Chapter Twenty
Roshan had left Nimita with her sister still fuming. He’d said his piece, but it wasn’t his place to remain at her side. Not anymore. Nimita deserved so much more than he could give her.
So he went and found Malini’s room. She’d been through X-ray and had been sent for a CT scan, too. Her wrist fracture was complicated and would need surgery. Now she was waiting for an ortho consult, and he knew her doctors were monitoring her carefully considering her medical history, too.
He grabbed her chart from the end of the bed and sat in the sole chair in the room, pulling it closer to the bed. The surgery was scheduled for tomorrow. His parents had asked why he hadn’t pulled strings to get her taken care of today.
She was on some pretty good drugs. He looked at her, asleep on the bed. She looked so thin and pale. She might be twenty-six years old, but she would always be his little sister.
Would he always look at her and think of cancer?
He certainly did that right now. But didn’t want to.
He wanted there to be a time when he did not look at her and wonder what her platelet count was, if the disease was inside her, waiting to ravage her cells.
Waiting to cause her pain, to put her through a treatment that was just as painful, if not more, than the actual disease.
Waiting to keep her from the life that she still wanted to live.
No, he thought to himself. There might never be a time when he didn’t look at her and think about cancer. He loved her so much, sometimes it actually hurt.
He had kept himself out of his parents’ way, so they didn’t have to worry about him. Good grades. Sports. College. Med school. All of it he did on his own, never even knowing if they’d noticed. What they did notice was what he did for his sister.
* * *
“I looked at all the routes Malini could take to school if she wanted to walk or bike, and I picked the safest ones. The ones least likely to lead to injury but that are still public enough that EMTs could reach quickly if something happened.”
Roshan showed his work to his parents as well as the final result.
His parents beamed at him. “Shabash! This is very good. You are a very good brother.”
“This is the kind of thing that puts us to ease. Knowing you are taking care of Malini.”
“We are very proud of you. You’re the best brother Malini could have.”
* * *
He was bombarded with images of Malini falling down, breaking a bone, him being told it was his fault for not being diligent enough. Even now, expecting him to use his position as a physician to get Malini in front of other legitimately sick people.
That wasn’t fair.
And Malini was grown and clawing for independence.
But look what had happened. He stared at her, so small and vulnerable in the bed.
He’d seen her like this before, and she had always fought back.
She was tougher than she seemed. He smiled to himself.
She may look tiny and vulnerable in that big bed, but there wasn’t much about his sister that was tiny and vulnerable.
She was a fighter.
* * *
“Bhaiya. Bhaiya. Roshan!”
Roshan startled awake. He had been dreaming of Malini falling down, breaking a bone, sitting in the hospital with an IV in her, of himself being told it was his fault for not being diligent enough.
“Go home, Bhaiya. I’m fine here. Mom and Dad and I can Uber to my place once I’m discharged.” She sounded healthy, full of her stubbornness.
“I’m not leaving you, I’m staying right here. I never should have let you go surfing.”
“Know what I was thinking?” she said. “That you were finally thinking that I could do things.”
“Yeah. Well, I was wrong. You and I both know you’re at higher risk for bone fractures after all the chemo. I don’t know how long this is going to take to heal. I messed up.” He shook his head at her. “I’m sorry.”
“Shut up,” she said.
“What?”
“You heard me. Shut. Up. It was my decision to go surfing. Just stop with the constant taking care of me.” Malini had some pain drugs in her, but the fire in her eyes was real.
“It’s exhausting for me, I can’t even imagine how hard it is for you.
Do you know hard it is to be responsible for your happiness as well as my own?
Every time I want to do something, I have to think about how freaked out you’ll get.
I try to stop caring. I love you, and I don’t want you to hurt, but I can’t do it anymore. ”
Roshan was speechless.
“Do you hear me, Bhaiya? Your constant care is hurting me.”
His heart was breaking. He was hurting Malini?
How was that even—
What?
No.
That wasn’t supposed to happen. He stood. “I need to…” He had no idea what he needed. Just that he couldn’t be in this room right now. He turned away from his sister and walked out the door. He didn’t know where he was going, but suddenly, Nimita was in front of him.
“Hey,” she said. “I was just coming to see how you—how Malini was doing.” She sounded formal, distant, like an acquaintance. It was…odd.
He saw her, he knew it was her, but he felt detached from the world.
Her brow furrowed. She took his hand. “Come with me.” This time, she used the voice she used when she talked to him, soft, intimate. It was the only reason he followed.
They walked down a few doors and ended up in a small, empty waiting room.
“Sit.” She led him to a chair in the back, away from the door and pulled one over for herself opposite him. Their knees touched. Strangely comforting. She placed her hands on his knees, and he wanted to disappear into the sensation of her touch.
“Roshan?” Nimita said his name softly. “Talk to me.”
He just looked at Nimita for a time. Drank her in.
Her floral scent, currently mixed with the ocean, her smooth silken brown skin, her mouth where he lost himself, time and time again.
But it was her eyes that did him in every time.
Right now they were raw, like she’d been crying, but her eyes were dry.
What he saw there was not just concern for him but something that calmed him, while it also lit a fire.
“Malini said… Malini said that I was hurting her,” Roshan managed. “That watching over her was hurting her. That is not supposed to happen.”
“Roshan. I’m sorry.”
“The thing is, I could stop hovering and watching every detail, but…”
“But?” Nimita took his hands in hers as she leaned toward him. The floral scent mixed with the ocean wafted to him.
“But I want her to be safe.”
“She can be safe and happy,” Nimita said.
He met that soft brown gaze that always fortified him. “I know that.”
“No.” She shook her head, squeezing his hands again.
“I don’t think you do. Letting her claim her own happiness requires you to…
let her go,” she repeated the words she had said at Holi.
But this time, he heard them. “Let her be her own person. You will always be her safe place. Claiming your happiness requires risk.”
His eyes widened.
“Letting go…is…scary. She may not always be safe. It’s just life. Being happy requires some level of risk. Malini is willing to take that risk for herself. You have to be able to let her.”
“Nimita…what I said at the mandhir…”
She shook her head. “Not right now, Roshan.”
He nodded and stared at her, his eyes burning with tears, his nostrils flaring as he tried to stay them.
One escaped then, two. His lips trembled.
“I have spent my life protecting her—from bullies, from sickness…when she wanted to come out here for college, I took a position here, too, to watch over her… Even before that, I became pediatric oncologist, for god’s sake. ”
Nimita was still watching him. He focused on her, on those eyes as he said the thing that scared him the most. The words were stuck in his throat.
He forced them out, only able to say them because it was her listening.
“I don’t know who I am if I’m not taking care of her.
I am her protector. That is the beginning and the end of who I am.
So if not taking care of her is the thing that will make her happy…
I can do that. I just don’t know who I am after that.
I’m completely and utterly lost. She’s my responsibility.
Her safety and happiness have always been my responsibility, and I’m failing her. ”
“Roshan.” A voice came from behind Nimita.
Roshan did not need to look to know it was his mother. He didn’t want to acknowledge her. He wanted to stay lost and safe in Nimita’s eyes.
“Oh, Vinay.” His mother’s voice was full of true regret. “What have we done?”
Nimita tried to remove her hands from his to stand. He shook his head at her. She nodded and stayed put.
“Beta,” his mom said. “We know that taking care of Malini consumed all of our lives since her diagnosis.” He heard the tears in her voice. But all he saw was the gentle fire in Nimita’s eyes. “I had no idea what that was doing to you. What we had asked of you.”
His father spoke. “You seemed to be able to handle everything. We were distracted by her, we ignored you—but you always seemed like you were doing well, succeeding at everything.” He paused. “I assumed that meant you were happy. I was…mistaken.”
Roshan shifted his gaze to his parents.
“We love you. We are proud of you—and not just because of what you do for Malini. But because of who you are,” his father said.
“Your worth is not relative to Malini. Your worth is that you are you,” his mother said. “Can you ever forgive us?”
He looked at Nimita and she gave him a small smile and gently dropped his hand, before stepping back. “I should check on my dad,” she said, leaving him to talk with his parents.
Roshan watched her go, and the room was a bit colder than it had been. He stood and faced his parents. “Thank you for saying that.”
They talked for a while. His parents talked about all of the things he had done—awards he had won, accomplishments—they had been paying attention.
“You pushed yourself very hard,” his father said. “Even when you gave her bone marrow, you hardly rested.”
“I had to.” Roshan shrugged liked it was obvious.
“What do you mean, Beta?” his mother asked.
“I mean I pushed myself to be the best just as much for you to notice me as for you to know I was okay and didn’t have to worry about me.”
His parents blanched. “Beta.” His father leaned toward him. “That was never… I mean…” His father swallowed hard, tears brimmed in his eyes.
“What we mean,” his mother picked up, “is that that was never the intention. We were and are always proud of you. We love you, awards or not, no matter what.”
They sat and talked a bit longer.
“We are going to see Malini now,” his mother said.
“How is she?” his father asked him.
“Vinay!” His mother chided his father. “What did you just say to him? We will go, and we will see for ourselves.” Her brow furrowed, she shook her head at her husband before looking at Roshan and rolling her eyes.
“This will take time. But we will do it.” His mother grabbed his father by the arm and marched him from the waiting room.
Roshan almost chuckled. He had never seen his mother roll her eyes like that before.
“I’ll join you in a moment.” Roshan sagged back into his chair. There was a feeling of lightness where there had not been before. He texted Vishal and Karan. You’ll never believe the conversation I just had with my mom and dad.
His friends blew up his phone as he told them. They would always be his family, but it was nice to have his mom and dad.