting married made the most sense. Since living together was a problem for Vikrant’s conservative parents and kind of frowned upon in Mumbai, the most progressive city in the country.
Vikrant ran light fingers over my knee. ‘Right?’ he asked.
‘You know I don’t like it when you get all possessive alpha male.’ I kneed him in the back as I slid away to the side of the bed.
Vikrant yelped and glared at me. Looking, for all the world, like how a doctor on TV would look like – sexy and smoldering and intense - with an unshaved beard and pitch-black eyes gritty from lack of sleep.
I winked at him. Ran my tongue over my lips, suggestively.
Then I leaned in close and whispered right in his ear, my breath blowing hot into the soft shell. ‘I love it.’
In a move that never failed to delight and arouse me, Vikrant whipped me under him, catching my hands in a tight hold so our bodies were lined up perfectly. He pressed his center to mine; he was aroused too (I’d been massaging his glutes for ten minutes) and I went wet.
I moaned.
‘You’re the devil,’ he muttered. ‘This is the on-call room, you know. We can’t just…’ He shrugged impressive shoulders that had me squirming now.
‘So what?’ I raised my head, inviting him in for a kiss.
I could see the intent in his eyes. And even though we were both fully clothed and exhausted from working double shifts, that massage had heated things up nicely. ‘It’s legally allowed. I have a marriage license in my backpack that says this is okay.’
‘You know, it would also work if you wore that mangal sutra my mother gifted you.’ He named the chain of gold I’d been gifted, on my visit home to the in-laws. The chain was a Hindu symbol of my marriage to Vikrant. As if I needed one! ‘It’s such a small thing, isn’t it?’
I shrugged. ‘I am a doctor, idiot. We aren’t supposed to wear that kind of jewelry, no?’
‘Everyone else does,’ he muttered.
‘I’m not like everyone else.’ I tugged at my hands, and he released them immediately. I wound them around his neck and tugged him closer. ‘That’s why you want me so bad you’ll fuck me in the on-call room.’
Vikrant glanced back at the closed door.
I settled deeper into him. The bed we were in, was a torn and sagging sofa with the stuffing coming out at one end. It was home to about a million butt impressions and perpetually soft.
‘Anika, the springs will give out,’ he tried half-heartedly.
‘So?’ I smiled, sexy and inviting. Knowing I had him. ‘Go slow.’
I kissed him. Swallowing his mouth in a deep, luscious kiss that went on and on. He wrapped one palm around my skull, and kissed me back, with a little desperation. And I knew why.
It was because of that mangal sutra comment. A sore point, every time Vikrant’s mother called on the video chat and he made me wear it.
‘I love you, Vikrant Pandit,’ I whispered against his lips.
He took my scrub top off, an expression of utter, focused bliss on his face. And I felt love, and desire, and a million other emotions move through her. Maybe I could wear the stupid mangal sutra if it made him happy.
‘I can’t stop wanting you.’ He squeezed me through the sheer lacy, lemon-colored bra. ‘You’re perfect.’
He tongued my nipple and bit it lightly. I moaned, squeezing my thighs around his arousal. He did it again and I dragged my core against it. His other hand drifted over my inside thigh and rubbed against my center.
‘Fuck.’ I gritted out. ‘You’re evil.’
‘If I am.’ He dotted kisses over the swell of my breasts on the bra and then dragged his tongue inside and swirled it around the nipple. ‘It’s because of you, wife.’
I dragged his head up with one hand and untied his scrub pants with the other. ‘Stop torturing me.’
Her words and the kiss mingled in desperation. A hot, wet, writhing mass of exploding desire and consuming love. He gentled me with nothing but his lips on mine, so the kiss turned soft, questing…pretty.
‘No.’ Vikrant said coolly and plunged one hand into my pants.
I whimpered, arched into his touch and the burning intent of his desire. Knowing heaven and hell were about to open inside me…any minute now.
***
The violent shaking of the bed woke me up. The soft moan died on my lips as I looked around, wildly. Expecting to see Vikrant on top, ready to give me the best hospital orgasm of my life. Aching for him…
‘The NICU patient’s parents want to talk to you, Ani,’ Nurse Tara said loudly.
I blinked against the strong, neon light that illuminated the nurse’s station couch. For the last year, I have napped here when I had to work double shifts.
The on-call room was a no-go zone now. The one time I had gone there last year, I spent the whole time crying into the pillow and ended up with a migraine.
No, thank you!
Deprivation was a physical ache inside me as I finally processed the nurse’s request.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll come.’
Tara gave me a soft, sympathetic look. ‘You were doing it again. Talking in your sleep.’
Pretending not to hear the nurse’s pitying words, I stood up, stretching the kinks in my neck, my entire body.
I talked in my sleep in times of extreme stress. It had begun back when my parents had first sent me to boarding school, when I was caught smoking with the gardener’s son.
It usually meant I was desperately, awfully, alone and scared. At least that’s what the professor in the Psychology class back in medical college had told me proudly. What the fuck did he know?
Some people snored. Some people talked in their sleep. It was perfectly natural. Nothing to worry about.
I straightened my scrub top, retied the drawstring pants, and wrinkled my nose at the disgusting smell of day-old scrubs that had seen everything – from a newborn pooping green goo to assisting in an emergency C-section. I wore the white coat I’d used to prop my head on and walked out of the nurses’ station.
***
I reassured the worried parents of Baby Sheikh that their daughter’s lungs were underdeveloped because she was a preemie (prematurely born) and the attending had to operate on her tiny air pipe because of an unforeseen obstruction during pregnancy. But that she was absolutely fine and ready to meet her parents as soon as they were sure there would be no infection.
This was the part of my job I loved most. Telling the loved ones of utterly tiny, helpless, new human beings that they could stop worrying. Their wait was almost over. The end was near.
Medicine had once again triumphed over the horrors of life.
Pediatric surgery was delicate in the extreme and required nerves of absolute steel. It also required a certain degree of detachment because the patients were so tiny, hardly bigger than the palms of my hands sometimes, that caring about them was catastrophic. It would mean I lost focus on the job at hand and would cause harm to my patient, an unacceptable outcome.
Vikrant had accused me in the lawyer’s office of being dead inside, of allowing the job to consume my soul….and I’d said something equally punishing to him.
But lately, I’d begun to wonder if he was right.
If, maybe in the quest to be the best peds surgeon in the department, I had pushed down all empathy and feeling and only used sex as an outlet for a real connection. In the end, even that had withered away.
It wasn’t wrong, of course, but maybe I could have given a calmer ear to his concerns. Maybe my ambition had blinded me to his need.
***
‘There you are, Dr. Chakraborty,’ Dr. Dsouza looked up as I came back to the doctor’s lounge, once I finished up with morning rounds. There were only three patients in the NICU, all in stable condition – so it was a fine morning for all the staff on call.
‘Yes, Dr. Dsouza?’ I straightened my spine immediately.
Dr. Dsouza was the Dean of Medicine at the hospital, the ultimate decider of all our fates. Having him talk tome, a lowly, second-year surgical hopeful was an honor beyond imagination.
‘I spoke to your father last night. I didn’t know you were Vivek Chakraborty’s daughter.’ The veneration in the Dean’s voice was sickening. And expected.
Vivek Chakraborty was a god in Indian surgery and being his daughter wasno t something I was proud of.
I shrugged. ‘I didn’t think it mattered who I’m related to.’
‘Of course not,’ he said smoothly. ‘But I’m sure you could put in a good word to your cardiothoracic surgeon father to come to visit us here sometime and show us that new procedure he just won an award for.’
I smiled mechanically. ‘Sure, Sir. I’ll talk to him about it. Was there anything else you needed me for?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said absently, checking his phone screen. ‘I just saw your husband down in the cafeteria. I didn’t know he was back from Goa. Why didn’t you tell me?
I felt the breath leave my chest in a rush and the floor tilted dizzily, while I clutched my stethoscope tightly between my hands. The cool metal helped steady my breathing and my wildly beating heart as three words danced in my head like cartoon birds.
Vikrant was back.