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He sat by my hospital bed holding my hand for seventeen hours.
‘And then with patient release formalities too,’ added Akki.
He saved my life.
‘You need to thank him. Atharv is a neurosurgery consultant at Great Whitesbridge Street Hospital and here is the address,’ said Akki and began to tap on his phone to message the address to Koyal as she stared open-mouthed at him.
Hema had first pestered Koyal, then threatened and finally shouted at her till she had finally relented. Even that morning, Hema had sent her a barrage of messages to make sure Koyal went to the hospital during her lunch break.
Koyal’s phone beeped, bringing her back to the present.
Hema. Again.
‘Are you there?’ her message read.
‘Yes, at reception,’ Koyal texted back immediately and then looked up at the receptionist.
‘No, please don’t call him here. I just have a small message for him. Please tell him Koyal Raje came to say thank you.’
‘Just that?’ the receptionist asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you want to leave your number or address? Or probably Dr Jayakrishna has it?’
‘No, thank you,’ she said firmly, eyeing the door. She – her heart, her soul – could not bear to be around Atharv any more.
‘No problem,’ said the receptionist and asked Koyal to sign a piece of paper.
Not that difficult, was it? Koyal asked herself, breathing out as she bent over the register to sign herself out. She could already feel relief cascading through her body and she finally unclenched her fingers.
‘Is there a delivery for Mum?’ came a voice from right next to her.
Koyal’s hands and breathing both stopped on their own. She stood there, bent low over the register, frozen.
From the corner of her eye she could sense that a broad, scrubs-clad form had appeared.
‘That would be Dr Surya Jayakrishna, please,’ he said.
The voice. His voice.
‘Sure, Dr Jayakrishna,’ said the receptionist, ‘let me check.’
Don’t say anything about me, please, please, please, thought Koyal furiously, wondering if she could somehow vanish. Or make a mad dash for the door?
‘Oh and by the way,’ added the receptionist and Koyal could have killed her, ‘this lady here wanted to leave a message for you. And now that you are here, may be best for you to just talk to her.’
Koyal breathed out. Steady, she told herself and straightened up. She turned around to face the stranger who had, many years ago, during one of the darkest nights of her miserable life, cradled her to his chest like one would cradle a newborn.
This stranger was the man who had only recently sat by
her bed and held her hand for seventeen hours. The stranger she had tried hard to forget but her soul had not.
Atharv, clad in scrubs and a stethoscope around his neck, was looking better now than he had ever before, Koyal had to give him that. He had never been conventionally good-looking, not as a sixteen-year-old and not now. But there was something about him that was very attractive. A kindness about him that was almost tangible. An aura around him that glowed with intelligence. A presence that nobody could ignore.
And then, like a bolt of lightning, memories from a decade back hit Koyal and she shook her head. This was the man who was responsible for the mess her life had become.
He was staring at her and Koyal gulped. Breathe, just breathe, she told herself, sternly forbidding her body to go into the meltdown it had spectacularly dived into when she’d last seen him. Just thinking about it made her toes curl in embarrassment and her heart go fuzzy – both pretty much at the same time.
