Start Over

The light was too harsh. Even at 2 am, when the world slept outside, oblivious to everything going on around him, that was the one thing Rahul noticed. 

White, stark, bright light – illuminating even the tiniest of corners. Much like the last time he had been waiting in this space. No, not this. A similar space. He had decided never to go back there. And he hadn’t. He was hoping that would change the outcome this time. That it would make it different from what had happened the last time. He was hoping, that changing the place would ensure that his fate changed too. Although, it wasn’t merely the place that was now different.

The nurse coming out of the operation theatre, at a run, broke his reverie. Rahul stood up to ask her how things were, inside. But before he could even manage an ‘excuse me, sister,’ she had run past him in her hurry. Rahul swallowed the rising panic in his throat and held on to the back of a plastic chair for support. The chair was bolted to the floor. Hopefully, he thought, it would help to ground him too.

Rahul checked his watch. It was almost an hour. Half an hour later than the last time. But then, last time, there wasn’t much they could’ve done anyway. He had been told that. This time though, the lateness of the time the doctors were taking, gave him hope, even as it continued to worry him.

His phone pinged. “Everything alright?” It was his sister’s message. She had had a baby last month, and hadn’t been able to travel to be with him right now. But she was his pillar of support. Always had been. Right from when she had almost single-handedly raised him after their parents had died in a car crash when he was still little. “Yes, so far.” He replied. He would’ve loved to have had her around. Anyone, actually, to have just someone around. He didn’t want to be alone. Not right now. Not when his memories threatened to consume him.

Memories. Good ones. Bad ones. More good ones. Just a year - that was all the time he had been married to Aanya. Just a year. When Aanya had given him the amazing news that they were going to become new parents! His lovely, beautiful Aanya, who had looked gorgeous and radiant as she had carried their daughter for seven whole months. Seven months that began with Aanya throwing up at all hours and that had ended in her craving the wackiest of things – seriously, salted caramel brownies at 3 am? Seven months when he had been too busy at work, too tied up to think of Aanya or her comfort. Too busy to notice that her health had steadily deteriorated.  

And then had come the time when she had gone into labour. Prematurely. He hadn’t even been there when his sister and her husband had rushed Aanya to the hospital. He had arrived much later. When the doctors were already working on her behind the ominous doors of an operation theatre. They would try to save both, they had said. And then they had come out to tell him that the baby was long gone. Aanya, he told them, Aanya! They had held his hands. Nodded their heads sagely, and gone back in. But he had lost her anyway. Both his lovely daughter and his beautiful, loving, warm-hearted wife. Lost. In a single night.

That was two years ago. He had thought he would never be able to live. Not without his wife. And not with his guilt over not having been there for her. He had found it difficult to even breathe, that first month. He had barely eaten anything. Hardly made it to work. His friends had visited him less and less, until, one day, he found himself awake in the small hours of the morning, eyeing the bottle of sleeping pills on the counter in his bathroom. They were prescription tablets. Meant to help him sleep. Fight his nightmares. But it was extremely tempting to end the nightmare that was his life, in just one swallow. The end of all his problems. The end to his loneliness.

He had woken up in the ER, disoriented; throwing up the contents of his stomach. He had a massive headache, and when he raised his hand to his head, he saw that it was hooked to an IV. 

And then the angel had walked into his life.

“You need to take it easy,” she had said, her voice dipped in honey, barely audible through the hammering in his head.

“Where…who…” he had stammered, trying to get up.

But she had placed soft, firm hands on his shoulders, pushing him gently but resolutely back on the bed. “Like I said,” she had smiled, “you need to relax.”

And then she had told him how he had been found by his sister who had tried to get hold of him on the phone and when he didn’t answer her for hours, which was very unlike him, she had come over to his place and entered the house with her key. He had been unconscious when the ambulance got there and had been so even in the ER till they had finally managed to pump out the last of the poison from his stomach. His sister had waited with him all along. She had left only an hour ago, and was expected back any moment.

“Who are you?” he had croaked. She was clearly a doctor. The white coat said as much. And she confirmed. “I am Pooja, a resident here,” she said. Ah, so not a full-fledged doctor yet, then. “And I am here to ensure that you leave from here, fine.”

She had worked her magic on him. All the while he was in the hospital. And also after he left. They never realised when they had fallen in love. Rahul had never thought he could ever forget Aanya, that he would never be able to live without her! And yet, here he was, loving it, because Pooja was here, in his life. She had changed his life completely. And his thinking. And his outlook to life.

And then the news had come. Pooja was going to give him the best gift of his life. They were to become parents! And just like that Rahul had found his heart constricting and everything going black!

It will be different. Pooja had assured him. We will be fine. She had said. But he had found it very difficult to believe it. And yet, they had survived. The whole nine months. Well, that was different, he had to admit. And then, right on time – different again – Pooja had gone into labour. An almost normal delivery, though, had turned into an emergency C section at the last minute; and here he was – waiting in the harsh lights of the waiting room. Waiting for things to change. For his life to change. 

Waiting for things to go right this time. Hoping that things go right this time.

Because, he prayed, that if he got a chance to change things this time, he would do things differently. He wasn’t able to be there for Aanya, but he won’t make that mistake with Pooja and their baby. He would do things differently. He would do things better.

And out of the blue, something from a movie he had seen long back, came to him – from The Lion King, his favourite movie when he had been a little child, mourning his parents – the past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it, or learn from it.

Rahul had decided to learn. He had decided to do things differently. He was just waiting to be given the chance.

“Mr. Khanna?”

Rahul looked up to see a nurse, standing just outside the operation theatre, holding a bundled baby in her arms.

“Come, meet your son, Mr. Khanna. He is the most handsome baby I have ever seen.” She smiled, as she held out his son to him.

She must have said this to every father waiting out here, Rahul thought. But it didn’t matter. Because she was holding out his son to him. That is all that mattered.  

His son.

Rahul cradled the baby in awkwardly. “Pooja…” he asked the nurse, afraid to know the answer. But she nodded reassuringly, and said, “Your wife is doing fine. They have taken her to the recovery room. You can see her in her room in a little while.”

“You heard her?” Rahul whispered to his new born. “Mum’s fine, buddy! Mum’s fine,” he said, cuddling him.

  

This is my first entry for Write Tribe's Festival of Words, June 2018. 

Pic courtesy: Pexels, Write Tribe. 

You can read my other entries for this festival here - 

The Dream
About Time 
Of Life Lessons and Listening to One's Heart
The Trip