Together

01

The screams of the thousand thoughts cluttering her mind seemed to increase rapidly, every voice was reverberating and evolving into another scream. The noise reached a crescendo, overpowering every bit of her existence, and she struggled to survive. That was the only thing she had been doing since the past few days, and then, she knew she was beyond exhausted. Slowly and slowly, her body gave in. There was a blaring siren in her mind and as always, her heart started hammering hard against the rib cage, warning to jump out of her chest any moment. With no warning, the devastating hurricane had hit the silent shoreline, but it wasn't for the first time.

A minute before, she was in a deep slumber, and at that very moment, she was struggling to open her eyes. A minute before, everything seemed to be just fine, and at that very moment, she was struggling for life. A minute before, she was trying to concentrate on her breath cycle, and at that very moment, she was struggling to cope with the shortage of breath. A minute before, she thought she was living, and at that very moment, she realised it was all a delusion, she was actually dying.

As Mallika got up with a jerk and opened her eyes, they dilated in an attempt to scan the vacant, dim room. Leaving the edge of her eyes, the tears seeped down her cheeks, one after another, taking their own time to drench her face. The mere thought of being left alone sent a shiver down her spine and she trembled. She was gradually losing herself, and there was no one beside her, no one.

On noticing a lamp burning in one corner of the room, Mallika tried to stare undiverted at it and within a few seconds, she realised its light was decreasing rapidly, the glow vanishing with every breath she fought for, and soon, there was just darkness -- the darkness to which she had succumbed much before. Collapsing on the bed once again, Mallika's fist, which she couldn't even feel now, clutched at her hair as she wriggled -- a crying mess, or perhaps, a dying mess.

"Mallika?" a soft voice, with concern echoing in every bit of it, called her out. Within seconds, she could feel a hand gently stroking her hair.

"You'll be fine."

"Where are you?"

"I'm here. You'll be fine. I'm here, with you."

"Something is wrong with me and I–" she tried to explain, but instead, ended up bursting into tears.

"I can't breathe. I don't want to get back to the hospital. I hate it there. Tell them...I'm alright. I don't need any injection, any medicine, any doctor. I need you," she cried and wondered if he could even listen, if she was even audible, if she was even speaking anything.

"Mallika, look here, look out of the window. See, it's raining. You've always loved rain, no?" he whispered, his voice distant, fading.

With her attempt to sit straight on the bed, an excruciating pain surged through every bone of her body and she winced, yet tried her best to get up, enduring every bit of the pain. It was strange that she hadn't been able to get the hint that it was raining until he told him about it. It was as if the petrichor, the pattering, the thunder -- all the senses that once used to bring her an inexplicable serenity -- had evanesced, dissolving into the pitch black crater that had recently developed within her own self.

Once seated to get a view clear enough, Mallika realised that the lamp was still burning, it hadn't blown out, it was still illuminating that one corner of the room -- the corner where Sumedh stood, his face quite observable in the glow.

Once she caught a glimpse of the heavy downpour, Mallika's gaze became still. From outside the window, nothing could be clearly seen, just the incessant cascading of the drops that had been saved by the Mother either for the best of the times, or for the worst. Everything felt strange, she couldn't feel the solace anymore; nothing about the rain elevated her soul, the way it used to.