Someone to Love

by Ruchita Misra

  ‘God, Koyal, are you okay?’ Atharv exclaimed as he rushed towards her.

  She looked up at him, and felt something very weird happen to her heart. Slowly but steadily, like the wide wings of a great bird, it unfurled, happy and thankful.

  ‘You never betrayed me,’ she mumbled, her wide eyes taking in every detail of Atharv’s face.

  ‘Eh?’ He looked down at her, puzzled. ‘Is everything okay?’

  She got on the tips of her toes, leaned forward and planted a gentle, chaste kiss on his cheek.

  ‘Hey!’ exclaimed Atharv, laughing, but he soon wrapped his arms around her.

  ‘Friends?’ Koyal asked, leaning back and extending her hand.

  Atharv looked first at the hand and then at Koyal, his expression full of questions. Why, he wondered, did Koyal suddenly look like the Koyal from all those years ago? He stared at her face, oddly radiant, younger, happier than he had seen her in the longest time. Her eyes were bright as she peered at him with an expectant smile on her face.

  ‘Yes, friends,’ chimed in Mansha who now came running to them.

  ‘I was thinking,’ said Koyal, smiling and picking up Mansha, ‘we seem to have stopped Mummy nights?’ She looked at Atharv. ‘Daddy,’ she said, ‘why don’t you finish dinner and then join Mansha and me in her room? We need to talk about Mummy.’

  Atharv could only stare quizzically as Koyal marched off, carrying Mansha.

  ‘Mummy,’ Atharv mumbled, looking at his mother.

  ‘Yes, dear,’ Surya said as if waking up from a trance. She had watched Koyal from the moment she had torpedoed into the room with immense interest.

  ‘You need to close your mouth,’ Atharv said with a cheeky grin.

  Surya Aunty laughed and then turned to steal another look at the retreating figures of Koyal and Mansha.

  Slowly, she shook her head, unable to stop smiling. A weight seemed to have lifted off her shoulders. Whatever she may have thought of of Nili, from what she could now see, she had done right in the end. At least in the end.

  39

  It was close to two in the morning and Koyal hadn’t slept a wink. She stared at the ceiling, thinking, as the rain hit the tin roof of the patio in a steady rhythm. It was raining – the typical London rain, the half-hearted but incessant rain that insidiously chills your bones.

  Koyal was thinking about Nili’s letter. The only thing she could possibly blame Atharv for was for leading her into believing that he loved her. What if he was a different sort of a friend, a more intense friend, but a friend, nevertheless? She had been sure he could kill for her, and she could be right, but maybe he loved her enough to kill for her, but loved her only as a friend?

  Evenings spent imagining how it would feel like to kiss Atharv came back to Koyal and she blushed in the darkness of her London flat. How desperately she had wanted Atharv to be her first kiss. She found that a blush was creeping up again and she realized with a start that she still wished for it, even after all that had happened.

  The phone rang and Koyal’s heart skipped a beat. For even though she did not, her heart knew who was calling.

  She quickly answered it. ‘Atharv? Is everything okay?’

  ‘Uh … yes, I hope I didn’t wake you up.’

  ‘I was awake,’ she said, smiling in the dark.

  ‘I know…’

  She did not ask him how he knew. He always knew.

  ‘So…’ she said awkwardly.

  ‘Um … I just felt like a chat,’ he said, his voice hesitant.

  Koyal looked at the watch and smiled.

  ‘How was your day?’ she asked, settling the cushions around her comfortably for she knew this was going to be a long conversation.

  A conversation that was like a slow, meandering river that was in no hurry to go anywhere.

  He spoke and she listened indulgently, not missing a word. Every little bit he shared with her was precious and greedily gathered. The little words, priceless little gems, spoken in that soft, serious voice she had once madly loved, cherished.

  And when he asked after her, she joyfully shared bits of her day with him.

  When they finished the call, Koyal looked at the clock.

  Four a.m.

  She couldn’t help but smile. They were back to being four a.m. friends.

  Kimberly watched Koyal and Atharv from a distance, no longer able to concentrate on the conversation she was having and trying hard not to be jealous. It was the night of the annual dinner of the neurosurgery department, a black tie event held at the hospital. Each staff was allowed two guests and usually Atharv just got his mum or attended alone. This year, however, Koyal had showed up.

  Kimberly had stared at Koyal’s saree as she had walked in, the fawn embroidered Indian outfit dripping with understated elegance. Her hair was done in a sophisticated knot and diamonds hung from her ears, gleaming as they caught the light.

  Instinctively, her first reaction was to turn and look at Atharv. Her heart immediately sank. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, his eyes not leaving Koyal.

  And then, when Koyal smiled, a shy do-I-look-okay smile, he smiled a warm wide you-look-beautiful smile that, even though it wasn’t meant for her, melted Kimberly’s heart.

  Though Atharv was one of the younger surgeons, his huge success had earned him a spot on the stage, a very rare and big honour.

  Kimberly, sitting next to Koyal, watched with pride as Atharv took the stage, his face shining with intelligence and genuine warmth.

  ‘He is just the best,’ she whispered to Koyal who beamed. ‘I say this often,’ Kimberly continued. ‘If I ever need brain surgery, I will only trust Atharv.’

  ‘Gosh, no, I hope you never need surgery!’ Koyal laughed.

  ‘No, I mean it. Do you know, we started off as doctors together in San Francisco and it’s such a joy to see how much he has accomplished in such a short time.’

  ‘I’m sure it has been a great journey,’ Koyal said, wishing once again that she had been a part of it.

  ‘No, not really, not all for sure,’ Kimberly replied truthfully. ‘In fact some of it has been down right depressing, but Atharv has come out shining.’

  ‘You … were around when … um … Atharv lost his wife?’ Koyal asked hesitatingly.

  Kimberly took a deep breath, as if preparing herself to talk about that time.

  ‘She was in our hospital … in San Francisco, I mean. I saw her and him,’ she indicated the stage where Atharv was adjusting his mike, readying for the speech, ‘each day.’

  Koyal stared at Kimberly and then at Atharv who was smiling a wide, happy smile.

  ‘It’s nice to see him smile,’ Kimberly said, echoing Koyal’s thoughts. ‘Whenever I see him like this, even now, I think about the dark days after Nili’s diagnosis. You know what angered me the most?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They were dealing with a pregnancy and a brain cancer. Atharv is a neurosurgeon and Nili was a gynaecologist.’

  ‘But why did that make you angry? It must have meant that they knew exactly what treatment to take and could make the most informed decisions.’

  ‘Koyal, there were no informed decisions to make. All they could do was wait for Nili to die.’

  ‘Gosh!’

  ‘They had no hope,’ Kimberly said sadly. ‘Hope can be dangerous, but it can make the dark days less dark … I became a different kind of doctor after Nili,’ she said, and when she saw the questioning look in Koyal’s eyes, she continued, ‘What I mean is, I saw at such close quarters the effect of each bad report, each chemo session, each surgery … After that I could never just give a patient bad news and be done with it.’ She sighed. ‘I understand grief better.’

  Koyal was staring at her, lost in her words.

  ‘It affected me so deeply, I can only imagine how it affected him.’

  Koyal nodded.

  ‘And that is why, even though he was being offered crazy amounts of money to stay on in San Francisco, he mov
ed to London.’

  ‘Oh, is that why he came to London? What got him to San Francisco in the first place?’

  ‘He studied medicine at Stanford,’ said Kimberly. ‘That is where we first met.’

  Stanford? It had been his father’s dream.

  ‘He has an MA in philosophy from Stanford too, by the way,’ Kimberly said, smiling. ‘In fact that is what got us talking in the library the very first time.’

  ‘MA in philosophy?’ Koyal asked, surprised.

  ‘Yeah, he is a bit bonkers that way.’

  ‘He is.’ Koyal nodded and the two women looked at each other and grinned.

  ‘And then we both started working in the same hospital in San Francisco … and then London.’

  ‘He left San Francisco because of Nili?’

  ‘Yes and understandably so. Everything about the city reminded him of her. And then the hospital. I mean, how do you carry on working in the hospital where your wife died. I mean, how do you walk past that room, or pop into it to see another patient where you held your wife as she breathed her last…’

  Koyal felt goosebumps and she saw tears in Kimberly’s eyes.

  ‘It was such a horrible day,’ Kimberly whispered and then held her face in her hands. ‘We all knew she was slipping and we kept a vigil outside her room so that someone was around for Atharv when the time came … and then the C-sec happened and then … when they got her body out of the OT … It … it all happened so fast … The first and the last time I’ve seen Atharv sobbing like a little boy…’

  Koyal and Kimberley stared at each other, the pain in each pair of eyes visible to the other.

  The audience erupted into laughter, breaking the spell. Kimberly paused to look at Atharv who, she noted with surprise, was looking in their direction – not at her though.

  His eyes were focused on Koyal, he had seen that she was upset and his eyes were asking her, all the way from the stage, if she was okay.

  Kimberly saw Koyal quickly wipe off her tears, smile and nod her head.

  I am okay, she said to Atharv without using a single word.

  ‘You came to London too, around the same time as Atharv did?’ Koyal asked, trying hard to keep her face expressionless and her voice free of curiosity.

  ‘Um … yes … I got a job and plus I am half Scottish, I have some family close by, so it made a lot of sense, really,’ she fumbled, but Koyal knew.

  Koyal smiled and Kimberly noted the mole, the heart-shaped face and the perfect teeth. Koyal was very pretty, she thought to herself.

  ‘Your sari is gorgeous, by the way, and you look so beautiful tonight,’ Kimberly said and Koyal smiled again and thanked her for the unexpected compliment.

  The girls got up and joined in the cheering.

  ‘I didn’t hear a word!’ confessed Koyal.

  ‘All my fault!’ said Kimberly. ‘Maybe we’ll ask him to repeat the speech for us later,’ she said, giggling.

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’ Koyal asked.

  ‘Yes, sure.’

  ‘The Fuller scholarship.’

  ‘Yes, to get into Stanford Med. They offer it to very few students from across the globe each year.’

  ‘Do you know if Atharv…’

  ‘Oh yes, Atharv is a Fuller Admit,’ Kim cut in and Koyal smiled.

  I knew it, she thought, her smile widening into a grin.

  Kimberly tried hard to but she couldn’t take her eyes off Koyal and Atharv the entire evening. They sat next to each other during dinner, wrapped in their own world. Conversation flowed, engaging and seamless. So much so that it was a delight really to just hear them talk. They glided effortlessly from one topic to the other, making each other laugh. However, what surprised Kimberly more was the amount of conversation that seemed to happen without words.

  Somewhere in between the meal, Atharv asked the waitress to get some salt for Koyal.

  ‘That is very presumptuous of you, Atharv,’ mock-reprimanded a senior surgeon sitting at the same table. ‘At least let the lady tell you she needs some salt.’

  ‘She did,’ said Atharv simply and then looked at Koyal who nodded.

  ‘No,’ said the senior doctor, ‘you didn’t say a word, my dear.’

  ‘I…’ fumbled Koyal, looking confused, ‘probably thought about it…’

  ‘Happens all the time when you grow up with a person,’ Atharv said, smiling widely. ‘So even though she’s not saying it,’ he said and took off his jacket, ‘I know she is very cold.’ He put it around Koyal’s shoulders.

  Koyal looked up at him, their eyes met and Kimberly noticed how she never said thank you, yet her eyes said something to his and he nodded.

  ‘Childhood friends,’ said the senior doctor, looking thoughtfully at Koyal and Atharv and voicing Kimberly’s thoughts, ‘have their own special language.’

  Later that night, when the dancing had started and the lights had been dimmed, Koyal was lost in the scenes that Kimberly’s words had painted in her mind. A younger Atharv sobbing in a hospital where his wife had just died. Something about thinking of Atharv crying made her heart knot up. Why, why couldn’t she have been with him, to hold him, to put his head in her lap so that she could comfort him?

  And then she felt someone touch her elbow.

  She looked up, startled.

  Atharv, his face serious, very serious.

  Koyal followed his fingers and noted with some alarm that he was tracing the scar on her elbow again, his face getting darker.

  ‘Leave it, Atharv,’ she pleaded

  ‘I can’t, Koyal,’ he said.

  ‘What is the point?’

  ‘What you went through in the last ten years, when I wasn’t around, bothers me so much, Koyal,’ he said, his honest eyes breathing fire.

  ‘I can say the same,’ said Koyal softly.

  ‘I need to see the other scar,’ he said after a while, his voice so low that Koyal thought she had misheard him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The other scar.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I need to see it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just do.’

  ‘Here, no, how can I… ’

  ‘Come with me,’ he muttered and grabbed her hand.

  One hand in his and the other grabbing the pleats of her sari, Koyal had to literally run behind Atharv. He took her outside the hall, into another hallway, and then into a room.

  The room had a bed, a table and lots of books.

  ‘Please let me see it?’ he said again.

  ‘Atharv!’

  ‘Please!’

  Koyal ran a hand over her head. ‘Why?’

  ‘I need to see how bad it is.’

  ‘You saw it just the other day.’

  ‘Just a bit … I need to know how bad it is, Koyal.’

  ‘How will that help anything?’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘You are just hurting yourself.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ he said and gently turned her around.

  And then it struck her. She turned around sharply to face Atharv. ‘I can’t show the scar to you. I’m wearing a sari … I … the blouse … um…’

  ‘I am a doctor, Koyal.’

  ‘Atharv!’

  ‘Koyal, I don’t care about anything else, okay? I don’t care where the scar is, I just need to see it. Now please, turn around,’ he said in a softer voice.

  Koyal followed instructions, acutely aware of him now, grateful for the relative darkness of the room. She fumbled with the hooks of the blouse, which was thankfully one which fastened at the back, and when Atharv helped, Koyal could feel his cold fingers brushing against her flesh.

  ‘Let me do this,’ he said and slowly he undid the hooks and pushed aside the cloth. A waft of cold air hit Koyal between her shoulder blades.

  And then her skin burnt.

  Atharv was tracing his finger just along the scar. Though Koyal couldn’t see him, she knew exactly how his
face was at the moment. His eyes would be intent, his face angry, his mouth set.

  Neither spoke.

  Koyal took a deep breath, her body shivering at his touch.

  ‘What did he hit with?’ he asked, his voice hard.

  ‘A belt,’ she said after a pause. She felt him stiffen.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I … I … shouted at his mum. I was very rude … I…’ she trailed off.

  For the next few moments, he did not speak a word, but she could feel his eyes boring into her scar.

  ‘Atharv…’ she said, her voice breaking slightly, pleading, ‘stop putting yourself through this misery.’

  ‘Should I help you button up?’ he asked after a few seconds.

  ‘I will … I … no…’ She fumbled, trying to do up her blouse, but unable to, thanks to her hands that would not stop shaking. She then felt Atharv’s fingers and let her hands fall away. He did up the blouse and then turned her around so that they were facing each other again.

  He stared at her wet eyes and flushed cheeks and shook his head.

  ‘I am sorry, Koyal,’ he said softly. ‘From the day I first saw the scar, I haven’t been able to take my mind off it. I had to see to check if it was as bad as I remembered it to be.’

  ‘And was it?’

  ‘It is worse,’ he said softly, his expression pained.

  ‘It’s okay, it’s all over now,’ she said, putting her hands on his cheek. ‘This one will fade away too … it’s okay.’

  ‘It’s not okay, it will never be okay,’ he said, putting a hand at the back of her head. ‘I wish … I … we were not … I should have been there, Koyal. I will never forgive myself for this,’ he said.

  ‘Atharv…’ Koyal said helplessly.

  ‘Anyone,’ said Atharv, bending low, eyes boring into hers, ‘who as much as looks at you in a way you don’t like, I will kill.’

  ‘Drama queen,’ she chided, grinning.

  Atharv grinned. ‘Come here,’ he said and pulled her into a tight hug.

  Instead of squirming, Koyal let herself melt into his arms.

  ‘Don’t ever let anyone, anyone, do anything to you that you don’t want,’ he said in the darkness and she nodded.