Changing Relations ✔

Chapter 45

Zain's POV

I could still hear the rain dripping down the leaves. I coiled up in my warm blanket. I reached out for her at the other end of the bed, but she wasn't there.

Again it was a dream.

When someone you once loved dies, you remember things.

It's been a year and a half but everything seems so fresh. It was a beautiful dream, turned into an endless nightmare. She was my source of strength back then, unfortunately she's my weakness now. I gave her my love but she broke my heart, she left me halfway.

She never asked anything more than, what I can't give. I really did tried my best to be the best husband. We were not the type of PDA couple but we really showed our love and affection with each other. I remember a weekend party in someone's basement. We kissed for what seems like an eternity now. Adults don't make out like that. Who has the time? But time was all we had back then.

How can I forget spending five hours in the car on a cold winter night, listening to the radio and talking about life the way only teenagers could, about the ways of the world and the interconnectedness of it all. The sky was bright with moonlight and the silhouette of leafless trees led the conversation. It was all connected. The naked trees and conversations, had the answers to it all.

I literally grew into myself with this girl who was once a child with me. I grew up with her, not in the typical sense of growing up, not the usual way people use that phrase. But I grew into myself - my very young self - with her over the years.

I remember driving home with her once, it was Hani's birthday. Our flight had landed late and she wanted to surprise Hani, she wanted to be the first person to wish her. Distance was all that mattered. Hareem wasn't stopping for anything, she had ordered the driver to go back home and not to say a word to anyone as she wanted to drive that night. She sure as hell wasn't taking her foot of the gas for a little rain.

My eyes stayed glued to the GPS display tracking our position while the world passed in a blur of red and white lights. The hiss of the tyres over the smooth tarmac was lost under the pounding bass of her preferred get-away music. Hareem leant over to turn it up. In that instant she lost the opportunity to evade a newly broken-down car without it's lights off. Even if she'd been paying attention she would have been hard pressed to make the manoeuvre. As it was she barely had time to scream before the air bags knocked her back and sideways.

The car tumbled over and over into the central barrier before coming to an absolute stop. Silence; it scared me more than the pain. Shouldn't Hareem be moaning or calling out? I turned to look at her, she tried to move but she was pinned by the collapsing roof and the steering column. Her neck was too fragile to move...

The car had flipped so many times that Hareem had become disorientated before she even sustained the concussion that had her drifting in and out of consciousness. I was fleetingly aware of the bloody taste in my mouth but I tried to hold her up. At times her eyelids fluttered. The pain was too much to bare, the last thing I heard was the sound of sirens.

It was a miracle that I survived the accident but the doctors have given only seventy-two hours to Hareem. They had clearly said she won't be able to survive because of her head injury and the fact that her internal bleeding was making it worse for her.