Silent Hearts

19| Nineteen

She drew memories in his mind

He could never erase,

He painted colours in her heart

She could never replace.

________________

Tushar stared at the blank white screen of his laptop, his eyes unfocused and slightly blurry, his right hand resting on the smooth silver surface of the touchpad, his index fingers tapping on it. He felt restless, his mind going haywire, his thinking getting all jumbled up, leaving behind all his concerns to disturb his senses. His fairly unstable body leaned against the headrest, the laptop being kept on his lap, as he tried to think back to that day he came home.

Seventeen of August had been the last day he went to the office, that, perhaps, had been the very day his fever started. He remembered coming home, and not having dinner, he remembered Nandini lingering beside the door of his room, asking for him to eat, maybe with her? He could not precisely say what. He thought back to that torturous night, and how his chest pained. Some moments, he had thought he wouldn't survive, some moments the pain had gone so high that he was left with no other choice but to remain curled up in his bed. He had not certainly thought about the woman who existed just beneath the same roof as his.

In all honesty, Tushar Chatterjee had had no hope with Nandini. Absolutely nothing. That is why when she came towards him, with her slow, calculated steps that night, he had to think, possibly it was naught but a trance of his. However, as half-conscious he was, he hadn't lost all his senses to his weakness. He couldn't lie to himself when he had to say she, in her own way, cared. Maybe not much, or maybe she couldn't show her concern, but in a way, Tushar had come to know. . . Nandini did care.

He had felt her presence all through the night, just next to him, yet never close enough to sit near him, on his bed. She had remained by him, on the floor, all through the hours of the dusk. In the hours between, he had woken up to her hands sometimes clutching his tee-shirt, and when he would try to glance at her, her crouched up form would make him guilty for making her uncomfortable. His warm body couldn't even put up an effort to help her get comfortable before his strength would give out, and he would collapse all over, breathing heavily. The cold compress she had provided for him had helped him ease out his temperature till the dawn when he couldn't feel her anymore.

Tushar sighed. He couldn't remember the events of the next dawn, that was the eighteenth of August. Early, when the dusk had faded into a new dawn, Tushar had opened his eyes to an empty room, usual however it was, he hadn't felt good when he couldn't find the presence of a certain someone. Unknown to himself, he might have wished for a presence beside him, he had been lonely. . . too lonely. When his weariness took over, and when his fever came back, heightening with seconds, Tushar couldn't have stayed conscious.

He had remembered gazing at the door with his hazy vision, rather hopefully, perhaps waiting for that woman, yet he couldn't know when she came back, or yet when he slipped into unconsciousness. Later, when his eyes opened, he had found himself surrounded by hospital equipment, pale walls staring back at him, rather harshly, he was in a hospital, he had realised. The same one he had taken Nandini Roy to, the twelfth of July.