Page 93 - Till the Last Breath . . .

anyone had found him. The receptionist shook her head. Half an hour had

passed by and there was no sign of him anywhere. Her concern about him
baffled her.
With her head hung low, she left the lobby and went out for some fresh

air. Mindlessly she walked towards the parking lot, wondering where
Dushyant might be. The feeling that she would never see him again filled

her with a strange, uneasy sensation. Normally, she would have been happy
to have one less man in her life, a minuscule reduction of the hatred she

held for men, but she was not.
She had been out for just about a few minutes when she spotted him on a

concrete bench. While still in his hospital robe, he was blowing smoke rings
and smiling at them as they drifted away from him. Zarah ran towards him.
A few steps from him, she slowed down. Her guard was up again, her eyes

flitted around for the easiest escape just in case Dushyant decided to lunge
at her.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, out of breath, her hands on her
knees.

‘I thought I would excuse myself for a smoke,’ he said. ‘It’s good for the
pain.’

‘Wait. Is that marijuana? How did you get it?’ Her heart rate slowed
down, her fear melted away. His uninterested yet warm eyes confused her,
even drew her closer.

‘A friend got it for me,’ he answered and took a long drag again. His eyes
were glazed over. He was clearly high.

‘Don’t you want to get better?’
‘I want to, but you guys seem to be getting nowhere. My organ systems

are behaving strangely. My body feels like shit and I am constantly in pain.
Just two days back I was fine and now I am not,’ he complained and

smoked.
‘You will be fine. Your insides are a cocktail of a million things that you
have ingested over the years and it will take us time to find out what’s

wrong with you,’ Zarah explained. ‘Can we go back in, please? We have to
run a few tests.’