Page 248 - Till the Last Breath . . .

As I look at the empty bed next to me and the missing books and the

absence of her chirping laughter, I feel the world has permanently become a
little darker, a little sadder. All I remember of her are her last words to me,
‘I will be back. It will be okay.’

Well, she lied. I don’t think I am forgiving her for that. Not now, not ever.
She left us behind to miss her, to yearn for her, to find things to distract

ourselves from missing her. She is not there. She is not around us. I will
never see that smile. She will not be on the next bed trying to irritate the

hell out of me. She will not talk till my head bursts into little splinters and
then irritate me some more. I have not met Arman, but over the last few

days I have heard stories. He told Zarah that he was sure she smiled at him
long after her heart rate dropped and the lifeline drew a flat line on the
monitor and the doctors failed to revive her. Zarah tells me that Arman had

spent the night at the morgue standing outside her frozen casket because
Pihu was afraid of the dark. She tells me he had to be forced out before he

caught pneumonia or something worse. She tells me how every night Arman
comes to both the room and the terrace where they had gone on their first

date. She tells me how her mother had fainted when she had come back to
the unlucky room no. 509 and how she had to be pulled from Pihu’s bed by

her father. She tells me her father looked like a walking corpse when he
heard the news. She tells me how both sets of parents had cried arm in arm.
She tells me how her father comforted my crying father (crying!) when I

was battling for my life while their daughter was dead. Zarah tells me that
her father has not said a word since the day Pihu passed away on the

operating table, lying on her side with her back cut open and a smile pasted
on her face. It was painless, Zarah tells me.

Does knowing that it was painless make me feel any better? It doesn’t.
She was no stranger to pain. She was strong and she would have picked

pain and life any day over comfort and death. People like her aren’t meant
to die. They never die because people don’t forget them. Did she give us
enough moments together? She would never have been able to even if she

had died a hundred years later. People like her just don’t live enough. No
matter how long, how fulfilling their lives, how painless their deaths are,