“You dare not die on me”- AmarSena Modern AU-- Part 5 (Final Installment of this story)
For everyone who has been with me on this journey. @avani008 @mayavanavihariniharini @bleedinknight @ratnas-musings
Thank you for sticking by this unexpectedly angsty story. Feel free to send me more prompts for the modern AU. This is so much fun to write.
Please read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 before reading this.
It was early morning by the time Devika managed to convince Mr. and Mrs. Balaraju to go to their hotel for a short while. She didn’t ask why they hadn’t chosen to stay at their son’s house even though it seemed rather odd to her.
But now was not the best time to ask such questions.
The newspaper boy left a bunch of Hindi, English, Kumaoni, and Garhwali dailies in the various magazine racks placed around the visitor’s lounge and the cafeteria.
To pass the time, she picked up one of the English newspapers and skimmed through the headlines.
China was in talk with India over a new trade agreement. The war in Syria was still raging on with no end in sight. A young girl of 15 had been attacked with acid by a high school senior whose advances she had resisted. An old couple had won a humanitarian award for planting 500 trees in their ancestral village.
The rest of the newspaper was filled with regurgitated garbage like baseless Bollywood rumors, horoscope readings, and show timings for the latest movies—which was pointless because who checked the newspaper for movie timings when they could just go to the Book My Show app or the hundreds like it that were advertised on play store all the time.
She was bored but also grateful for it. Boredom meant normalcy. Boredom meant that everything would be okay.
She would happily accept a lifetime of boredom for him. Just like she had accepted a lifetime of torture and loneliness.
Where did that come from?
Devika shook her head. These annoying thoughts had become so frequent lately. What was with her mind playing such weird tricks on her. They weren’t in a fantasy movie! And this whole situation had been downright terrifying.
“Maybe I am just stressed,” she thought. “I guess this is how I cope.”
The next two hours passed slowly. Amresh’s parents came back to the hospital with a hot sandwich and a thermos filled with tea for her.
“That cafeteria food is no good,” Swethambari said. “And you are a chef. You probably cook amazing things even for your daily meals.”
“Well, thank you for bringing me food,” she opened the paper bag and sniffed appreciatively. “Mmmm, I smell Herbes De Provence. This is great.” She took a bite and couldn’t help but sigh at the sheer freshness of the lettuce and the crunchy, juicy texture of the cucumbers.
“To answer your question, I actually don’t cook all that much for my own meals,” she said in between bites. “I am usually so tired after getting home that I don’t have the energy to chop, puree, bake, roast, or do anything that requires more than ten minutes or the use of more than two utensils.”
“Who would have though even celebrity chefs get tired of cooking,” Ajith was amused.
“Er… I am hardly a celebrity chef, but thank you,” Devika said modestly.
“You worked at the Falaknuma Palace, didn’t you? Swethambari asked her. “I searched for you on the internet earlier this morning and according to Google, you are a celebrity chef. You have cooked for Yitzhak Perlman, Kamila Shamsie, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, and other who’s who of the art world.”
“I may have had the good luck to cook for them, but it was only because I was the pastry chef under Chef Alain Passard during my time in Paris.”
“Someday, people will come specifically for you.”
“Is that a blessing, aunty?”
“It is. But it is also my hope and my conviction. I can’t wait to try your food. Once my son is discharged, we will celebrate his homecoming with your desserts.”
“One day out of line won’t hurt me. Besides, people die of hypoglycemia. No one ever died of high blood sugar levels.”
“We should find out when they will let us see him,” Ajith said to his wife. “I’ll go find out.”
Swethambari nodded but her anxiety came back full force.
“He will be okay,” Devika reassured her.
A few minutes later, Ajith returned with Dr. Meghwal.
“We are expecting him to regain consciousness in the next hour or so. You will be allowed into the ICU in half an hour. Meanwhile, please submit those files I asked you for. Inspector Negi will meet you in my office.”
Swethambari stood up to follow her husband to the doctor’s office.
As before, Devika had to stay back and wait. This was what she hated about hospitals. The long, interminable wait.
There was something so familiar about the woman. Inspector Ramchand Negi was troubled after meeting her and her husband. He felt rattled like he had three days ago when he had found their injured son on the highway.
It sounded crazy but there had been something oddly comforting about being in that young man’s presence. He had ridden with him in the back of the police jeep while bringing him to the hospital. And the entire time, he had kept his hand on his brow.
How utterly strange that reading this file of his birth records was unsettling him to such a degree. Of course, the police officer in him was intrigued by the weird and unnatural nature of his “birthmarks.” But he felt… he felt guilty.
Why did he feel such an immense responsibility towards him? Why this overprotectiveness? And regrets that felt like echoes of a phantom pain… like an arm whose loss he felt despite never actually having lost an arm.
But at least he knew there was no case to be made against anyone for malicious intent. Especially not his parents. Not Sivagami Devi Swethambari ji.
A fog. That was the word for it? Or was it mist? He heard laughter. Women’s voices; high and sweet. Someone admonished them and told them to get out of the way. The Princess tittered as he tripped over a pail. Should he fall down? No. It would hurt and she would consider him an even bigger loser. But… wasn’t that what he wanted?
Now he was standing in front of Bahadur, the bull. This couldn’t be happening. He was indeed going to get hurt. No way was he fighting the bull. The princess could keep her smugness.
Wait… why was she wearing an Omega watch? Watches weren’t invented until the 16th century, right?
“Well, I promised him a key lime cheese cake with guava confit,” the princess was speaking a different language. “But it is still sitting in my fridge. It probably tastes even more sour now.”
Then he noticed the brightness above his eyelids.
“….urghh,” he groaned. Too much. He needed to move his eyes away. But his neck seemed stuck.
He tried to speak but his throat sent shooting pains down his spine.
“Amresh?” a gentle female voice. Not the princess. Someone else. Someone wearing a large red bindi on her forehead.
“Amresh? My child,” the voice repeated, almost pleading this time.
The red bindi moved away into the distance. “The light is hurting him,” the voice said to someone.
Ahhhh… sweet mercy! They finally dimmed the bulb.
He tried to open his eyes.
At first, nothing happened. They remained blurry, narrowed down to slits, and stubbornly fixed as if held in that position by glue.
He tried again. His temples protested at the effort.
“H..h…hurts,” he mumbled out.
“It is okay, Mr. Balaraju, take it slowly,” this time, an unfamiliar male. His features were fuzzy but his voice was clean and sharp, almost like that of a drill sergeant.
He closed his eyes. He was tired.
“It is okay,” the male voice said. “This is normal.”
The room was dark except for a single beam of light from a small nightlamp fixed near the door. The quiet hum of the fan was the only thing that disturbed the silence.
His eyes did not hurt anymore.
He was in pain. And he didn’t feel like he could move yet but he experimentally shifted his gaze towards the chair next to his bed.
Devika. Sleeping curled up uncomfortably in a plastic chair.
He sighed softly at the sight of her. He was okay. He was not dreaming. And they were in Nainital.
He remembered being hit by the truck but nothing else. A blinding flash, an agonizing pain in his side, glass shards digging into his face. Then darkness.
The steady beeping of the monitor told him that. As did the IV pumping a cocktail of antibiotics into his system.
He didn’t want to wake anyone up. Devika would certainly get disturbed if he were to try and call for someone.
But before he could close his eyes again, the door opened and a nurse came in.
“There was a change in your vitals,” she explained. “I am glad to see you are alert. The doctor is on her way. Once she approves, you can have some water.”
He tried to nod but in vain.
Just then, the duty doctor, Dr. Harveen Kaur came in.
“You gave us such a fright,” she chastised him gently. “But after all those dramatics, here we are. And thank God for it. Come, let us see how you’re doing.”
She moved to the foot of his bed and folded the blanket a little to uncover his feet.
“Wiggle your toes for me, please,” she said.
“Now your fingers. Just the ones on your left hand. The right hand is pretty badly fractured. We’ll leave that alone for now.”
He moved the fingers on his left hand.
“Excellent. Now please follow the movement of my finger with your eye.”
She moved her right index finger in a straight line in the air, back and forth.
He had no trouble following her with his gaze.
“Great. Let’s get you some water now.”
The nurse gently lifted up the upper part of the bed to raise him to a sitting position.
He winced as the injuries on his back and in his side were jostled slightly.
“We are so sorry that it hurts,” she said. “But you can’t have water lying down.”
She gave him tiny sips of water in a spoon so as to not tax his tender trachea which had, until very recently, been intubated.
“T..t..than..k.. You.” He rasped out.
“It will hurt to speak for a few days. It’s to be expected. Don’t worry about it.”
Then, he was given an IV injection for the pain and a new canula was inserted in his left ankle because the one on his left wrist had caused swelling and bruising. His right hand wasn’t an option because of the extensive injuries it had suffered.
“Should we wake up your friend?” the nurse asked as she showed him where the morphine and call buttons were on his bed.
“No,” he answered. Devika looked so tired. He was so grateful that she had chosen to stay here with him, that he had not woken up all alone here. There was no way he was disturbing her rest when daybreak was just a few hours away.
He tried to close his eyes and sleep a little more. But unfortunately, his mind felt too active to go back and rest again. It was torturous to have nothing to distract himself with while he waited for morning. There were a great many things to think about, but they were unpleasant thoughts, confusing and distressing.
He was glad to be alive. But more than that, he was relieved. The thought of dying without telling Devika how he felt about her, sent a pang of grief through him. He couldn’t leave her like that.
“Not again,” added a little voice in the back of his mind.
They deserved an entire, uninterrupted lifetime with each other. They deserved seven such happy lifetimes together. They deserved an eternity in each other’s arms.
It was an intense thought. But he had never been so sure of anything. He loved Devika. He loved her with every fiber of his being and deep in his marrow, he knew he was hers. He would always cherish her. He would stand between her and anything that would seek to harm her. He would bring her joy and contentment every moment of her life.
He imagined asking her out formally. He imagined their future together. They would have a nice, large house, tastefully decorated by Monique Marchiani, the most celebrated interior designer in Italy. She would help them buy hand-crafted wrought iron furniture, a modular kitchen with an actual woodfired oven, and a fencing studio which would also double up as a ballroom of the sorts for when they would host parties. They would have a large garden with an entire section dedicated to kitchen herbs and edible flowers. They would travel the entire world, three countries per summer. And God willing, they would have two beautiful children out of which at least one would be a daughter.
A part of him knew he was being fanciful. Devika might not even want to be with him. Friendship was not the same as love. Besides, even if she did agree to spend her life with him, there was no guarantee that she would want to live in style like he wanted to.
That was small potatoes though, he thought.
He would be happy with her anywhere. Even if she chose to live a little cubbyhole in Mumbai, he would join her there and make his peace with underpants drying openly on every window sill.
He allowed nothing to dampen his happiness and hope. As long as she was with him, he would be happy anywhere and in all circumstances. It was true he came from money. He had always led a life of comfort, luxury, and privilege. But for her, he was willing to live differently. Hadn’t he learned to manage in his meagre earnings as an ad-hoc fencing teacher?
He understood that if he married her, Nainital would not remain a permanent option. Her career would get stunted here. It was inevitable that she would move. And he wouldn’t find work as a fencing instructor everywhere. Most schools in India did not offer fencing. And even as a generic sports teacher, he would never really have job security.
While that thought bothered him a little, he told himself to calm down. If nothing else, he could be a stay-at-home dad. Lots of women did it and the household ran smoothly. There was no reason a man couldn’t do it if his wife’s career options were better than his own.
Devika woke up slowly. A fond, reverent smile played at his lips as he watched her stretch a little.
She stood up and came closer to him.
“M..m…” he tried to clear his throat but it only made him cough, which was painful.
“It’s okay,” she said, patting him lightly on his hair. “You’re awake. That’s all that matters. Has the doctor seen you yet?”
He managed a 5 degree tilt of his neck to respond to her question in the affirmative.
“Your parents are also here,” she told him. “They couldn’t stay in the ICU and the waiting lounge is really uncomfortable. They are at their guest house. They should be here soon to see you.”
Amresh looked at her, unblinking. His eyes held an ocean of unspoken words as she told him mundane things that he had missed over the last three days. Of course, his parents were important to him. They were not among the mundane things she spoke of. But somehow, more than them, he was interested in something else.
There was something he needed to say.
And no matter how his throat felt, he was going to say it.
“De…de..v,” his efforts to form her name stopped her mid-sentence.
“Yes, Amresh?” she was at his side in a moment. “Do you need something? Should I call the nurse?”
“Dev…ik..a,” he said. “I… I… love… you.”
For a long moment, she just stood there, processing his words, the enormity of them… and the unexpected way in which they had been confessed.
He had offered her his heart at his most vulnerable.
Low blow? Or sheer desperation that he should not waste even a moment, considering how closely he had escaped death just a day ago?
He did not dare to look at her. His long, dark lashes cast a soft shadow on the tops of his cheekbones. She couldn’t see his eyes. But she knew they were waiting for her to pass judgement. To accept his love, freely given. Or to reject him, and break the fragile strength he must have gathered in order to take such a step.
“I don’t know what it will mean,” she whispered and lowered her face close to his. “But I love you too. I have loved you for a while now. I am happy that you feel the same way about me.”
He gave her a small, heartfelt smile and his eyes shone with moisture.
But this was no time to cry.
The nurse brought in a cup of juice for him and the news that his parents were outside, eager to meet their son.
