Of Broken Hearts and Tears

Chapter 41

Zayan blinked as unshed tears swam in his eyes. The tears stung his eyes and blurred his vision. As he closed his eyes tightly, a few tears leaked from his eyes and rolled down his cheeks getting soaked in his stubble.

Maya stared at him as her throat constricted. She opened her mouth to speak but then closed it again at a total loss of words. She hesitantly put her hand on his in reassurance.

"She's fine now." She mumbled grasping his cold hands in her warm ones. She rubbed circles across his hand, trying to ease him.

"Should- Should we take her to the hospital?" Zayan asked without looking at her. He stared at their hands as her warmth seeped into his skin. 

"I'll take her in the morning, I promise." She reassured him. Her heart was breaking seeing his eyes go red and she knew she had no idea of the pain he was going through. 

An hour ago, they had found his mother unconscious in her bedroom. She was lying on the floor, looking lifeless making them panic.

Maya examined her to find that her blood glucose had gone very high as she was diabetic. She had given her the insulin shots. The elder woman soon succumbed to sleep.

"I can't lose her too." Zayan mumbled as specks of red danced in his eyes. 

"You won't lose her." She tried to reassure him.

"I've lost far too many people in my life. I can't lose her too." He kept saying as if he hadn't heard her. The image of Leya dead crossed his eyes and he shut his eyes tightly trying to get it out of his head, trying to forget it for a moment. 

"She probably forgot to take her insulin. That's why it happened." He said but he seemed to not have heard her. He was in a trance, and she couldn't dare to break it. 

"You know when we were younger I used to be so jealous of Areesha because I thought Mama loved her more. I used to hate myself for losing my parents." He told her still not looking at her in the eye. He was talking to her but at the same time he wasn't. He just needed this load off himself. He was carrying too much and he felt like he was going to crumble under its pressure. 

"Once I heard an aunty tell Mama that she should keep Areesha away from me because I was bad luck." He admitted when Maya didn't say anything. "I didn't know what it meant but I knew it was something bad. I was bad. I was so hurt that I stopped talking to Areesha after that. I avoided her for days. She kept apologizing thinking that she had done something wrong. She didn't know that I was the wrong one. My existence was wrong. I should have gone too with my parents. I prayed so hard to Allah to take me away too. I didn't want to be bad luck for my sister."

Maya stared at him in shock. Areesha had never mentioned their childhood so she never knew that he had gone through so much. Her grip on his hand tightened because she had no words to say. Was there anything to say?

Her silent reassurance seemed to prompt him to speak more.

"I don't even know why I'm telling you this. I haven't ever told this to anyone. Not even her." He swallowed as he couldn't utter Leya's name in front of her. Life hadn't given them enough time to talk and heal their old wounds. It just gave him new wounds without ever giving him the chance to heal the older wounds.

"You can tell me anything." Maya told him, her heart breaking at his confession. Who knew that he held so much pain behind that reserved personality.

"In every single thing, I noticed how Mama loved Areesha more than me. I couldn't see that she did care about me. Maybe it was childish of me to think that way. It's natural for a mother to love her own child more. It wasn't her fault. I should have just felt blessed that I had a family. A mother who gave me her milk and raised me. It took me a very long time to accept this. By the time I accepted it, I lost Baba. I had lost my entire world by then." He had lost his Leya. He narrated to her as if he was telling a story. He no longer had those tears in his eyes. Maya swallowed down her own emotions as she heard her own heart break.