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Nice part!luved it! Hope shilpa is alright! Do cont.soon..thanxx for the PM
Originally posted by: fri42911awesome part!!!!!
ARSH had quite similar tragic past.Shilpa had lost her parents and arman lost love of his life.i hope shilpa'll be fine.please continue soon.
Originally posted by: kashmayurfanNice part!luved it! Hope shilpa is alright! Do cont.soon..thanxx for the PM
Originally posted by: sammy4uamazing ff dear...loved the way you describe their feelings...do continue soon..do pm me plz
Originally posted by: sweet_shilpa
Nice ff,,
Add me to ur pm list,,
Originally posted by: ksgforever10Hey Anuuu! 🤗
Well ohkay, firstly, I simply wish that Shilpa is fine. I can't see her in more pain. And Oh-My-Gosh, the whole goddamn update was so heart-pleasing. I mean, the way you write (sounds weird) but when I read it, I feel so light and heart-pleased, seriously! The way you described Armaan's inner pain, the way he's trying to hide it, was simply mind-blasting. It was sad to see Riddhima missing her mom, and the way their conversation got carried on, I could sense the birth of an emotional bond between them, a strong one, indeed. Which will help them. Guess I'm right on this one! 😆 Anyways, Happy New Year! I know I'm wishing late but was quite busy, I'm really sorry about that. I so wish to give a longer comment right now, as you deserve one, but my health isn't allowing me to write more. Sorry! Please update soon! 🤗
Chapter 4
God, there was so much blood. It was everywhere, large, dark crimson stains. It wasn't even streaks of it, but actual circles, like a million bloody lakes had sprung up all over her body. He'd always assumed blood didn't show up on dark clothing, but that wasn't the story his eyes were telling him now. Her deep blue dress was covered in vermilion patches, so much so that it looked more red now than blue. But at least he could fool himself into thinking it was just a pattern on her dress. Not like the blood stains on her skin.
Maybe it was because she was cold and her skin was pale but the pools of blood on her face, her neck, her arms, even her legs, all stood out in the most awful of ways. It looked for all the world like someone had come along with a tube of paint and splashed it all over her. Her face was the worst. Thick crimson lines snaked their way down across her cheeks, along her jaw, from the gash that stretched almost the entire way across her forehead. It was deep, even he could tell that, and no matter what material was pressed against it, the blood kept seeping through. It had worked its way into her hair too, the glossy ebony strands now matted to her head.
He tried not to look at it, tried to focus instead on her closed eyelids which were the only part of her face that still looked normal. He tried to count her lashes. They were thick and black and he remembered how they'd framed those emerald eyes like a curtain. But his eyes kept being drawn back to that gaping incision, almost magnetically. And every time his stomach curled, part in horror, part in cold fear.
"Her pulse is getting weaker!"
Armaan lifted his head and looked at the EMT sitting on the other side of the gurney in the back of the ambulance. He was a middle-aged guy, with grey, slightly balding hair, and a kind, ruddy face. When he'd arrived on the scene and Armaan had grabbed him by the coat lapels and yelled at him to save the girl he'd looked into his face with a patient, kind smile that made Armaan instantly trust him. But those words he'd just uttered were like daggers of ice to his heart.
"What?" he heard himself say, and his voice didn't sound like his at all. It was rough and scraped, like the voice of someone who'd just survived a natural disaster only to find out their loved ones hadn't made it through. "What did you say?"
The EMT turned his kindly eyes on him and there was something about them, a shadowiness, that had the fear in Armaan's stomach expanding.
"Her pulse is weakening," the EMT explained. "But don't worry, we're nearly at the hospital now."
He gave Armaan a small, reassuring smile, and then turned to his colleague who had come to kneel beside him. How the hell could he be so calm, Armaan thought, more than a little furious? It was taking every ounce of control he had to sit still where he was and not pace up and down the small space in the back of the ambulance. He felt like a spring that badly needed to uncoil, a giant knot of tension building up and up inside him, threatening to unleash at any moment. He wanted to yell, to scream, to do anything but sit there and stare at that red-streaked face, so cold and lifeless.
His breath caught tightly at almost the exact moment the ambulance came to a skidding halt. Then there was chaos and he hardly had a moment to blink, let along digest the frantic activity going on all around him. The next few minutes were something of a blur as the EMTs jumped from the ambulance and started to pull the gurney with the girl out after them. Armaan followed more out of instinct than knowing what to do. Now they were at the hospital there really was no reason for him to stay, after all, he didn't actually know the girl and he was quite clearly of no use to anybody. But somehow he felt that he couldn't go. He didn't want to leave her side. Not until he knew she was going to be okay.
They rushed inside to bright, garish lights that blinded him and a strong, acidic smell that tickled the back of his throat. There were voices shouting all around him and none of the words they were saying made any sense, but he followed after the EMTs religiously, his eyes never once leaving that pale, blood-soaked face. She looks so peaceful, he thought randomly, as if she's sleeping. And then he realised what that might mean and his heart stuck in his throat and he picked up his pace, dread curling coldly about the base of his spine.
"Asian female, early twenties, involved in a collision with a car," the EMT was saying to a nurse that had rushed over. She nodded, her face grave. And then a couple of people in white coats came striding swiftly out of a pair of double doors down the corridor.
Armaan couldn't help but watch them as they made their way so assuredly towards them. One was a fifty-something man with grey hair and sharp blue eyes. He didn't walk, he strode, reminding Armaan of a warrior going into battle. He certainly had that same focused, determined look on his face that one might expect from a soldier. His presence instantly reassured Armaan. Surely if this man was in charge, the girl would be all right.
The second doctor was a young Indian girl in her early twenties. She was short and had a slightly sound, sweet face, with large, soulful brown eyes that were creased in worry. She was the first to reach the gurney and when she did she let out a gasp that sent a stab of alarm straight through Armaan's heart.
"Shilpa!" she cried. Her head snapped up and she speared the EMT guys with an intense, urgent look. "What happened to her?"
The EMT Armaan had liked told her about the collision, and then asked, "You know this girl?"
"I should think so, Richards," the male doctor said as he stopped by the gurney. "She is one of our interns here. Dr Shilpa Malhotra."
The EMT's face registered surprise, but the doctor had already turned to speak to his colleague. "Dr Shah, would you go and inform Dr Malhotra's family of what has happened? I will ask another intern to assist me."
Dr Shah looked as if she were about to argue. Her brows contracted and a steely light passed through her eyes, but when she glanced up at the senior doctor she seemed to change her mind. With a small nod, she turned to go, but not before casting one last anxious glance in Shilpa's direction.
Watching from the sidelines, Armaan noticed her squeeze Shilpa's hand and saw her lips move as she whispered something quickly. She was too far away and there was too much noise for him to be able to make out what she said, but he somehow knew it had been words of reassurance. His eyes followed her as she walked hurriedly off down the corridor and he made a mental note to seek her out later, when he knew Shilpa was out of danger.
Shilpa. Now that he knew that was her name he felt how perfectly it suited her. When he thought of her soft smile, her dazzling eyes, he couldn't imagine any other name that would have sounded so right. Unconsciously he played the name around in his mind, mulling over its sound, so light and sparkling, just like her face when she had been twirling about in the snow.
And then his mind flashed on the moment the SUV had ploughed into her and all the warmth that had been filling him up was vanquished in a blast of icy horror. In his memory he could picture every detail so crystal clear ' the way her body had arced up, as if it were made of nothing more substantial than twigs, how she'd plummeted back down to the ground at an inhuman speed, and the hollow thud when her body met the earth, a thud his own heart had mirrored.
Shaking his head, he focused back on the here and now and realised that the doctor and the nurse had wheeled the gurney off down the corridor towards the double doors. With a surge of panic, he started after them. I can't leave her alone, I have to stay with her, he kept thinking. He didn't even try to understand it or ponder where this feeling had come from. It wasn't something that could be decoded and analysed. It wasn't anything tangible, rather it was more like an inner voice that told him he had to stay with her. I'm your guardian angel, he heard himself say to her back in the park. At the time he'd thought it was lame and ridiculous, but he was beginning to wonder if there was a reason he'd spontaneously said that.
He followed the gurney through the doors, his eyes flicking down to Shilpa with a sudden need to see her face again. Her eyes remained closed, no sign of even a flicker of life behind them. But he noticed there was a wider pool of crimson on the white pillow they'd rested her head on. It was like a halo of blood.
Hastily he drew his eyes away from it, his stomach clenching tightly.
"I'm sorry, but you can't come in here with us," someone said, bringing him up short.
Coming to a halt, he found himself looking into the wide eyes of the nurse. Her expression was pressing and she had one hand on the door, her arm effectively barring him from going any further.
"But..." he started to say, his heart lurching.
"I'm sorry," she repeated, and then disappeared inside without another word. The doors swung shut with a loud click and the light above the door came on and Armaan was left alone in the corridor, feeling useless and restless and uncertain what to do now.
There were no seats outside the emergency theatre so after a few minutes he wandered back down the corridor. Where exactly he was headed, he wasn't sure, but he knew he couldn't stand outside the theatre all night. A walk might ease some of the tension currently knotting his gut and besides he needed to distract himself. If he stayed watching that red light above the door he knew his mind would conjure up all manner of awful scenarios about what might be going on inside. The flashbacks of the accident were bad enough, he didn't need to add to them with gruesome images of his own.
One thing he was certain of, though, and that was that he wasn't going to leave the hospital. However long it took, he would stay here until there was news on Shilpa's condition. Somehow he knew, deep inside, that he would not be able to eat or sleep or do anything remotely normal until he knew how badly injured she was.
He headed out through the double doors and found himself in a small reception. The nurse behind the desk was holding a phone to her ear and desperately rummaging about on her desk for something. She looked tired and harassed and kept smiling apologetically at the people waiting on the other side of the desk. They all turned to look at Armaan when he walked in and several of them glared at him, as if he had somehow affronted them. He didn't even bother to waste energy thinking about them, heading over to the large window on the other side of the waiting room and glancing out into the night.
The night was still clear, the stars winking away merrily in the black sky. Armaan stared at them, recalling the look of wonder on Shilpa's face when she'd gazed at them out in the park. How happy she'd looked, so young and carefree. So full of hopes and dreams. Alive with them. He squeezed his eyes shut as a wave of nausea washed unexpectedly up the back of his throat.
She'll be okay, he told himself. But he didn't feel any conviction. Images danced before his eyes ' Shilpa lying in the snow, her hair spilled over it like ink, her body all twisted and mangled, her blood spreading out in a wide arc, like someone had decided to die the snow vermilion. He bit down on his bottom lip, fighting against the fear and the sickness, breathing hard. And then something wet trickled down his cheek.
His fingers shook a little as he lifted them to his face, touching his skin lightly. When he opened his eyes and glanced down he was astonished to see a drop of moisture glistening on his forefinger. It sat there, glistening faintly under the hospital strip lights, for a second, until it evaporated. But even as it did his vision blurred and more wet droplets went snaking slowly down his cheeks.
With a sort of horror, he brushed them hurriedly away. What the hell was wrong with him? He was crying? Why? He didn't know the girl, she wasn't a friend or a colleague or even a distant acquaintance. She was just someone he'd spent half an hour talking on a freezing cold December night. Sure, seeing her thrown up into the air had been horrible and he was worried about her. He would have had to have been made of stone not to care what happened to her. But shedding tears for her? Did it really justify that?
You're just drunk, he told himself. Your mind is all screwed up because of the alcohol and the accident and Riddhima.
Her name only added to the swirl of dismay in his chest. This was not how he had envisaged tonight panning out. With a humourless laugh he realised that he should have known better than to expect anything but the opposite of his plans by now. It was his own personal jinx. He was cursed. Didn't today prove it? He'd lost Riddhima and caused a stranger to get knocked down by a car. What more proof did he need?
"I should never have gone to that stupid wedding," he muttered under his breath. "I should have listened to her when she asked me to stay away."
But when had he ever listened to her? Casting his mind back to that fateful day six months ago, he saw her eyes, wide and pleading, as she told him that everything between them was over.
"I love Sid now, Armaan. It's him I want to be with. Please try to understand."
Understand? How could he understand when she wasn't speaking sense? She'd said that she loved him, that he was the most important person in her life. He'd give her his heart and soul and now she was rejecting him? Yes, they had had their problems. His possessiveness had gotten out of control, he'd clashed with her father, resented her promotion above him at work. But they were minor issues that they could work through, he'd been confident of that. She just hadn't been willing to try.
That was how it had struck him that day, at least. And though she had begged with him to let her go, to accept that she had moved on, he hadn't heeded her. Day after day he had tried to get her alone, waiting for her after work, showing up at the gym, followed her when she went shopping, all in the hope that he could show her that the love they has was still alive. He'd known she felt the same way about him as he did her. Love doesn't die; it lasts forever. She'd been lying to herself and he'd been determined to prove it.
Sighing, he stared out into the snowy night again, thinking of the look of contempt on her face when he'd shown up at her wedding. There had been real hatred in her eyes when she told him to leave. That look had seared right through him, broken him into a thousand pieces. Nothing could ever hurt as much as that, he'd thought.
But when he thought about never seeing Shilpa's emerald eyes again, of never hearing her sweet, melodious voice, or seeing her smile light up her face, the ache in his heart was more intense than anything he'd ever experienced. In the last six months he'd thought he had acquired a PhD on heartbreak. But all that was nothing compared to what he was feeling right at that moment. The sense of emptiness inside him, of desolation, was more than he could bear and with a frustrated cry, he punched the wall, the shock of pain down his arm a welcome distraction from the agony at his core.
The guilt only made it worse. Yes, he felt guilty. He couldn't shake the thought that if he hadn't of made that stupid quip about her mother she would never have gotten upset. She wouldn't have rushed away. She wouldn't have been too preoccupied to notice the car...
It's all my fault, he thought bleakly. And if she doesn't make it, then I as good as murdered her. Oh God, please don't let that happen.
His world was falling apart and like a drowning man, he was caught in the middle of it. Confusion and dread filled his mind, clutched at his heart. He glanced back up at the starry sky and unexpectedly Shilpa's words came back to him - Whenever you feel alone, whenever you feel lost and don't know how to find your way, just look to the stars. If you make a wish on a star, it is certain to come true.
Armaan wasn't one of those people who put much store by superstitions. He was a passionate believer in his own ideals and nowhere was that plainer than his unwavering belief that he was destined to be with Riddhima. But when it came to matters of faith and religion, he was more than a little sceptical. The last six months in particular had convinced him that the power of prayer could solve nothing. If it could, then wouldn't Riddhima have come back to him by now?
Yet, standing there in the hospital, listening to the beeps of the machines and the distressed voices of families waiting for news on their loved ones, he was overcome with a sudden need to believe. Shilpa had trusted her mother's words. She might have said she wasn't sure anymore, but he'd seen the look in her eyes, that one of mixed wistfulness and hope. No matter what had happened to her, she still believed in the power of the superstition. And right then he desperately needed something, anything, to grasp on to.
So he made a wish. Looking up at the brightest star in the sky, he silent prayed that Shilpa would pull through, that her injuries would not be great, and that she would regain consciousness soon.
That's all I ask, he added, closing his eyes as his heart squeezed fiercely.
"Excuse me."
The voice, softly spoken and hesitant, called him out of his thoughts. Turning, he was surprised to find Dr Shah standing there. She was wringing her hands together in a nervous gesture and when he looked at her she gave him a small, tentative smile that didn't reach her big, brown eyes.
"Sorry to bother you, but, you're the one who brought Shilpa in, aren't you?" she asked. He noticed that when she said Shilpa's name her eyes deepened with pain, as if someone had stabbed her. He understood the feeling.
"Yes," he answered, managing to frame a half-smile.
"How...how did it happen? Did you see?"
Armaan couldn't answer right away. The words stuck in his throat and he had to swallow hard to clear it. "She ran into the road. She was upset and crying, I think. The car came out of nowhere. There wasn't any time for it to break and she never noticed it."
Dr Shah closed her eyes and clutched her hands to her chest. "God," she said softly.
"Yeah," Armaan answered, knowing exactly what sentiment she was suffering. And then, seized by a sudden impulse, he asked, "How well do you know her?"
Dr Shah opened her eyes. They shimmered under the lights with unshed tears. "She's my best friend," she told him, her voice choked. "I've known her since my first day at college." A faint smile touched her lips but it quickly faded. Clearing her throat, she held out a hand to him. "I'm Sapna, by the way."
"Armaan." He took her hand. It was small but warm and for some reason it made him feel calmer than he had done since the car hit Shilpa.
"How about you?" Sapna asked. "How do you know Shilpa?"
"Oh, I don't. Not really." Sapna frowned and he felt his cheeks burn. "I mean, I just met her tonight. I found her dancing in the snow."
Sapna regarded him silently for a second, her head titled to one side in a thoughtful manner. "Hmm," she said after a minute, straightening her posture. "That's strange. From the way you looked at her, I got the feeling you were close to her."
Armaan's heart thudded hard in his chest, but he didn't get a chance to ask Sapna what she meant. Just at that moment the double doors leading to the operation theatre opened and the senior doctor walked into the reception area. Sapna instantly stiffened, jumping to her feet with a sharp intake of breath that was only audible to Armaan. He rose too, feeling the cold sensation in his stomach expand uncomfortably.
"Dr Hughes! Is she okay?" Sapna asked.
The doctor walked slowly over to them, his hands stuffed casually into the pockets of his white lab coat. Armaan couldn't work out whether that was a good sign or not. Unconsciously he held his breath, the frantic beat of his heart drowning out all other noises around him.
"I really cannot discuss it with you," Dr Hughes said gravely. "You know that, Dr Shah."
"Please, Dr Hughes," she pleaded, her face crumpling. "Just let me know if she is all right."
The doctor glanced between her and Armaan. "I should wait until her family gets here. You did call them, didn't you?"
Sapna nodded. "Yes, but they will take their time."
Dr Hughes inclined his head in a manner that said this wasn't surprising. It made Armaan frown and wonder what kind of people Shilpa's relatives were.
"Please tell me," Sapna reiterated.
Dr Hughes sighed. "Very well, as I know how fond of one another you are. Dr Malhotra has suffered a great loss of blood. Several of her ribs are broken, as is her left leg. She has suffered a severe concussion...But I believe she will pull through."
Sapna let out a cry of relief and tears started to spill from her eyes. She didn't bother to wipe them away, just clutched Dr Hughes' hands, thanking him repeatedly.
As for Armaan, he very nearly fell down to the ground. His legs suddenly went rubbery and his heart swelled with joy to the extent that it choked the back of his throat. Out of nowhere tears gathered behind his eyes and he had to hurriedly blink them out the way. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He wanted to hug the doctor for bringing such good news, but more than that, he wanted to thank whoever had heard his wish and granted it.
His gaze travelled to the windows and the bright stars in black sky. They seemed to wink at him as much as to say, told you so. The sight of them made him feel lighter than he had done in months and unbelievably a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. Thank you, he said silently to them; thank you for listening to me.
He knew then that for the rest of his life he would never doubt the power of faith ever again.
"She'll really be all right?" Sapna was asking Dr Hughes. Her voice was full of joyous disbelief, something Armaan could relate to. It all seemed too good to be true, like a real miracle had taken place.
Dr Hughes opened his mouth to answer, but he never got the chance. From behind him came a booming, authoritative voice, one that sent a chill right through Armaan. And the words they said were every bit as ominous.
"Not when I am done with her, she won't be."
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