Chaotic Tangles!

22|| Storm

Caution : This chapter reveals a whole lot of things, read with caution 😝

They say “time heals”, but even now I know that’s a lie. What people really mean is that eventually you’ll get used to the pain. You’ll forget who you were without it; you’ll forget what you looked like without your scars.

— Claudia Gray, A Thousand Pieces of You

The sky was beautiful, Nandini noticed, the colours mixing with each other as the sun prepared to bid adieu for the day, but truth be told, nothing really registered inside her mind. She continued to sit on that raised platform, staring at the sky, lost.

If someone was to shake her and ask her, how long she had been sitting on the terrace of their own hospital, she wouldn't know.

How had she managed to reach this place, or get it opened, she didn't remember.

Her patients, rounds, roasters, duties - she was completely clueless. Nobody had called her and she had assumed nothing that needed her urgent attention had come up so far.

It was almost afternoon when she had seen that message in her phone and now it was nearly dusk and she didn't know where did the hours in between go by. She felt like she was caught in time lapse, everything and everyone was moving around her and she was frozen.

But to be honest, that wasn't what what had shaken her. It was the fact that she was actually being blind and someone else had to shock her so bad for realizing that she was being blind.

Nandini squeezed her eyes shut at that thought, and held her head in her hands. What in the world was happening?

She fished her phone out and opened the chat, Manik's text box showed he had indeed read her "Hi" but hadn't bothered replying. It angered her, itched her and hurt her all at the same time. She felt a hundred emotions together, and just feeling them was a draining experience, and that brought her another important realization.

This - whatever she was doing here, her motive, and what she was building with Manik - irrespective of the knowledge if it was being build on a true or false notion - both of these couldn't go on simultaneously. It was getting too much to handle.

As soon as her problem segregated into clear layers in her mind, she could see a solution too. Taking a deep breath, Nandini stood up and began walking towards the exit.

Manik Malhotra was about to have an interesting evening, Nandini smirked to herself as she called for a cab, unknown to the fact that he had had a pretty interesting day already.

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If there was a competition for having maximum shit days in one year, Manik Malhotra would definitely be one of the top three contenders, or at least so he thought. Gulping in his third coffee for the day, Manik stood in his balcony and stared at the beautiful view his penthouse offered from that height. The cloudy weather was only adding to the calmness in his surroundings, even though inside him was a world of chaos.

He had had a rough night with that haunting nightmare coming back after months and had hardly managed a get a few hours of sleep post 5 am in the morning when the consistent ringing of his cell phone had forced him out of his drugged sleep. And as annoying as that was, he couldn't complain because his dear sister had only called him twenty two times until he picked up to warn him about their father's arrival to Delhi.

Later, he also found a text from Dr. Malik waiting for him, to let him know about the same.

And another text that he did open, but didn't reply because last night, in all honesty, was a mistake, he would happily accept that.