Chapter Eighteen
Roshan showed up at the beach for Malini’s surf lesson. If his sister insisted on doing this, he would at least be there. It wasn’t because Nimita was teaching and he needed to be in her presence, whether they were together or not.
He was exhausted, having just pulled an overnight shift. Finn was enjoying the treat of playing in the ocean. He’d heard the stories about Finn dragging her into the water, but she’d earned the dog’s respect, it seemed, and he was behaving for her.
The air was warm, the sun had just come up, but the water was quite cool, so he preferred wearing a wet suit. Nimita and Malini were also clad in short wet suits. He watched them from a few feet away.
Nimita nodded in his direction as she spoke to Malini. “What’s he doing here?”
“He insisted on being here,” Malini said, looking at him. “But he said he’ll stay out of our way.” She glared at him.
“Love how you talk about me like I can’t hear you,” he said. He wasn’t here to be liked. He was here to look after her. Malini was going to do whatever she wanted. She had proved that when she got her own place.
Nimita flicked her gaze in his direction. She also did not appear happy to see him, but she seemed resigned.
Nimita started Malini out slow, like she had with him and the guys in Hawaii. Had that been only two months ago? She first went over popping up.
Roshan recalled feeling like he had no control of his body when he had tried to learn this. The number of times he fell in the water. He smiled to himself.
Being lithe and flexible, Malini was able to jump up to standing quickly. Nimita looked in his direction with a small smirk, indicating that she, too, remembered his difficulties with this move. Luckily he had his aviators on, or Nimita might have seen the longing in his eyes.
Holi had been a week ago. He was just having a hard time letting his feelings for Nimita go. Didn’t help that she seemed to be his sister’s new best friend.
Malini mastered popping up quickly, and Nimita got her out riding the white water. Malini seemed to belong on the surf board. She was graceful and seemed to understand the board and the water and her body all at the same time.
Roshan decided to join them in the water. He had just reached the water’s edge when a huge wave came out of nowhere and took both women down.
Roshan raced into the ocean. Nimita popped up in seconds, looking around frantically… Where was Malini? He saw the unoccupied surfboard at the same time she did, and both of them raced toward it.
“Malini!” Nimita called out, reaching the board first.
The terror in her voice made his blood run cold.
He never should have allowed this. He should have—Suddenly, Nimita was swimming away from the board.
He saw Malini bob up and go under. He pushed panic aside and started to swim to her.
Nimita was already there when he got there… and so was that lifeguard.
The guy grabbed Malini under her arms and swam her to shore. Malini immediately coughed up water.
“Malini. Malini. Are you okay?” Roshan came up behind Nimita.
Malini looked up at the lifeguard still over her and managed to smile sweetly at him. “Hey,” she said before coughing again. Then she winced in pain. “My wrist hurts.”
The lifeguard went to look at it, but Roshan shouldered him aside. “Let me see.” Roshan took Malini’s wrist gently. “I think it’s broken.”
Before he could look, she fainted. He picked his sister up like she weighed nothing and took her to his car.
He was vaguely aware of Nimita behind him, dragging the surfboards to the car as he made Malini comfortable in the passenger seat.
She was breathing but something was wrong.
“We’re going to the ED,” he snapped before Nimita could say anything, and left her there in the parking lot.
Somehow, Nimita beat him there, already at the ED when he carried Malini, awake now but disoriented, through the doors. Nimita…and his parents. She must have called them on her way.
“Roshan. What happened?” His father stared in horror at Malini, dripping wet in a wet suit, holding her left wrist gingerly with her right hand.
“She was learning how to surf—”
“What?” his father exclaimed. “Why? Why was she surfing? How could you let this happen?”
“She wanted to learn how to surf. It’s a normal thing.” Roshan surprised himself as the words came out. “Can we get her through triage before you lay into me, please?” That led to stunned silence, at least for a few moments while Malini was taken in by a nurse.
He then turned to the forms that needed to be filled out.
He said nothing while his parents laid into him for Malini’s injury.
This was not the first time, and it would not be the last. He filled out forms while he waited for them to finish.
He knew Nimita was nearby; he could feel her.
Silently observing while his parents blamed him for allowing Malini to be injured.
How long would it take before he wasn’t painfully aware of her presence at all times?
“Uncle.” Nimita stepped forward. She was also still in a wetsuit, and her voice sounded shaken. “It was me who took her surfing, not Roshan.”
“Thank you for telling us, but ultimately, it was Roshan’s responsibility,” his father said.
Nimita flicked her gaze to him. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her.
“Roshan’s?” Nimita asked. “Not Malini’s herself?”
Roshan paused with the forms and looked at her. Malini, taking responsibility for herself? Why was this a novel idea?
His parents stared at her as if she were speaking a different language. They turned back to Roshan. “Can’t you get us back to see her? Aren’t you a doctor here?”
“Dad.” He drew into his doctor patience. “She’s being seen to. Let the doctors do their job. She’ll be fine, I promise. There are people with much more serious injuries than a broken wrist.”
His father’s mouth gaped open as if Roshan had just confessed to committing a felony. “But Malini—”
“Has a broken wrist. It happens.”
“Dr. Dave?” An ED nurse approached him. “I thought that was you and your family.” She smiled. “Come on back. I’ve got a space for you while we take her to X-ray, and then you can update your parents.”
It might have been mortifying to anyone else to be dressed down the way he’d just been by his parents. But Roshan was used to it. When Malini had gone under, his heart had nearly stopped. It was among his worst nightmares. It would be easy to blame Nimita.
But if he stopped and thought about it rationally, used his medical training, he knew that what he’d said to his parents was true. A broken wrist was fixable, and it could happen to anyone.
He glanced at Nimita, who smiled weakly at him before sitting down with his anxious parents. She might not know what it was like to have a sick sibling, but she was here now with his family, despite the awkwardness. Had defended him to his parents. And that wasn’t nothing
* * *
Nimita paced in the crowded ED waiting room. Guilt for taking Malini surfing in the first place warred with anger at Roshan’s parents for making him feel responsible, as well as heartache for Roshan for bearing the brunt of it all. No wonder he was so protective, he had his parents to answer to.
She offered to get Auntie and Uncle something to drink, but they were doing a great job of ignoring her. She clearly was not family, and she wondered if she should leave. She’d love to get out of this wetsuit, if nothing else. Her decision was shelved when her phone buzzed.
“Where the hell are you?” Reena’s panic was evident in her voice.
“What happened?” Nimita’s heart rate increased. Reena was tough. She did not panic easily.
“Papa collapsed. The ambulance is on the way to the hospital.”
“What happened?” She felt the blood drain from her face.
“I don’t know, but I need someone for Naya.” Reena’s voice was strained.
“I’ll meet you in the ED. Long story, but I’m already here. Bring Naya. I’ll take her,” Nimita assured her. What was going on today? Was it a full moon or something?
When the ambulance arrived, her father was wheeled out on a gurney, an oxygen mask and IV already on him.
“I’m his other daughter,” she told the EMTs as she met them at the entrance. They were giving the ED doctor his vitals and other information.
A nurse touched her arm. “Miss. Your father had a heart attack. We need to take him straight up to surgery. You can wait in the cardiology waiting room. Someone will come find you.” The nurse was kind but firm. She glanced at her. “Find a volunteer, they can give you a set of scrubs.”
She felt a pit open up in her stomach. A heart attack?
She’d been messing around in the ocean, giving surfing lessons to a young woman who probably should not have been out there, while her father was home having a heart attack.
Guilt, thick and strong, overcame her. What was wrong with her?
Why could she not seem to get the whole family thing right?
Before she could move, Reena was at her side, Naya on her hip, trying to keep away from the crowd.
“There you are,” Reena said as Nimita walked over. She scanned her. “Where were you?”
“Teaching Mali to surf. They’re taking—”
“Surfing?” Reena said with disgust. “That must be nice.”
“Excuse me?”
“To have time to surf and hang out at the beach.”
Nimita shook her head. Whatever. “They took Papa up for surgery. He had a heart attack.”
Reena’s eyes bugged out and filled with tears. “What?”
“Listen. I am going to stay. Why don’t you take Naya home so she doesn’t get sick—”
“I think I know what’s best for my own child.”
“Of course you do, I just meant—”
“You know, I don’t care what you meant. You have made nothing but empty promises since you came home.” Reena glared at her.
“They haven’t been empty—” Nimita started, but her voice was small. She thought of the fight with Roshan at Holi, the cold look he’d given her in the parking lot after Malini’s injury. Tears burned behind her eyes. She’d had the best of intentions, but intentions did not matter. Actions did.
“Well, you say you’re going to do something and then you don’t. What would call that?” Reena snapped at her.
“Don’t talk to her like that.” Roshan’s voice startled them both. Nimita turned to see him standing behind her. He had changed into scrubs and was holding an extra set out to her. His voice was calm but firm and laced with anger.
“She’s my sister. I’ll talk to her however I damn well please,” Reena shot at him, switching Naya to her other hip. The toddler’s eyes were huge and scared as the adults fought. “What business is it of yours?”
He focused his gaze on Reena. “It’s my business when you continue to dismiss everything Nimita is doing.
She has done nothing but try to make things up to you since she came back, and you do not seem to care.
No matter what she does, you find something wrong,” Roshan said. “She came back to make things right.”
“The only reason she came home is because she had no place to go after she was fired,” Reena sneered.
Roshan snapped his gaze to Nimita. “You didn’t tell her?”
Nimita shook her head.
Roshan raised an eyebrow at her.
Nimita sighed and looked at Reena. “I wasn’t fired. I quit.”
“Why would you do that?”
Tears filled Nimita’s eyes. “I wanted to come home.” That was really all she had wanted. To come home to her sister and her father and be part of something, part of them, again.
“But that video—”
“That really happened, and the airline wasn’t pleased about me not letting a first-class passenger walk all over me.
But they weren’t going to fire me over it.
It’s just, I had been thinking about resigning for a while, and that was the incident that clarified things for me.
Why was I supposed to give all my time and care to undeserving strangers?
Why was I choosing to be anywhere but home with my family?
So I quit. I’ve wanted to come home for a long time.
Every time I came home, you were so mad—and you were right to be—I just didn’t know how to fix it.
” Tears rolled down her face. “This time, I saw the moment, and I quit. And I’m not leaving. ”
Reena was speechless.
“I’m going to change and find the cardiology waiting room. Take Naya home before she catches something.” Nimita put some authority into her voice, and shockingly, her sister complied.
She turned to thank Roshan. But he was gone.