After All This Time

by Nikita Singh

  ‘Relax,’ Lavanya murmured, much to Shourya’s relief was glad Lavanya was speaking softly too. ‘It will be over before you know it. Don’t think too much.’

  ‘Is there nothing I can say to change your mind?’

  Lavanya shook her head.

  ‘Fine! It’s decided then. We are getting Hepatitis or AIDS, or I don’t know . . . some other kind of blood-borne infectious disease today. Let’s face some needles,’ Shourya patted Lavanya’s back and nudged her towards her cubicle.

  ‘At least we are in this together. See you on the other side!’ he called, as he drew the curtain to the small room where Michael was supposed to take care of him.

  9

  Lavanya was steered into a dingy stall in a corner of the tattoo studio. The artist who would ink her introduced herself as Zia and asked her if she was ready. Lavanya did not respond in any way; no words, not even a nod. Zia did not seem to care. She started setting up the workstation.

  Lavanya slumped into the reclining chair, her body curling inwards. It was as if her spine could not be bothered with keeping itself straight.

  ‘You can relax. It is a relatively small tat. Not gonna take long.’ Zia was wearing a translucent white tank top, her purple bra completely visible underneath, with neon green nylon shorts. Lavanya noticed how her entire right arm and whatever was visible of her chest was covered in one tattoo—a vibrant, red and gold snake coiled itself around her arm, all the way to her shoulder, its mouth open to reveal its fangs above Zia’s chest.

  For some reason, the snake’s fang was pink in colour. Lavanya could not stop staring at it, not even when Zia caught her at it. A thin, sharp fang, almost like a needle.

  Lavanya’s eyes were drawn to the small machine that Zia was holding. Her fingers were around the coil of the tattoo gun, through which a thin needle emerged, inching closer to Lavanya’s skin. It was not one needle. There were five very fine needles disguised as one, but Lavanya was looking close enough to notice.

  It was the only thing she could see. In that moment, it was the centre of the world. As she felt the first sweet prick of the needle, she was transported back to another time.

  There was darkness. There were lights—red and blue and green—but they did not do anything to brighten up the room in the least. They did not need light anyway. They had enough of their own, inside.

  Once they had white magic flowing through their veins, who needed light bulbs?

  Her cheek was resting against something hard, and cold. Soon it did not feel cold any more. Whatever little warmth was left in her body was transferred to the cold tile, warming it. Her feet were freezing. She tried to pull them towards her body, but they refused to move. Not even an inch.

  Her throat felt parched, her mouth dry. Except for the loud trance music blasting through the speakers, there was absolute silence. She had a funny feeling in her gut. Something terrible had happened.

  She managed to push her body up, resting her palms flat against the floor. She had to sit like that for a minute, wait for her head to stop spinning, prepare her body for the next step—getting to her feet. It proved more difficult than she had expected. In the end, she settled for pushing herself back against the couch and resting her head on the worn edge. It was hard—the foam had given away and the woodwork was showing. Fortunately, comfort was the least of her concerns at that moment.

  She looked around for her cell phone. Her head stayed still, only her eyes moved, scanning the room. She thought she saw the silver edge of her phone under an arm. With enormous effort, she crawled to it. The arm was large and hairy, just like the body it was attached to, its big belly rising and falling evenly, repeatedly. There was nothing lying around to cover it with.

  She pushed the arm away, only to reveal a needle, some loose white powder, and a credit card. Those rectangular pieces of plastic had proved very useful that night. And also the needle. The silver of the needle glinted red, then blue, then green as the disco lights flashed. Red, blue, green. Repeat.

  Lavanya jerked her arm away. The sweet pain shooting through her right arm did not cease. It was concentrated in one tiny point on her wrist. She gaped at it. A minuscule A sat there, red and throbbing.

  ‘Is everything okay, ma’am?’ Zia asked, looking at Lavanya with concern.

  Lavanya’s eyes shot up and met Zia’s. ‘Needle,’ she muttered.

  ‘Ah, it’s no big deal. You’ve got to relax a tad. I’m going to be done before you know it.’

  Zia pulled Lavanya’s wrist back and tried to put it back in position, but Lavanya jerked it away again.

  ‘Ma’am, it’s okay. It won’t hurt any more than the first letter, and that wasn’t that bad, yeah?’ Zia looked nervously at Lavanya, who shook her head. ‘Did I do something wrong?’

  Lavanya shot to her feet all of a sudden.

  ‘Ma’am, please. Tell me if I did something wrong. My manager will kill me. He’s always looking for an excuse to yell at me.’ Zia’s expression was terrified.

  For a second, Lavanya almost sat back down. But her eyes fell on the needle again and she ran out of the stall, as if she could not leave fast enough. Her sneakers made a strange squeaky sound against the tiled floor.

  ‘What’s going on?’ the man at the reception asked as Lavanya flew past him.

  ‘ZIA! What did you do?’ she heard him thunder.

  Lavanya tried to turn back, to tell him that Zia had not done anything wrong, that it was the demons of her past that had chased her away. She could not be rescued any more, but she could help Zia keep her job. Even knowing that, her legs did not stop long enough for her to turn back.

  She walked briskly towards Shourya’s car. Too late, she realized she did not have the keys. She paced around the car, like a lunatic—round and round and round. She should have known better. What was she thinking, getting a tattoo? She had HIV. HIV. She was a threat to others; she could not risk getting her blood on a needle. She could infect someone if it wasn’t sterilized properly. How could she have been so reckless? So thoughtless? She brought her wrist close to her eyes, looking at the tiny A. It was swollen, and red. The black ink was covered with her blood. Such an innocuous murder weapon.

  Round and round and round.

  HIV.

  What if her immune system was not strong enough to heal the tattoo wound? What if it grew, and kept getting bigger till it covered her wrist, and then her hand and arm, slowly spreading across her body. What if she never got better again?

  Round and round and round.

  She needed answers. She could not keep running from it. What if the time she had wasted ignoring her condition made it too late for her? What if her condition kept worsening and there was nothing that could be done? Doctor. She needed to go to the doctor. She needed to get some tests done. She needed treatment. She chuckled. Who was she fooling? There was no cure.

  Round and round and round.

  Lavanya kept walking in circles around the car, her feet refusing to stop. She was getting dizzy, her legs were becoming wobbly, her armpits sticky. She pushed her hair back from her face angrily and was surprised to find it damp. Her cheeks were damp too.

  Round and round and round.

  She could not let Shourya anywhere near a needle. She had to stop him. She had to rush back in and drag him out with her. She had to tell him how stupid she was. What she had done.

  Round and round and—bump.

  Her knee collided with the car’s bumper and a sharp pain shot through her leg. She buckled down to the ground, clutching her leg, her hands tightly wound around her knee, trying to block out the pain. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  It was one thing to destroy your own life, but forcing the only friend you’ve ever had to participate in your stupid schemes, endangering his life? She was disgusted by herself. She craned her neck to look back at the tattoo parlour. Shourya had had his doubts about the place; he had asked her repeatedly if she was sure. If something were to happen to him . . .

  He
r head was bursting with what ifs. Her body had stopped trying to get back up. She sighed loudly, and bowed her head in defeat. Her eyes rested on her tattoo and she had the overwhelming urge to scratch it out. Her cheeks were still wet, and she did not know what to do about it.

  Lavanya was living a lie. Keeping a secret that was killing her inside. She could not handle it, she now knew. It was too much. Every second that passed made her realize that she was one second closer to dying, and she was doing nothing to stall it. Nothing except pretending to be fine. Of ‘protecting’ those who loved her, as if the pain of her death would be easier than dealing with her sickness.

  She was tired of pretending.

  ‘What do you mean, she ran away?’ Shourya asked the guy at the reception.

  ‘She got up and ran away! I swear I did not do anything wrong. I asked her, but she did not say anything!’ the young tattooist was saying animatedly.

  ‘Where did she go?’ Shourya went to the door to see if his car was still there; Lavanya couldn’t have driven off since he had the keys. He pulled out his cell phone and dialled her number.

  ‘Sir, sir . . . your bill,’ the man at the reception called after him. ‘And I will have to put madam’s expense on your bill too?’

  ‘Did she get her tattoo? You said she did not get it.’ She was not taking his call. He dialled again.

  ‘She got some of it—’

  ‘Fine, put it on mine,’ Shourya said. He paid the bill and rushed back to his car. Where could Lavanya have gone, without telling him? She was the one who had insisted they get this done. Her to-do list seemed important to her. It was unlike her to get up in the middle of it and run away without a clue. His car was sitting only a few yards away from the tattoo parlour. He looked around. Maybe she’d gone to a coffee place nearby to wait for him. Or maybe she’d gone back home, and was too ashamed of panicking and bolting to take his calls. She’d chickened out! He looked at his tattoo. It was still red and swollen, but it had turned out well. He had had his reservations about the place, but Michael turned out to be good at what he did. After the first few minutes, it was not bad at all.

  On the inside of his left arm were the words ‘great perhaps’ in an old-school typewriter font. The main character in Looking for Alaska follows the words of the poet Francois Rabelais, who said, ‘I go to see a Great Perhaps’, and embarks on a pursuit of his own great perhaps. The idea of having a sense of purpose and connection to a grander cause had stayed with Shourya long after he’d finished reading the book.

  Shourya could not wait to show off his tattoo to Lavanya. He walked around his car and . . .

  ‘Lavanya?’

  She was sitting on the pavement next to his SUV. She looked up, squinting in the sunlight, her face white like a ghost’s. There were purple bags under her eyes, every vein visible under the thin translucent skin there. Her cheeks were red, the kind of red caused by an abrasion. To most people she would appear stressed and worn out, but not many would conclude tears. Except Shourya. He had seen her biting the inside of her lower lip far too many times to not know that she did that to keep her lips from trembling, a tell-tale sign of crying. It was obvious that she had been crying now. But there was also something in her eyes. Something . . . more.

  Lavanya’s eyes were squinted against the sunlight, but were gazing intently into Shourya’s. Her lips were closed together, but her eyes were asking something of him, something he did not understand.

  He dropped to his knees and crouched in front of her. ‘What is it? What is wrong, Lavi?’ He knew it wasn’t about some stupid tattoo she’d chickened out of getting. She was hiding something from him, and if this was the condition her secret had left her in, he had to find out what it was.

  ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘Come on.’ Shourya took both her hands in his and pulled her up with him. He deposited her in the passenger’s seat and walked around the car to the driver’s side. She would try to fight it, he knew. She never did give in easily. But this time he was not going to back down because he could see that she needed help.

  He climbed into the car and slid the key into the ignition, but didn’t turn it.

  ‘Tell me,’ he demanded softly.

  Lavanya’s eyes darted around the car, and she blinked several times before she turned towards him and met his eyes again.

  ‘Seven years,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ Shourya asked softly.

  ‘That’s how long I had not been home in. This is the first time I have come back since I left.’

  No!

  Shourya was thrown. He did not know how to respond at first. He tried to put all the pieces together. He had always known about her issues with her father and the troubles she faced with letting go of them. When he learned that she still had not been able to move on from what had happened with her father years ago, he was surprised. But now it made more sense. She had not been home in seven years—the trouble had not gone away. She had found it exactly as it was when she walked back in.

  She could not move past it because she was still living in the past.

  ‘It is the same . . . all still the same,’ she muttered. ‘Exactly how I left it. Only, Mom is older, and lonelier.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ever come back?’

  ‘I could not . . . It wasn’t like I didn’t try. I called Mom sometimes and asked her how she was doing. I always made sure she was okay. But I could not come back here, Shourya, I could not. It was too hard and ugly and painful for me. ’

  ‘It did not need to be. I know you feel like you had to run away, Lavi, but you really did not. That was never the solution.’ Shourya saw the pained expression on Lavanya’s face and stopped.

  ‘Why are you saying that now . . . now when I can do nothing to change it? To rub my mistakes in my face? To prove that I was wrong?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry. I did not mean it in that sense.’

  ‘I had to go. I had to. And at that time, I honestly believed that that was the only way I would ever be able to forget things and start over. I believed that it was the only way I would feel normal after . . . You have no idea what I went through.’

  ‘I do, Lavi. Trust me, I do.’ Shourya’s tone was almost pleading. He could sense the agony she was in, and he wanted it to end.

  ‘You don’t!’ Lavanya hissed.

  Shourya reached out and held her hand. He felt it burn his skin for a second before she pulled away.

  ‘We need to get you home. You have a fever.’ Shourya started the car.

  ‘No! You think it should have been easy for me. To forget about it, to forgive him and move on. Turn a new leaf, begin a new chapter, or whatever fancy name you want to give it. But it is not as simple as that. Once you’ve seen your father . . . naked in your science teacher’s bedroom . . . You try to live with something like that, and tell me if it is easy!’ Lavanya said heatedly, tears flowing down her cheeks. ‘Nobody had any respect for me. I was the butt of all jokes. He was the one having an affair, but I became the school slut.’

  Shourya could see what the conversation was doing to Lavanya, but he could not stay quiet. He had to speak up. ‘I never said it was easy. But running away was never the solution. What’s changed now that you’ve come back so many years later, other than the fact that everyone is almost a decade older? You’re picking up from where you left off. If anything, judging by that night when I was over, things have only become more awkward.’

  ‘Of course they have! He never even apologized!’

  ‘How could he? Have you even given him the chance to speak to you? How is he supposed to say anything to you, when you don’t talk to him at all? Have you ever stopped being angry with him long enough to consider how tough it must be for him?’

  ‘Him?’ Lavanya shrieked. ‘What do you care about him? Why are you always taking his side?’

  ‘Lavanya! Be reasonable. I did not say I was taking his side, I am just trying to see how it must have been for him. One mistake and that has defined th
e way his daughter is going to treat him for the rest of his life.’

  ‘It was not a small mistake, Shourya!’ Lavanya snapped. ‘You know how tough it became for me to even go to school.’

  ‘I know. And I understand what you went through. I was there through most of it, and I am here now. You know that.’ Shourya tried to hold her hand again, and this time, she let him. ‘Listen,’ he continued after a pause, ‘you just got here. It took you long enough, but the fact that you were able to come here shows that you are stronger than you give yourself credit for. Give it time.’

  ‘Weren’t seven years enough?’ she sighed, resting her back against the car seat and closing her eyes.

  Shourya reached out and touched her cheek. ‘Seven years when you weren’t here. Now you are, and it’s only been, what, seven days?’

  ‘It’s too difficult, Shourya.’

  Shourya could see her closed eyelids pressed in deep pain. Her breathing was slow and deliberate. He did not want to argue with her any more. She was running a fever and becoming groggy—she clearly needed rest. ‘Yes, it is,’ he said. ‘But it’s going to be okay soon.’

  He made her fasten her seatbelt and drove her back home. Her eyes were closed the entire time.

  10

  Lavanya took the long way around the huge lawn in front of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). She walked briskly, intently, wasting no time. Even though it had been a long time since she had lived in Delhi, she feared being spotted in the hospital. It was the last thing she needed.

  She had stayed up all night, reading up on the Internet, which was overflowing with countless resources for people infected with HIV. The websites she found were very . . . kind. She Googled ‘what happens if i am tested hiv positive’ and read from the first ten sites that were listed in the search results. After four hours of reading through government and healthcare sites, she had a sense of what the next steps for her would probably be.