Love at First Heist

FOUR

"I'm sorry,"

Two words. That's all it took. Idris understood what it meant, having said the words himself so many times to others. He had never been on the receiving end though, but here he is.

He's angry— that is the first thought in his mind. He lost his father the first time when he was thirteen, and again when he's almost thirty. He just found him, what? Five hours ago? He doesn't realise it when his fist slams against the mirror, until two cold fingertips take out the shards from the palm.

It causes the blood to ooze out, and that's what he thinks this pain is. Red. You romanticise and glamorise it as much as you wish, pour in metaphors from every language that has been spoken, but in the end of the end— a deep red is all it is. He could hear all about the stories of his father from the strange people, remember the legends of afterlife— but nothing would change that he has lost the only family he had.

A burn causes him to flinch, and he looks at the person in front of him. Shehnaz mutters a quiet apology before tying the bandage.

"We're in a hospital, you could've told any nurse to do this."

"What would they think?" That does it for him. His father just died and that is what she cares about, what people would think?

"Excuse me?" She doesn't respond, getting up to leave.

"Are you just going to leave? Everything that happened does not bother you at all?"

She turned to look at him, her eyes detached— as if her mind and soul were both far from this place.

"Everything that belongs to Him will return to Him,"

He stares at her, stunned and almost, disgusted. Does she not care at all about this world? If it was that simple, why was he trying everyday? Why was he working his arse off night and day to save lives if it meant to return to dust anyway, is it so meaningless? And he snaps, everything beginning from his dad's absence and his death transforms into hatred, directed towards her.

His last words.
They were about her.

And she could not even care less.

"We will perform the ghusl tomorrow after the organ donation. You're his son, you have to be there. Ferit uncle will direct you through the janazah." Shehnaz quietly says, her tone remains insensitive towards the way he looked at her— with repulse, before closing the door behind her.

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The janazah is after fadr prayer, which is why there wasn't a large crowd. He does not recognise any face around, although many people approach him to show their respects. Throughout the entire miladh, he does not see Shehnaz. It's right after sunrise, and he's walking towards the grave.

He looks at his hands, his bandage covered in the dirt still. He has not left the graveyard's premises since the burial, strolling past the graves there. It was almost humbling to be there, surrounded with nothing but what is no longer here. He thought of all the patients deaths he had to announce, and one particular case came to his mind.

A mother, seven months pregnant with her second child, she had CHD. It was raining that day, when she felt herself bleeding. The blood diffused with the rain water, and she was brought into the hospital. She lost her child that evening.

That baby had been both her birthplace and deathbed. That was the only time he cried in his residency years, when he touched her heart— and he felt it beat. He was terrified, that  if they saved her after the miscarriage, would she be glad? Or would she detest them?

He remembers when his mother had a miscarriage too, and his father explained to him— that when a woman loses her child, the infant finds her in the Akhira and brings her to heaven with them self. The umbilical cord, it was a knot between them. Similarly, every soul had an invisible knot holding them together, his exact words were.

He grew up afterwards, thinking afterlife was just a concept humankind made to get out of the mourning cycle and that memory was buried somewhere deep. He hadn't reached out to that part of his mind in a while now, but he was now. Strangely, he finds himself leaning against the comfort in that belief— that this life isn't the end of it.

_________________________

Shehnaz counts the beads of the tasbih in her grip before finishing her dua's. She stands still, facing the grave in her view. The warmth of sunlight caress her back, and she looks at the rather darker sky in front of her.  The moon is setting, and she purses her lips.

She looks at the gardenias she brought from the hospital, and swallows the lump inside her throat.

"Are you okay?"

A voice asks from behind, she recognises it; Idris. And his words are the last straw. She inhaled, sharp as the winter breeze, before her eyes well with tears.

"No, the flowers.. I—" her voice breaks, and she turns to look at him. Blinking away the tears, she notices his eyes are searching, and the hatred in them from earlier shifts into something else, something close to recognition.

Like, there you are.
I found you.

He takes a step forwards, closing the gap between them as he puts his hands over her knuckles. His hold is delicate as though if he pressed any more, she'd break.

Then, she does. She breaks. A harsh, jagged gasp spills out of her mouth into his sweater, and her body trembles in his embrace, the violent tremors wrecking her bones reverberating through his own skin as he holds her against him, not letting go. Never letting go. The sound of her pain is still so quiet, you can't even tell she was crying unless he saw her. The tears fall relentlessly in silence.

"I needed to give him the flowers," she whispers, her voice coarse.

"He'd come back to me. He'd come back to me when I brought them," she says, remembering whenever he recognised her for them.

"The larvae, in the water. I forgot to change them, and.. and, they're rotting. I can't save them anymore," Idris places his chin above her temple, trying to stop his own tears. He fingertips move through the tangles in her hair in a rhythmic motion. He's not even aware of it.

"I can't save him." She holds onto him for dear life, like if any of them let go, the other's knees would crumble and the ground beneath them would crack, sinking them underneath.

"You'll be okay." He says, holding the nape of her neck until his body's almost shielding her smaller frame from the rest of the of the world. He holds her like it's the end of the times, his own tears forming moist on her dupatta.

And as the sun brims over the horizon, crackling through the clouds, they remain in each other's embrace, their hearts breaking like the silver lining at once.