The Reason is You

by Nikita Singh

  ‘Akriti?’ He looked around for her, but she was nowhere in sight. He couldn’t remember if she’d said she had an early shift, and made a mental note to thank her for the rose when he saw her at work.

  In the weeks following Akriti’s sudden declaration of love for Siddhant, it was never brought up again, even though the memory was vivid in Siddhant’s mind. They saw each other practically every day. If they didn’t see each other at work, they met up afterwards, and as far as Siddhant could tell, everything was okay between them.

  Of course, he wasn’t foolish enough to believe that she had forgotten what she had said to him that night, but he wondered if she had realized later that she wasn’t really in love with him, at least not romantically, not yet. They had shared an emotional moment, and in the heat of it, she’d said something she probably didn’t mean seriously.

  Whatever the case, she didn’t bring up the topic and neither did he. She seemed to be doing rather well, and he was really enjoying her company. They had grown more comfortable around each other. They were going out very frequently, and on nights that they were too tired to hang out with the rest of the world, she would come over and they’d order take-out.

  Siddhant was still constantly surprised by her courage. In the two months since her father’s unexpected death, Akriti had come a long way. When Siddhant looked at her now, he could only see a small part of the broken girl he had seen in Amritsar. There were days when they didn’t talk about her father or her family at all. He made sure she knew he was there for her anytime she needed him, but he was too happy to see her smiling to bring up sad memories.

  ‘Wanna carpool?’ Priyesh hollered from the living room.

  ‘Give me a minute,’ Siddhant called back. He did a final phone-wallet-keys check and emerged in the living room a second later. ‘Let’s go.’

  Priyesh gave Siddhant a sideways glance as they walked to the car. ‘What are you smiling about?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing. Was I smiling?’

  ‘Like an idiot.’ Priyesh looked annoyed with Siddhant’s apparent happiness.

  ‘Sorry!’ Siddhant laughed.

  ‘What, are you in love or something?’

  ‘Dude, I smiled. Big deal. Let it go.’

  On the drive to the hospital, Siddhant figured out the reason behind his idiotic smile. He was genuinely happy. He wouldn’t go as far as saying that he was in love, but maybe he was starting to fall …

  He didn’t want to dwell on it.

  He didn’t get the time to do so either. Soon after they arrived at work, there was an emergency case they were both put on. The operation lasted the entire day and took everything Siddhant had to offer. When it was finally over, he gobbled some mediocre cafeteria food while texting Akriti to see where she was.

  ‘Oh man, I’m gonna pass out,’ Priyesh complained, shoving large spoonfuls of food into his mouth.

  ‘Yeah, you look delirious. Like you’re drugged or something.’

  ‘I feel drugged too. We should just take a cab now and pick up the car tomorrow. Your girl coming?’

  Siddhant picked up his phone. Akriti hadn’t texted him back. ‘She didn’t say … I think she went home already. Let’s just go. I’ll drive.’

  Priyesh fell asleep on the way and woke up with a start when they arrived home. They made their way up to the apartment without a word and parted ways in the living room.

  Siddhant checked his phone again, hoping to see a message from Akriti, but found that his phone was dead. He plugged it in, intending to call her before falling asleep, and fell face-first on his bed. A few minutes later, before his phone was sufficiently charged to be turned on, he had dozed off, still clutching it.

  The following day in the hospital, he looked for Akriti again, and learned that she hadn’t come in. Nor had she come in on the previous day. Panic rising in his chest, he pulled out his phone and called her.

  ‘Pick up, pick up,’ he muttered as it continued to ring at the other end.

  He only had a few minutes before he had to scrub for surgery, but he desperately wanted to talk to Akriti and make sure she was okay before he was cut off from the outside world for hours on end.

  ‘You coming?’ Dr Mehta asked.

  Siddhant looked up. ‘Yes. Yes, I’m coming.’ He put his phone away and joined Dr Mehta and two other doctors. They went over the procedure for the surgery, and Siddhant had to push away worrying thoughts about Akriti from his mind. Before they went in, however, he excused himself for a minute and sent her a text message.

  Hey, heard you didn’t come in today. All okay? Sorry couldn’t call last night – phone died. Heading into surgery now, will call after. Please text me that you’re okay.

  As soon as he entered the operation room, all thoughts unrelated with surgery disappeared from his mind. He was assisting two of the best doctors in the hospital, which was a rare learning opportunity, and he tried to absorb as much information as he could.

  Despite the nine straight hours they spent in surgery, when they finished and stepped out, Siddhant was exhilarated. Surgeries like this reminded him why he loved his job. Apart from the chance to learn new techniques from the best minds in the field, and the thrill of saving someone’s life, there was an unexplained pull he felt towards this profession. It was challenging, it demanded everything he had, but the payback was far greater than the investment.

  As he changed in the locker room, he picked up his phone and checked for messages, but there was nothing from Akriti. His fears came rushing back. He called her immediately, but her phone was turned off. Once he was dressed, he located her friends, but they hadn’t heard from her either.

  Wiping sweat off his forehead, he considered his options. Who else could he ask? Should he go over to her place? She was probably just fine. In the time that they’d known each other, they had barely gone thirty-six hours without talking to each other until today, but that wasn’t necessarily a reason to panic. When he had last seen her, she had seemed okay. She had stayed over at his place that night, but disappeared the following morning, without a word, leaving a rose on his nightstand. He had assumed that she’d had an early shift, and maybe she did, but it was very unusual for her to not show up to work for two days without a word to anyone, let alone just him.

  It was clear that something was wrong, and ten minutes later, he found himself driving to her place.

  Akriti lived alone in an apartment in south Delhi, and when Siddhant reached her building, a feeling of dread rose like an ugly snake in his chest. He took the elevator to her floor, trying to calm himself. When he rang the bell, no one answered. He waited anxiously for a few minutes, bile rising in his throat. Just as he began contemplating asking one of the neighbours, the elevator doors opened behind him. He turned around to see Akriti step out, carrying three supermarket shopping bags.

  She stalled when she saw him, and a soft ‘Sid’ escaped her mouth.

  ‘Where have you been?! I was looking all over for you,’ Siddhant said, rushing to her.

  ‘Out shopping,’ Akriti said shortly. She walked calmly to her door and set the bags on the floor.

  ‘Shopping? Where?’

  Digging into her handbag for keys, she asked, ‘Where? Do you want the names and addresses of the stores I get my groceries from?’

  Siddhant paused. He couldn’t read her mood. He sensed that under her calm demeanour she was angry. ‘No, of course not. I was worried, that’s all.’

  ‘Worried. Why?’

  He followed her inside and watched her put her things away. ‘Because I didn’t know if you were okay. I haven’t heard from you in two days!’

  ‘I called you last night but your phone was switched off.’

  ‘I’m sorry, that’s my bad. My phone died and I put it on charge but I was so tired from work that I just passed out,’ Siddhant explained hurriedly. ‘I was going to call you, really.’

  ‘Sure. Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘No, it matters; I should’ve called you last
night. I’m sorry. I tried calling this morning before surgery, and then again after surgery. Your phone was off …’

  Akriti didn’t look at him. She simply shrugged and said, ‘My phone died.’

  Siddhant was at a loss. She was clearly angry with him, but he didn’t know why, or even how to make it better. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked plainly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  When Akriti was done putting away her groceries, she walked into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. It was as if he wasn’t even there. He decided to give her some space, let her adjust to his sudden appearance in her home. He sat down on the living room couch from where he could see her in the kitchen, busy moving things randomly. It was several minutes before she came to him.

  ‘What’s your plan?’ she asked, looking bored.

  ‘My plan?’

  ‘Yes. How long do you plan to stay here? Because I have to go to bed.’

  Siddhant stood up. ‘Are you kicking me out?’

  ‘I’m just asking if you have a purpose behind being here.’

  ‘I do. I want to talk to you, and I want to make sure you’re okay,’ Siddhant said. Before she could protest, he added, ‘And don’t say you’re fine. Because I know you’re not. You’re mad at me. So, tell me, what did I do?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She said it quietly, and he detected a change in her tone. She was warming up to him.

  ‘Akriti.’ He held her arms and pulled her closer to him. ‘Look at me.’

  She looked up, her face still impassive.

  ‘What’s going on? Tell me,’ he coaxed.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Something,’ he insisted. ‘I’ve been freaking out – I couldn’t find you, you weren’t at work, your phone was off. We haven’t spoken in two days. I was losing my mind.’

  Akriti jerked her arms out of his grasp and said heatedly, ‘Why do you care, friend?’

  ‘What?’ Siddhant was completely taken aback.

  ‘I haven’t talked to any of my other friends in two days either. They’re not barging into my home demanding an explanation. Why can’t you and I go two days without talking to each other, friend?’ Akriti was positively breathing fire.

  ‘Because we don’t … We talk every day …’ Siddhant said, trying to figure out where this was coming from. ‘It’s different. We’re not just friends, we’re more than that.’

  ‘Oh, we’re not? Did I make a mistake with the white rose then? I wasn’t aware we were more than just friends. When did that happen?’ Akriti challenged.

  ‘From the beginning! The first time we hung out, it was a date. We weren’t hanging out as friends. You know this. What’s going on?’ Siddhant tried to take her hand, but she walked away from him.

  ‘What’s going on is that you don’t give a fuck!’ If she had intended for that to sound emotionless, she failed. Her voice was shaking.

  ‘What are you talking about?! I care about you so so much. I’ve told you that so many times. I don’t understand what’s happening here.’ This time, when he grasped her arm and turned her around to face him, she didn’t resist. ‘Akriti, what’s going on?’

  She looked up at him with sad eyes, tears streaming down her face. ‘You don’t love me.’

  Siddhant froze.

  It took him several moments to recover. Their eyes were locked. He put everything that had happened since she had said ‘I love you’ in chronological order and tried to make sense of it all. It was like trying to work through a puzzle. Had she been pretending all this while to not care about the fact that he hadn’t said he loved her back? Was the white rose a passive aggressive gesture, a sign? Did she actually mean what she had said that night, and was upset with him for not feeling the same way about her?

  She loved him. That was it – she loved him, and she was angry that he hadn’t expressed the same feelings for her. She was watching him with such misery in her eyes. He hated to see her unhappy. He gulped.

  ‘I love you,’ he said quietly, his eyes still locked with hers.

  ‘Really?’ Akriti let out a laugh-cry.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner.’

  She jumped up on her toes and hugged him in excitement.

  He held her, his heart in turmoil. He let her face fall into her hair and said, ‘Promise me you won’t think like this anymore. You’re not unloved and I do care. Please don’t lock me out like this again. It’s a terrible place to be; I felt so … helpless and terrified. We’re on the same team. Please let me in and share whatever’s going on with me so I can try to help.’

  Akriti hugged him tighter and whispered, ‘I promise.’

  Chapter 5

  ‘You should’ve seen Dr Mehta in surgery today. I’ve never seen so many things go wrong simultaneously. It was a perfect storm,’ Siddhant said. He took a hurried gulp of water and resumed, ‘But man, he did not panic or even hesitate for one second. He was like a superhero in there, putting out one fire after the other without so much as a crease on his forehead.’

  ‘Sounds fun,’ Akriti said gloomily, playing with the food on her plate.

  ‘It really was,’ Siddhant continued, his excitement unfaltering. ‘Ah, man, this is what I got into this profession for. Priyesh, you know what I mean, right?’

  ‘Dude, I’m just happy my patients don’t keep dying anymore,’ Priyesh said, without looking up from his food.

  They were sitting in the hospital cafeteria. Even though Siddhant’s shift was over and he was free to go home, he had wanted to hang out with Akriti before heading out. Both Akriti and Priyesh were working overnight shifts, and neither of them was particularly pleased about it.

  ‘Your patients keep dying?’ Akriti looked curiously at Priyesh.

  ‘Kept, past tense. For a whole month. It was horrible.’ Priyesh shook his head, his eyes wide, as if he was remembering an especially bad case. ‘Thank God it’s stopped. I was this close to giving up medicine.’

  ‘He thought he was killing them,’ Siddhant interjected.

  ‘Like, on purpose?’ Akriti asked.

  ‘No, more like a jinx or a curse of some sort that he couldn’t shake off. And it’s weird, because for a second there, he really did believe there was an inexplicable supernatural element to it. He would get a straightforward case, and unforeseen complications would arise out of thin air.’

  ‘You have no idea!’ Priyesh said. ‘And I’m a man of science, I don’t believe in hocus-pocus, but you can’t deny that they stopped—’ he lowered his voice before continuing – ‘the patients stopped dying on my table once my mom had that puja done at home.’

  ‘Oh, come on!’ Siddhant groaned. ‘Not this again!’

  ‘You cannot be serious!’ Akriti exclaimed. ‘There’s no way there was any connection between patients losing their lives and your mom’s puja!’

  Priyesh evaluated his position for a second, looking from Akriti to Siddhant, before saying, ‘Let’s put it like this: I don’t think that the puja helped, but I don’t think that it didn’t either.’

  ‘Dude—’ Siddhant began, but Akriti put her hand on his arm.

  ‘This argument could go on forever. Let’s just drop it,’ she said. ‘Besides, we’ve gotta go. Ugh, I hate overnight shifts. And don’t say I chose this life!’

  ‘I wasn’t going to!’ Siddhant defended himself.

  ‘He was,’ Priyesh countered, laughing. ‘It’s his favourite thing to say.’

  ‘You do say that a lot,’ Akriti seconded Priyesh.

  ‘Fine, I do. But it’s only because it’s so challenging … I have to keep reminding myself that I chose this life and while the lows are really low, the highs are incomparable,’ Siddhant said. ‘Exhibit A: the surgery with Dr Mehta today. I don’t even mind how under-rested I am right now, because that surgery was out of this world.’

  ‘There he goes again …’ Priyesh said, getting up.

  ‘Don’t listen to him; he’s just jealou
s because he has to do clinic duty tonight while you worked on a cool case with rock star doctors all day,’ Akriti said, rising. She kissed the top of Siddhant’s head and said, ‘Gotta go. Love you.’

  Siddhant met Priyesh’s eyes for a split second, before he turned to Akriti and said, ‘Love you too.’

  ‘Good night!’ Akriti said, before walking away with Priyesh, leaving Siddhant sitting alone at the cafeteria table.

  It had been a month since he’d said ‘I love you’ to her, but every time it was said, it still gave him a tiny jolt. Akriti had formed a habit of saying love-you to him, while hanging up the phone, while texting him good night and, like that night, while parting ways at the hospital. On an average, she said it to him 3.5 times a day. In turn, Siddhant was left with no other choice but to say it back to her 3.5 times every day too.

  He was mostly okay with it; he liked spending time with Akriti, and they were now very comfortable around each other. But sometimes, he saw her, and he had this thought … that he didn’t know her at all.

  When the casual love-you exchanges first started happening, Priyesh had asked him what was up. Siddhant had refused to entertain him and told him that it was no big deal. Maybe Akriti was a little emotional, but it was completely justified, given the loss of, essentially, her entire family. Maybe in her current emotional state, she needed him more than he needed her, but it hardly meant that he wasn’t in this relationship willingly. He had to excuse the little things and give her a break – and see the best in her.

  Siddhant shook these thoughts from his mind and took his tray to the trash can. He had had an excellent day at work. And even though it had been a very long day, he was far from tired. He felt energized. Surgery really was his calling. And he felt fortunate to have found his purpose.

  As he made his way to the parking, he had a smile on his face. He got into his car and as he drove away, he watched the hospital in his rear-view mirror. An imposing structure, lit by hundreds of lights at night, it looked like home.