Rumi got down from the suburban train, squeezing herself out of the jam packed ladies' compartment.
She was dressed in her habitual pair of jeans, and a sunshine yellow t-shirt that was stained with splotches of fluid from the day's work. She brushed a thick lock of hair that fell on her face, fluttering out of stretch band that gathered her shoulder-length hair in a careless bun.
Twisting her arm, she hoped for her eversilver water bottle from the bottle holder of her backpack. As the sparse remnant of cold water streamed down her throat, she admonished herself for not having refilled her water can before she departed from her workplace for the day.
As she strode down Station Road, her anticipative eyes roved around hoping she'd discover the wounded cow she'd treated a couple days ago..
She'd caught sight of a cow, impaired with a huge abscess in her right hind leg. The cow, with a fraying rope tied loosely around its neck, undeniably, screamed someone's ownership of it.
Did the owner know of this huge, hurting abscess and didn't take a step towards relieving it of the prickly pain—Rumi didn't know.
But after happening upon one such abscess, she couldn't leave the place without towing the cow to her clinic so damned dutifully, to alleviate her. This was not a legally right thing to do when the cow had a owner and her, treating it without the owner's say, but her moral values, and doctor instincts would do her off, if she didn't do it. Right away.
And surprisingly, the cow did cooperate well, when she'd tugged it gently all through the torrid streets of her city, to her clinic. Perhaps, it just wanted to be salved from the pain.
From that day, whenever she walked down to her clinic, or retired home at night, Rumi's eyes, benevolently, scanned the streets for the cow, she'd treated. She now had a greater responsibility of changing the gauze wick she'd packed inside the abscess cavity, if it'd soaked in the what's left of the drainage.
As Rumi lumbered across the street holding her right hand over her spectacled eyes, blinking at the scorching sun, she came up with the same cow resting in the corner of the street, chewing on the cinema poster that it'd ripped off from the wall.
Wiping the single bead of sweat that rolled down her right temple, Rumi dashed across the street and reached the cow.
Planting her hands on her hips, Rumi shot a momentous glare at the creature lying down at her feet, chomping the cinema poster giving out an annoying rustling. She had not the energy to tug an already languished cow up till her clinic, in this sultry weather.
Decided she'd look into it right here, she squatted at the cow's hind limb, to examine how well the abscess's cavity had healed, unmindful of the situation around her.
Just when she'd managed to pluck the wet, pus-soaked gauze out of it, and repack the cavity with a newly sterilized one, distracted by a noisy bike in her closer proximity, she twisted her head around.
Adhithan smiled down at her, perched on his vintage Bullet, and holding down his helmet in the front. "Hi, uhm... Not-So-Rude Girl," he greeted her, as his eyes swayed down to check out the new gauze's tail she was stuffing in.
Rumi's eyes floated over to his thick, curly lock of hair that ruffled at its release from the helmet. And as she averted her gaze to the cow's legs, she replied, "You don't have to change my name just because you're seeing me do nice things."
She'd said that anticipating a witty comeback, but he'd astounded her by quietly watching her, until she finished repacking the wound.
Roused from the ground, Rumi gently shook her legs one by one that'd numbed due to the squatting. She then asked him, "Why are you waiting?"
