Chaotic Tangles!

21|| Smiles And Deception

Note : A few minutes late but I am proud of myself for being able to stick to the schedule. Almost :)
See you next to next Saturday ❤️

The mind can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven.

The morning breeze was cold, it was an unusually dull morning, and Nandini who hadn't have any sleep the previous night, was literally running on coffee and the adrenaline that put her heart into fourth gear everytime she thought of the conversation she was going to have with Manik. Just the crazy scenarios her mind was creating, were enough to make her go crazy, and she absolutely hated how each one of them seemed to throw her over the edge.

Shaking her head, she managed to walk inside the elevator, reached her floor and went straight to the pantry that had the automated coffee machine. She desperately needed more caffeine to go through the day.

Carrying the plastic cup, she walked out of the pantry and into the ward, greeting the ward boy, and soon the first year came rushing to her wishing her.

"Rounds?", she asked, sipping her coffee and keeping her handbag aside to fetch her pen and stethoscope.

"Done, I have put the notes too but it would be great if you check once before Dr. Simran comes", the resident requested, clearly afraid of Dr. Simran, who was known to be very strict anyway. Nandini nodded, trying to calm her down, "Come, I will take a quick round again and you can brief me like you would brief her - the practice would be good for you". The resident was hugely relieved and happily accompanied her.

Once they were done, Nandini sat down on the chair inside the nurse station, already tired. She asked the ward boy to check if Dr. Manik had come in, but he replied in negative, two times, half an hour apart. Nandini frowned checking her watch. It was almost 11 in the morning, way past his usual time to come in.

Her thoughts went to last night, she remembered putting him to sleep. After all, he really had a tough day. It brought back memories of their conversation, something Nandini had put on hold for time being but now hitting her in full force.

Manik had a case of extreme grief reaction and he had admitted that it wasn't just about his mother.

Without even trying, it worried Nandini. She didn't want to, but she couldn't stop thinking about all her previous notions of him. Was he really not playing her?

She discarded that thought as she got up, restless. Of course he did. She knew that, she was sure of that. She had caught his smirks quite a few times.

But maybe, it was both? He was playing her, and he still had certain skeletons of his past that bothered him too bad. That could be a possibility.

Or maybe, she was just too desperate to make it a possibility - her sane mind chided her. Her feelings for him were creating a havoc inside her, even though there wasn't a label to their relationship yet, Nandini couldn't fight the fact that she was indeed desperate to find anything that could suggest Manik wasn't the culprit she was searching so hard, even when situations looked the opposite.

Shaking her head, she stood up and walked out of the ward, her steps measured and calculated even when she wasn't conscious of where she was heading to. Yet she wasn't really surprised when she found herself standing outside his cabin.

She looked through the glass partition and saw him sitting on his chair, it's back to her. Her heart beats fastened as she pushed open the door, about to call his name but the chair turned in the same moment, and Nandini was more than surprised to see Dr. Malik sitting on the chair instead of Manik.

"Dr. Nandini?", Dr. Malik was surprised and confused together, Nandini gathered that from his amused frown almost instantly.

"Good morning Sir", she greeted, forcing out a smile, "I needed a research paper from Dr. Manik. I thought he was here", she made up whatever excuse that hit her mind, just keeping the eye contact so that her lie wasn't caught too easily.