His Scandalous Bride

4: Then

His reasons were as clear as day. He doesn't like her. She isn't his daughter. She could understand his reasons. They were reasonable. His anger was reasonable. . .

"You have to get the rest of the medicine before the end of the day," the nurse fixing the I.V fluid for her father was saying sternly but she wasn't quite listening. Her eyes might be on the shell of a man on the bed but her mind wasn't.

. . .but she doesn't want them to be understandable or reasonable.

"He would be asleep for awhile. You can go freshen up and get something to eat. . ."

There were a lot of things Aisha could understand, her mind persisted stubbornly with thoughts she doesn't really want to sieve through but was proving impossible to ignore. There were a lot more she thought were reasonable. Even for him. But she was still struggling with acceptance, and forgiveness. That was why it was frustrating her; that almost insignificant yet visible part of her that knew there was a part of her that could understand his anger, and his frustrations, and his vindication, and his complicated feelings for the woman he had stolen from his best friend. Her mother wasn't a saint. She knew that. He must have had his reasons. He should have his reasons. She also know that. She could understand even, to some point, but not his actions. Never his actions.

. . .The nurse pat her shoulders softly, "Don't worry, okay? Your Baba is a strong man." She comforted in that voice strangers adopt where comfortable familiarity had been established before she'd left her with her thoughts.

Aisha smiles absently at her retreating figure. She normally does that whenever someone acts kindly to her even if she couldn't be bothered. She finds it easier. It was exhausting to do anything else. She'd learned the hard way. People expects you to not be miserable and grumpy even if you have the right reasons. To be poor, miserable and grumpy just makes you a bad person.

Her face lingered on the gaunt face ravaged by sickness on the bed and she thought about forgiveness again. And she finds she wasn't there yet again.

His actions doesn't justify his sense of betrayal. . .

. . . and she would never forgive them.

She doesn't want to.

She doesn't want to understand his madness. She doesn't want to understand his pain. She doesn't want to understand his regrets. She doesn't want to understand him. . .her father. She doesn't want to understand this man whom had loved her mother in the most miserable of ways.

How can a person hurt the person they obviously love as much as her father had done her mother? Aisha loathes to understand. She couldn't understand this man who lives in this world which her mother doesn't exist. How can a person just. . .shut down? He needs to want to live, this man her mother made her swear to protect. He needs to want to live so she can hate him comfortably. . .or just die.

She let her hand cover her face in obvious exhaustion and damning frustration. Why was she torturing herself with such useless thoughts, she doesn't know. Yet she was full of a desperate need to understand this man whom has broken her in all the wrong places. He never loved or cared for her as he'd said time and time again but he'd also never let her want for anything either. She doesn't understand him. He hated her yet he has never harmed her, not even once.

"Your father is a good man." her mother had promised

She had been tempted to ask which father but she hadn't. Her mother was entitled to her thoughts no matter how misguided. She was under no obligation to accept or believe even though her mother's untimely death had made her question how much she had stubbornly discarded just from sheer pettiness.