by MV Kasi
"What? Oh. I..uh..I'm driving now. Since I...uh...no longer have nausea or dizziness."
"I see. That's...uh...good. See you home then," he said with a hint of amusement in his voice.
Her head snapped up, and she looked at him to see if he was making fun of her and the awkwardness of the situation.
Ajay's eyes were dancing with mirth.
Damn. He was making fun of her.
She composed herself and then said, "Yeah. See you home," with a cool nod and almost fled.
And while she headed towards her car, she felt weird. She found the doctor's sex talk awkward as hell. Which by itself was weird and ironic, since she had never been the prudish kind or ever shied away from the topic.
But Ajay's slight teasing made her feel...shy? No. That cannot be it.
Hopeful?
God, she hoped not. It would be stupid and foolish to hope. There was no chance in hell that Ajay would warm up to her or forgive her enough to be with her that way.
It must be the pregnancy hormones making her delusional.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
AJAY GOT INTO his car to drive back home from the hospital.
Hearing his child's heartbeat was one of the most moving things in his life. At that very moment, something had shifted in him. And when he saw the image of the ultrasound scan, he felt a fierce surge of protectiveness sweeping over him.
Suddenly, his pride, or his ego, or even his thoughts of revenge didn't matter to him anymore. The only thing that really mattered was the tiny life growing inside his wife.
His child would have to come first, before anything else. The added tension and stress when he was around Sia, must not be good for the baby.
So during the drive home, he decided to try his best to make Sia comfortable around him.
It shouldn't be that hard. Because before she had led him into the trap, he had actually enjoyed her company. Especially her dry sense of humor that most people around her didn't quite understand or get. So he decided to pursue a friendship of sorts with her again.
He and Sia arrived home at the same time. And before she could disappear into her office room, he stopped her.
"Sia, do you have a minute?"
She stopped and looked at him questioningly.
"I've decided that for our child's sake, we should start over again. I'm also going to let go of whatever you did to me in the past," he said.
She looked surprised, but didn't comment.
"We can't continue living like this. I know our marriage is supposed to be a temporary one, but we need to work out some kind of a deal between us to have a cordial relationship."
She gave him the slightest of nods.
He sighed. "That means, we talk once in a while, Sia. While I am thrilled with our chin nods, our child might not be too thrilled to see his or her parents communicating with them."
She was about to nod again, but stopped midway. "Okay," she said, finally.
"Good." He was about to go towards his room in the opposite direction, but he stopped midway when he thought of something.
"I'm leaving tomorrow morning to visit The Colonel at the village," he said. "I'll be there for a week. Would you like to join me? He has asked me to let you know the invitation was extended to you as well."
Sia looked torn. "I can't. I'm sorry. I have some important work pending today," she said.
He felt disappointed hearing that, but he nodded. "Okay. I guess, I'll see you in a week then."
Just as he was about to leave, he heard her say. "Have a safe trip, Ajay. I'll see you back home soon."
He liked hearing her refer to her house as their home. And he was determined to make it true. For their baby's sake.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SIA'S HANDS SHOOK as she walked towards a restaurant from a parking lot.
It was a little after two in the afternoon, and towards the end of the lunch hour. But since it was a very popular restaurant, most of the tables remained occupied.
Nodding her head in acknowledgement at the restaurant hostess, she was seated at the table she had reserved, nearly a month ago. It overlooked a lake view.
She didn't really care for that view, but she was more than pleased with the other view that she could see from there. A few tables away, a group of middle aged ladies were celebrating. There were lots of loud discussions and plenty of laughter.
Ordering a soup and a noodles dish, she kept glancing towards them in a casual manner.
She could see that a waiter had approached the group's table with a small cake and a few candles on the top. A woman with a red sari, who's birthday it was, smiled, and then, cut the cake while her group cheered on, and sang the birthday song.
Soon, everyone fed her the cake, taking plenty of pictures.
"How is the food, Mrs. Manthena?" a friendly voice interrupted her show.
She dragged her gaze away from the celebration, and smiled pleasantly at the owner of the restaurant whom she had vaguely remembered as being one of her wedding guests.
"It's very good. I've been meaning to come here for a while since I've heard such good reviews," she complimented politely.
There was a loud crash followed by panicked shouting.
"Geeta! Oh my god Geeta!"
The owner of the restaurant frowned, and turned to see what the commotion was.
The woman celebrating her birthday was on the floor. Her face was covered in rashes that were as red as her sari, and she was flailing in pain and terror.
"Help! Someone please call an ambulance!" shouted one of the ladies in the group.
"Call her son Dr. Kranthi Naidu. He would know what to do while the ambulance arrives!" suggested another woman.
The owner of the restaurant rushed to the table.
"What happened?" he asked the group of panicked women.
"It's Mrs. Naidu. She is Jagdish Naidu's wife. We are celebrating her birthday today. She was fine until now. But all of a sudden, she has collapsed. I think she must be having a heart attack."
People didn't break into ugly red rashes, and grasp their throats, waiting to breathe, if they were having a heart attack. Allergy awareness or symptoms of asphyxiations was not that common in India. Some people even thought it was an urban legend that someone could have food related allergies, and potentially die when exposed to the allergens.
"Dr. Kranthi is instructing someone to administer an injection into his mother's thigh. She has it in her bag it seems. Is there a nurse or a doctor here?" a frantic woman shouted.
No one responded. Including Sia.
Sia's plan all along was to save the woman's life after she had eaten some of the cake that Varun had served her. She was to go to the fallen woman, and offer to administer the Epipen.
The woman was turning almost blue around the lips, due to the lack of oxygen. She needed the Epipen right away.
Yet, Sia hesitated to move.
"Aunty, please help me. He's hurting me—" the eight year old begged.
"I think you must have misunderstood him, Sia. Nothing of that sort is happening," the woman said, refusing to even make eye contact, let alone offer to help the little girl from the monster.
That same woman who had turned away from helping a desperate little girl, who had needed her badly, was now lying on the floor. In need.
'Are you really going to let her die?' Sia asked herself.
Yes. I absolutely could. In fact, I could do it quite easily. All I have to do is to get up and walk away.
Those very thoughts jolted Sia into action. Not because she had any special love towards the woman almost dying on the floor, but because she realized that she still felt enough rage to go against the plan.
Revenge was supposed to be a cold blooded mission where feelings of rage and pain had no place.
"I can help," Sia stated calmly. Then going towards the other table, she opened the woman's emergency kit, and removed the Epipen from there.
When one of the women saw the huge needle, s
he looked alarmed. "Do you really know what to do with that?" she asked.
"Yes," Sia answered.
"Are you a doctor?" asked another woman.
"No. But I'm a registered CPR. I can give you more information, but I don't think your friend will last that long without her medicine."
They all looked torn for a few seconds before nodding their approval. The woman on the floor had stopped moving, and was purple in the face.
Sitting down, Sia stabbed the sharp needle deep into the woman's thigh.
A few seconds later, the blue tinge began to fade slowly from the prone woman's face. Everyone around her heaved a sigh of relief. And soon an ambulance along with paramedics arrived to the restaurant.
Meantime, Sia left the restaurant before anyone could speak to her.
***
Much later that evening, Sia visited Varun.
She rang the doorbell to his house several times, and waited outside the door. When he didn't answer the door, she used the keys he had given her to get inside.
Just like her house, Varun's decor was also stark. But unlike her huge house, Varun preferred a smaller home. Just a large living room, a kitchen and a large bedroom with an attached bathroom.
Everything in Varun's house was black. The furniture, the wall paint and even the curtains were black. He even wore black from top to bottom as though he wanted to ensure that he didn't draw any attention towards him.
She didn't know why she kept visiting Varun even though it was risky to do so at this point. But she couldn't stay away from him. He needed her. And she needed him equally.
"Varun..." she called out softly.
When she didn't hear anything, she walked towards the bedroom and opened the door.
She could see the faint outline of a large man sitting on the bed.
"You are late," he said gruffly.
"I know. I'm sorry. I had to go home first to not risk anyone following me."
She paused when she saw something glinting in his hand."Did I disturb your nap?" she asked casually, even though she knew why he was sitting in the dark with all the curtains closed.
"No. I-I'm feeling restless and going crazy. I feel I'm going to explode unless I release some of this pressure inside," he said.
Her heart thudded in dread.
The last time he got such urges, it didn't end well. It was the night before her wedding.
She had found him in his bedroom, and had to take him to the emergency. She had stayed vigilant next to him during the entire night, until she knew he'd be okay.
"Varun, have you been seeing Dr. Mishra? You lost a dangerous amount of blood the last time—"
"Sia, please. If I was in a mood to listen to a lecture, I would've called my mother."
It was strange that she was always after Varun to get help to recover and heal, when she herself was struggling to do so. But she desperately wanted Varun to be okay to the point that she was obsessed with it.
She recalled what Dr. Patel had said when she confessed to him about her relationship with Varun.
"An obsession of 'saving' or 'fixing' anything broken is one of the coping mechanisms."
She stared at Varun.
For a change, he was wearing a short sleeved shirt, which he had never worn during the past one year since she had been meeting him. She could see several criss-cross scars on his arms, most of which were healed.
Varun was a self-harmer.
He sought out pain to help remove the build-up of agony, and feeling of helplessness inside him. She felt equally helpless about him. Because he thought that Varun was targeted by her abuser, only because she had managed to escape.
Dr. Patel didn't agree with her reasoning, but the feeling of being responsible for Varun's plight wouldn't leave her. And over the past few months, she had coerced Varun to see a therapist. And she spent enough time in every possible manner to stop Varun's urges.
She could never forget the first time she saw Varun slice his arm with a sharp knife. She had watched in horror, and was even more shocked when she saw him breathe in relief as pain overtook him.
She hadn't judged him then. Not with her own history of abusing drugs and alcohol.
She recalled how each night she had taken a lot of pills, and mixed them with alcohol and drugs. Not to commit suicide, although the combination could have killed her easily. But she had loved the thrill of taking chances—to see whether or not she'd wake up the next day.
But she woke up each morning, feeling slightly disappointed. Until that last time on her twenty first birthday when she couldn't wake up for a very long time.
"Varun, please talk to me. You know I'd understand."
Varun didn't acknowledge her. She tried helping him as much as she could by making him channel his pain into something less destructive.
He stared at one of the dark blank walls. "He was on television this morning. At a children's hospital. He had picked up a little boy who didn't seem to be more than five years old. And...and he called him his 'favorite little boy'."
Varun used to be called that by him. He was on a smaller side when he was a child. And now at nearly twenty three, he was a strong, tall man. But he still felt weak and helpless.
She recalled one of Varun's confessions that still got to her. It made her even more determined to exact vengeance on the monster who must have claimed souls of many other innocent children.
"You know what's worse than having no one to ask for help?" Varun asked.
"What?" she asked softly.
"It's having people who supposedly love you, not believing a word you say," he replied.
He laughed bitterly. "My own mother wouldn't believe me when I told her that the monster was abusing me. I didn't know the word 'rape' at that time. I was only eight. I just kept telling her he hurt me, and touched me in ways I didn't want him to."
Sia listened to Varun even as guilt tore her up. Varun's abuse began a year after her supposed fake death.
The monster must have needed a fresh new victim.
Varun looked at her with the similar torment she saw in the mirror on her own face, each day.
"I wanted to kill myself," he stated. "I crashed my bike several times by riding into ongoing traffic. I jumped from the roof of the house. I even drank poison for heaven's sake. But my parents kept brushing it off as childhood 'accidents' and 'adventures', and wouldn't believe me. Soon I stopped telling them. What was the bloody use?"
She recalled her own experiences where most of her 'accidental' drug overdoses weren't really accidents.
He smiled, although it was a tormented one. "The funny part was—that my parents were angry with me. For fighting in the school and getting into trouble. They couldn't deal with my mood swings from being anxious and clingy. I was always in a rage and then self-destructive. It was a cry for help from their only child! I waited to be rescued, but no one ever came. No one!"
She had felt the same way.
She felt that if no one believed her, or protected her at that time, then maybe she wasn't worth being protected. So she began to turn to abusing her own life instead.
Binge drinking, drugs, unprotected sex. Anything to blot out the trauma, and keep it within her nightmares.
"I'm not able to deal with what's inside me, Sia. I need an outlet. Maybe it's not a good idea for you to be around me today," Varun murmured.
"I'm not leaving you alone, Varun. I told you several times that I understand you more than anyone else. I feel the same way as you."
He laughed bitterly. "You? Miss Cool and Controlled?"
"That's how we need to be at this time, Varun. It would bring us closer to achieving—"
"I know. You have told me before. I know you have it in you to succeed in our mission. But I don't know if I can last that long. Or even want to last that long," he said.
He picked a small pen knife and raised it over his wrist. "I feel so damn suffocated. I need to let this pressure out."
When he raised the knife rea
lly high, like he would slash it with enough force to cause permanent harm, Sia ran closer to him, "Varun. Don't!" she cried and held his wrist to stop him.
He froze. Completely. And then, he began to shudder. His entire body was going into a lockdown with his veins popping out of his muscles on his arms.
"Don't touch me!" he shouted in agony.
She immediately raised her arms, and moved away, a few steps from him.
She began to plead with him."I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But please, put down that knife. You promise me last time that you won't hurt yourself until we see this through. Just give us some more time and we'll be free."
Varun was still trembling. He didn't allow anyone to touch him. Ever. Not even his parents.
"One wrong touch, even if it's for a brief time can destroy a child's life forever," Dr. Patel had said.
Varun was still panting from her touch. And then after several minutes, when he finally calmed down, he sat back on the bed with a sad hopeless look on his face.
"Free?" he asked. "Do you really think we can ever be free from all this Sia?"
She knew he was right. There was no way they can be magically free from their demons. But for his sake, she confidently stated, "Yes, Varun. There would be, and should be an end to this. Just promise me again you won't do anything to yourself meantime. Promise me."
Varun didn't reply for a while, worrying her. But ultimately, he shook his head, looking resigned. "Okay, I promise."
Breathing a sigh of relief, she sat down opposite to him, careful to maintain a distance.
"So you were able to slip in the tracker successfully?" he asked.
"Yes. Both as a pen and also into the lining of her emergency kit bag," she replied.
And then, she began to tell him about the next steps in their action plan. She knew until the baby was born, there wasn't going to be any sort of contact initiated with the Naidu family, but now with a GPS tracker, there were several other things she needed to put in place before everything blew over.
CHAPTER TWENTY