He went silent. But his gaze remained on hers.
Amaal couldn’t see him like this again. Like he had been when talking about Chaturvedi. She knitted her brows, asking him quietly what he meant. But his head shook, the veins in his neck standing stiff as his head fell back into his palm. And Amaal pushed forward, clutching the back of his head. He did not resist. She patted it. He stayed still.
When nothing was said for a long moment, she asked — “What must be good, Samar?”
He pushed off with a gasp. His eyes were wide, shocked, staring unblinkingly into hers. The opening and closing of the door jerked her to her feet. Fahad turned the corner, files in hand. He handed them over to Samar and strode inside the door where Atharva was kept. Amaal crossed her arms across her chest, looking at Samar. He was alert now, turning pages on the hospital file.
“Where is Atharva Bhai?!” Fahad came running out.
“He is not there?” Samar shot to his feet. “Where the hell did he…”
“I’m here, don’t panic.” A hoarse voice came from the ICU door at the end of the alley. Amaal gasped. Atharva looked… destroyed. His skin was dark, sooty, moulded to his bones. His voice was not his. His hair was mussed. He wore a hospital scrub top over his pants.
“Fucking give me a break!” Samar pushed to him.
“I just went to see her…” he cleared his throat.
“Do not get up from your bed. Go take your oxygen.”
“I’m fine.”
“Fahad.”
Amaal looked on as Fahad grabbed Atharva by the bicep and pulled him towards the examination rooms. Their eyes met —Be with her, he mimed, tipping his chin to the ICU door. Amaal nodded.
“Sit down,” she told Samar.
“Don’t fucking tell me to sit down!” He raged.
“Keep your voice down,” she hissed, stepping into his chest. “This is an ICU.”
All the bluster left his mouth. Samar nodded, and took a seat on the chair.
“I am going to go see Iram now. Sit here quietly.”
He nodded. Amaal walked to the door, sanitised her hands at the station outside and pushed it open.
Samar watched her go.
Sitting here outside the ICU, with Atharva not understanding the repercussions of his smoke poisoning and reports on Iram’s sexual battery still not out, he found himself reduced to the smallest pest in the universe. What had he been thinking? What part of him had been operating? How could he have let this happen? How could he not foresee this possibility? How was he so blind? Whatever that girl was, whoever her father was, however she had trapped Atharva — she did not deserve this.
Samar stared blindly at the half-open door of the ICU.
He was not this man. He had not been this man. His harm was towards himself, not the world. He had wanted Iram Haider away, not brutalised. He was spiralling in this need for something to slake the thirst of his revenge, but the repercussions of that were his. Only his. Not somebody else’s. Not even Iram Haider’s. And definitely not Atharva’s.
Atharva had hidden from him, pushed him into a corner, taken him off the equation, chosen Adil, not trusted him. Samar hated all of it with a vengeance. And even now, even in Atharva’s pain that made him guilty, a small, cruel part of him revelled. How was he guilty and glad all at once? Why was he glad that Atharva was suffering but also needed Atharva to be ok? What was this madness?
Let Atharva live, but let him know how it feels!Some sick, deranged part of him screamed.
“Iram Haider?” Amaal’s soft voice penetrated his ears. And his vision cleared. He focused on the back of her head. She stood at the nurse’s station inside. The ICU door pulled close on its own behind her, cutting her voice and the sliver of her shadow.
The echo of her voice, though, remained.
Samar breathed in.
He stared at the closed door.
All the bad, all the mad, all the sad inside him rose from his emptiness.
