Chaotic Tangles!

17|| Cinderella

"The most confused we ever get is when we’re trying to convince our heads of something our heart knows is a lie."
— Karen Marie Moning

Nandini rested her back to the wall as she settled herself on the bed inside the resident room of their ward. Her eyes closed on their own as she pressed her forehead to soothe the pain. It had been a long day for her. She looked at her wrist watch and exhaled loudly.

6 pm.

If she thought working with Manik was tough she was proved horribly wrong today.

Doing an OPD shift with Dr. Simran was the worst.

And well, maybe the fact that she hadn't seen Manik all day, lingering somewhere in the back of her mind, was also a reason enough to bother her. It wasn't like he hadn't come to the hospital, ofcourse he had, they just hadn't crossed paths all day and she was absolutely not looking forward to see him once.

They hadn't had any contact since last evening after she had left him pretend sleeping in his room and the part of her that was expecting him to at least find her once, forget greeting her, was like a noose around her neck, suffocating her.

She wasn't supposed to hope for such stuff. She was here for a purpose and she intended to fulfill it too. But her heart and mind seemed to be at cross roads when Manik was concerned. And that was exactly what she had been annoyed about - wanting to meet him and feeling guilty about it in equal measures.

But truth be told, the past day they spent together had confused her more if nothing else. It wasn't like she didn't know who Manik Malhotra was or what she was here for. She was clear about all of it in her head and neither was she fooled by his actions yesterday, but at the same time - there were moments where he had let her see through him, or so she wanted to believe.

Some tiny little part of her wanted to convince herself that not every moment they spent together was an illusion he was trying to create for him and she was trying to create for her.

But she didn't know if it was true - she realized that with an ancient sadness filling her.

She sighed when she saw Dev leave the ward with a few PGs trailing him. Tea breaks were exactly what kept the residents going, especially when it was paid for by their seniors. Only one first year was in the ward other than her and she knew she wouldn't get a better window for her work again. Hence she forced all the thoughts away from her mind and remembered the tears trailing down her best friend's eyes as she cried hysterically holding her. That was a visual Nandini knew she would never forget. She had promised to deliver and she would - she reminded herself again and stood up from the bed. Quickly picking up her phone she moved out of the ward under the pretext of a phone call and kept walking until she reached the other secluded corner of the department.

The records room was the one huddled in a corner opposite to the men's washroom of the floor. Nandini shook her head as she remembered the stories she cooked to retrieve the keys from the floor watch man. Opening the lock she pushed open the door and broke into a series of cough.

"Ugh! Things you do for friendship", Nandini muttered to herself and quickly scanned the room to see how could she access the documents. Her eyes fell on the huge cartons labelled yearly. Her eyes lit up as she walked further inside and brought down the carton labelled 2019.

But one look at it and all her excitement died down. The carton was filled with files, all dumped one over the other, completely out of order.

How in the hell was she supposed to find Aadhya Mittal's file from this heap of papers, a lot of which were torn here and there and some also detached from the bundle, lying just like that. The dark room and her cell phone's light being the only source of illumination wasn't helping either.