by Nikita Singh
NIKITA SINGH
Right Here Right Now
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Epilogue
Thank you!
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Copyright
PENGUIN BOOKS
RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW
Nikita Singh is the bestselling author of ten novels, including The Promise, After All This Time and Love@Facebook. She has co-authored two books with Durjoy Dutta: If It’s Not Forever . . . and Someone Like You. She has also contributed to the books in the Backbenchers series. Her latest novel, Every Time It Rains, was an instant bestseller. She was born in Patna and grew up in Indore. She graduated with a degree in pharmacy from Indore. Nikita has worked as an editor at Grapevine India for three years and as a publishing manager at Wisdom Tree before relocating to New York, where she got her master’s in fine arts (in creative writing, fiction) at the New School. She received the India Young Achiever’s Award in 2013 and has delivered TEDx talks at IIM Calcutta, IIM Indore, IIT Delhi, BITS Pilani and many other prestigious institutes. With a library stocked with over 12,000 books, she is a voracious reader and adores her collection of fantasy novels. She is currently based in New York.
To new beginnings . . .
Prologue
I try to open my eyes, but it feels like my eyelids are stuck to my eyeballs in an alarmingly permanent fashion. My eyes feel heavy and swollen and I don’t know if it’s because I’ve slept too little or too much. I strain to remember what happened last night and what time I went to sleep, but I’m blank.
I can hear beeping on my right and the hushed voices of people talking from far away. I am lying on my back on a bed that isn’t too soft but still comfortable, a quilt wrapped around me, in a place that smells very sterile. Where am I? I try to raise my hand to rub my eyes, but somehow the simple task seems unmanageable. My hand simply won’t move, just like my eyelids. I attempt to wiggle my toes, and surprise, surprise—I can’t.
I’m a little annoyed now. I force myself to move, but not one part of my body responds. I try to sigh, but find myself incapable of doing that either. After fighting for about five more minutes, I give up. It’s no use. All I can do is breathe in and breathe out, and even that feels assisted—I can feel something tied around my face, forcing oxygen into me. And suddenly it all adds up.
I’m in a hospital.
I have put together everything I can hear, smell and feel around me and it’s the only conclusion that fits, but I have no clue how I got here. All I can remember is . . . nothing. I feel a constant nagging sensation in my head as I try to remember how I got here, as I try to make sense of things, but it only adds to my frustration. I start to panic. I feel like I am trapped in a cage, tied down with thick iron chains wrapped around my limbs so tightly that I can barely even breathe. And there is nothing I can do to force my way out.
After a while, I find myself drifting away into comparative calmness. The beeping seems to fade away as does my will to fight. It does not smell like disinfectants and antiseptics anymore. And I can move my muscles again.
Slowly, I glide into a different world, where I am with a group of people whose faces are blurred, but they all seem to belong to the same age group—sixteen or seventeen, like me. There are loud noises around me, but I can’t figure out what is being said. We are a bunch of people, sitting on the edge of what seems to be a cliff, underneath which there’s a vast body of water. I am laughing very loudly, and there’s a guy sitting next to me, with his arms around me, whispering something into my ear. I giggle and hit him playfully.
Everybody around us, who I figure must be our friends, starts hooting and that makes me blush. The guy who was making me giggle now pulls me towards himself with my silk scarf and I look up at him. He has grey eyes, a straight nose and his lips are lifted up in a warm smile. I meet him halfway, and our lips touch. The hooting around us gets louder, and we keep kissing passionately. I wrap my arms around him happily and smile.
And then my foot slips and I fall off the cliff.
One
2 APRIL 2013
I hear my own screams piercing the air as I sit up on the bed with a jolt. Some kind of a mask slips down my face and I find myself struggling to breathe, as if I just ran a mile. I look around, to find myself sitting in what looks like a hospital bed. There is some medical equipment in the right corner of the room and the monitor displays something I do not understand. Right in front of me is a closed cupboard, above which a TV is hanging from the wall. To my left there are double doors which, as I look, are suddenly pushed open and a strange mix of people rush in. All of them have a panicked look.
And because they look so panicked, I imagine something terrible has happened. ‘What? What is it? What happened?’ I ask frantically.
Nobody seems to any pay attention to a word I said. There are five other people in the room and all of them are walking towards me looking intently at me, but no one listens to what I’m saying. It’s like I’m the centre of attention—but nobody is paying attention.
I panic even more. ‘WHAT IS WRONG?’ I shout again, imagining an earthquake or a fire.
There’s a short, middle-aged lady wearing a blue cotton saree, a lean, slightly balding man right next to her, who somehow looks like he is her husband, a fat woman in a nurse uniform with the word ‘Anita’ on her badge, another much thinner nurse with ‘Priya’ on her badge and a tall doctor who doesn’t have a badge.
‘Kalindi! You are okay! Thank God . . . you are . . . back . . .’ the lady in the blue saree is suddenly looking warmly into my face and hugging me, tears flowing down her cheeks.
‘Umm . . .’ I don’t know what to say.
I look around to see the doctor coming towards me, looking at me suspiciously, as if I’m some bomb about to explode or something. He reads something on the monitor and peers intently into my eyes. ‘How are you feeling?’
Before I can think of a response to that, the nurses come up on either side and the slightly balding kind man is holding my hand and asking, ‘Kalindi, are you okay? Does it hurt?’
‘Please say something, Kalindi,’ the doctor without a badge says and I see five pairs of concerned eyes peering at me, waiting for a response.
I think my name is Kalindi.
‘I . . . I can’t breathe—’ is all I can say before the nurse called Priya shoves an oxygen mask on my face and the nurse called Anita pushes me back on the bed to make me lie down.
‘Just try to calm down. Now, breathe into the mask and slowly breathe out. It’s going to be okay,’ the doctor says and starts checking my vitals. I breathe as he instructed and he starts asking me some questions. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Umm . . . confused?’
‘Understandable. Where does it hurt?’
‘My head . . . and this arm . . .’ I point to my right arm and the lady in the blue saree, who had been holding my right
hand all this while suddenly lets go in alarm.
‘Do you know how you got here?’
I think hard, but the only memory that comes to me is of me falling down some stairs or something in my dream and waking up with a jerk to see these five people rushing to me as if there were a fire or an earthquake. I figure there was no fire or earthquake
after all. It was just me. I shake my head.
‘Alright.’ The doctor exchanges a look with the others in the room and turns to me. I notice everybody watching me even more seriously. ‘You were in an accident and suffered a moderate level of traumatic brain injury. You were brought here in good time and we operated immediately, but there was a lot of swelling, and you slipped into a coma. Now that you’ve come out of it, this kind of confusion is completely understandable, even expected.’
I wrinkle my brows and try to absorb all the information. Everybody is still staring at me like I’m some kind of zoo animal, so I reckon I need to say something. I clear my throat and ask the first thing that comes to my mind. ‘So . . . when did this accident happen?’
Anita checks the file attached to my bed. ‘Nineteen days ago. The night of 15 March. Today is 2 April.’
I nod. I wonder if it would be the right time to ask which year it is, but before I reach a decision, the doctor asks me the question himself, ‘You do know which year this is, right?’
‘I . . . uh, 2013?’ I say instinctively.
‘Great! And you still don’t remember how the accident happened?’
‘No.’
‘Okay. So, what is the last thing you remember?’ The doctor starts looking optimistic.
‘I was in this bed, sleeping, I guess. And then I got up.’
‘No, I mean before you got here. What is the last thing you remember from before the accident?’
‘Not much . . .’ I reply vaguely.
‘Just try and pinpoint an incident, or a frame of time,’ the doctor insists.
‘You had appeared for your last subject . . . your final exams had ended . . .’ The lady in the blue saree says and I turn to look at her. She has a very gentle face, which is marred with tension. I hate to think that worrying about me might have caused the dark circles underneath her eyes. I feel touched. I like her.
‘You went out with your friends to celebrate at night . . .’ The man, who I bet is this lady’s husband, says. ‘And then we got a call about the accident . . .’
I just gape at everybody. It’s kind of embarrassing. It mustn’t be too difficult a question to answer. And now they are all waiting for me to say something, and I can’t think of one goddamn event that happened in my life before this accident thing. I push my brain to gather all the information it has stored and feel my face crumple in concentration. This is frustrating.
‘Kalindi, please don’t cry . . .’ The kind lady, who is probably related to me, says.
‘It’s okay. Relax,’ the doctor says.
I shake my head in aggravation and anguish. ‘I don’t . . . I don’t remember much . . .’
‘That’s alright. Don’t strain yourself. Just try to think of the last thing you do remember and don’t worry about what you don’t. This happens. It’ll come back to you in a little while.’
‘But . . . but I don’t . . . I really don’t . . . What’s wrong with me?’
‘We’ll figure it out. You’ll eventually recall whatever you don’t. For now, we need to concentrate on what you do remember, so that we can piece everything together. So tell me. What do you remember?’
‘Nothing.’
So, as soon as I’d said ‘nothing’ the atmosphere in the room got a lot more intense, which made me even more nervous than I already was. The doctor asked the nurses to allow me some space and not t o crowd around me, so they left the room after checking that everything was in place. Then he identified himself as Dr Sahani and asked to speak with the man on my left in private.
As the men excused themselves from the room, I became aware of being alone with the lady in the blue saree, with a gentle but tired face and dark circles, who I thought was probably related to me.
I looked at her to find her staring at me. She was sitting on my bed and studying my face. I felt the need to break the tension and lighten the atmosphere, so I smiled at her and said, ‘Hi!’
She held my hand again and squeezed it tightly, but said nothing.
‘So . . . you must be my mum?’ I asked. Which made her burst into tears. In hindsight, I do realize that it was kind of insensitive of me to ask, but, well, I had to know.
Now, she’s sitting holding my hand, not crying anymore, thankfully. She’s my mum, and she looks really drained and I don’t like that, especially knowing that I am the reason for her distress, what with getting into some unknown major accident, suffering a severe brain injury and staying in a coma for nineteen days. If all that was not enough, now I wake up and don’t even remember her. What kind of an inconsiderate jerk does that? I feel like a real douchebag.
‘Please don’t cry . . . Mum,’ I mumble.
She immediately wipes her tears off and puts on a brave face. She looks a little scared. Not generally scared, but scared of me. By me. I frown.
‘Umm, so . . . I guess my memory will be back soon?’ I ask. I’m getting really agitated now, because she hasn’t said a word since we were left alone.
‘Your father . . . he’s talking to Dr Sahani . . .’ she bites her lip. I figure the man I assumed was her husband really is her husband and therefore also my dad.
I like them. I like Mum’s blue cotton saree, the way she looks into my face with concern and a strange mixture of happiness and worry (happy, probably because I’m finally back, but worried because I’m not really back). I like Dad’s kind face, his thinning hair and . . . well, I don’t know him very well so I guess I can’t get into details, but I just feel drawn to like him. They both look too haggard, which is obviously my fault and I feel guilty again. But that also means that they were (and still are) distressed because of my condition, which means that they are good parents and I’m probably very loved and adored.
Which makes me wonder, ‘Do I have any siblings?’
‘No,’ Mum says, ‘you’re all we have,’ and looks like she is on the verge of breaking down again.
Great. I keep making her sad. But how am I supposed to find out anything without asking? I should probably just shut up for a while and let her talk instead. ‘I . . . I’m making you cry a lot. So, umm . . .’
‘No, no, it’s not you. It’s just that all this while you were unconscious . . . we were so scared . . .’
‘Yeah, but now I’m back!’ I try to cheer her up. ‘At least physically. And like the doctor says, I’ll remember everything soon enough, so no need for tears!’
She smiles warmly at me and seeing her happy, I light up from within. I really must be her daughter, to experience this kind of a reaction to just one smile.
‘So, till I remember stuff by myself, why don’t you tell me about me?’
‘Okay,’ Mum starts. ‘Where do I start?’
‘I know nothing except my name, which I gather is Kalindi. So, you can start pretty much wherever you want!’
‘Hmm, so your name is Kalindi Mishra. We live in Delhi. You are seventeen years old, and you just passed XI grade, or at least we hope you did. You finished your final exams on the same day you . . .’
‘Right. I got that. Dad said I went to celebrate with my friends and then the accident happened,’ I complete her sentence. ‘Am I a good student?’
‘Absolutely. You scored really well in your Class X boards last year.’
‘So, am I a nerd then?’
‘What? NO!’ Mum laughs and I get curious.
‘What’s funny?’
‘You’re a good student, but you’re one of the “cool kids” in your school. You’d hate to be called a nerd. You and your friends are the exact opposite of that.’
‘I clearly have friends,’ I point to the huge bouquets of flowers, balloons and baskets of fruits and chocolates covering one side of the room.
‘Yes, you do. You’re very popular in school.’
‘Tell me about my friends. Do you like them?’
‘You like them, and they like you, so I like them,’ she smiles again. ‘They’ve been dropping by every day to check up on your condition.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Do I have a hobby or something?’
A strange expression comes over Mum’s face before she says, ‘If you could only hear yourself asking these questions. I mean, if only you-before-the-accident could hear the present-you.’
I nod, not knowing what to say to that. I’ll probably understand what she’s talking about once my memory comes back, so I guess I’ll just sit and wait for that. We look at each other, and she does not say anything either. It’s amazing how I am such a blank slate and she must have seventeen years of stories about me to tell, but we somehow still run out of things to say and our conversation dies out.
I stay silent, lest I say something that makes her cry again and she doesn’t say anything either, I don’t know why. Dad hasn’t yet returned with Dr Sahani, so I don’t know what to do. I finally motion towards the TV and ask if something good is on.
‘You don’t watch TV,’ Mum says.
‘What? Why?’ I ask.
‘You watch American TV shows on your laptop and almost all movies in the theatre with your friends.’
‘And you let me?’
‘You’re kind of a rebel . . .’ Mum says, her funny expression is back on. ‘You don’t really ask for our permission to do anything.’
‘Oh, I sound reasonably . . . charming!’ I say and we laugh together.
She looks at the door and I follow her gaze to see Dad and Dr Sahani entering the room. I get nervous again.
‘Hi Dad,’ I mutter.
‘You remember?’ his face brightens up. ‘We just discussed amnesia in detail and planned out a way to help you through it, so that we can get your memory back. But I guess there’s no need for that any more, is there?’ He looks so relieved that I feel another pang of guilt. Gosh, why can’t I just remember stuff and get over it?
‘I . . . don’t . . .’ I stammer.
‘She doesn’t remember,’ Mum tells Dad. ‘She just knows what I told her now . . .’