Page 190 - Till the Last Breath . . .

‘Dushyant, you need to calm down,’ Zarah said and sat beside him.

‘How’s the pain today?’
‘I am not in any fucking pain! Why didn’t I know?’ He dug his face
again into his palms.

‘I am sorry I didn’t tell you and also for having assumed you knew. Did
she tell you about it?’

‘When I asked, she just told me that she had some problem with
sensation in her limbs and that it was nothing serious,’ he told her.

‘You talked to her? That’s new. It will be fine. She doesn’t hate you for
the way you were to her. In fact, she never hates anybody,’ she clarified.

‘I feel like such an asshole right now,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘Feel? You’re an asshole, aren’t you? In fact, you pride yourself on being
one,’ she chortled.

‘Now that’s mean,’ he said.
The more they talked about it, the more the situation sank in and the

pieces fell in place. It explained all the nights he had seen her mother cry
and bicker. All the times she had looked at him in envy. It all fit in now

because her daughter was dying and he wasn’t. As he sat there, he
wondered if her mother had wanted him dead in lieu of her daughter living

a few moments extra. Guilt kept wearing him down as he thought about the
day her friends had come to meet him.
Zarah probed him more about what they had talked about and Dushyant

told her about Kajal, his unconsciousness, the hand holding and other
details. He thought he saw Zarah’s face droop as he narrated Kajal’s

rendezvous with Pihu. As he further shared his apprehensions about being
in touch with Kajal again, he certainly noticed a distant look in her eyes.

With so much going on in his head, he chose to ignore it. A little later, the
crippling pain reared its ugly head again and Zarah had to inject him with

sedatives to mute his screaming, dying organs.
Soon, he drifted off as Zarah left the room without a smile on her face.