Breathless | ✔

*Chapter 22*

The teeth clatter wind brushed against the soft and smooth face skin shuffling the left out hair around as Susheela stood on the hospital rooftop in the chilly winter evening. It was past 9 p.m.
She rubbed her palms together in order to keep them warm, she enjoyed being alone there for some time. In her wear, she got no heavy clothes to avoid the extreme cold.

Suddenly a warm jacket felt being put on her from behind, which led her to turn around and meet with the most unexpected person.

"I heard you haven't eaten in a while. I brought some light food."

He still cared.

"I'm fine.." A little chilled air came out as she spoke shaking her words harder.

"You'd catch cold."

She kept silent.

After a few seconds of looking around the city from the open view, Pramod turned to Susheela.

"May I ask something?"

"Hmm?"

"How have you been?"

Not sure why but feelings yearned to jump out of her as words. She badly wanted to tell how she missed them, how she was broken to live alone; for some unknown reasons it felt like trusting the person beside a lot.

Pondering for a while she replied sternly, "I've been.. good."

Perhaps it was nothing but formality?

No one said a word after that. "Come downstairs. They've been waiting for you."

Susheela silently nodded and followed the elder.

Pramod went straight to his chamber without looking at his family members sitting in front of his mom's cabin.

Susheela was going forward to the upset figures but stopped in her tracks when out of nowhere Priya came towards her crying.

She thought she would be getting her some comfort but things turned out to be complicated this time. Much more complicated.

"It's all because of you... all because of you! My brother suffered because of you, my mom was frustrated because of you, everything kept getting spoiled because of you! I begged you to come back so many times, you and your stupid ego, my foot!"

Susheela was astonished. To the very least, she did not really expected to receive such behaviour from Priya. She just hugged her warmly a few minutes ago, and the sudden change...

"P-Priya I..."

"We used to be so happy.. why did you step into our life? You yourself are a curse, you hear me!?"

"Stop it, Priya!"

Before Susheela could understand anything, her wrist was grabbed by Pramod who dragged her in his own cabin locking the door.

"I'm sorry, she's just stressed because of all the things happening at once. She is not so mature yet. Please ignore whatever she said, they were all wrong."

Susheela did not say anything, she just sat quietly grabbing a chair and Pramod forwarded a glass of water to her.

They both stared at things blankly looking here and there avoiding any type of conversation. Pramod looked at the zoned out Susheela in front of him who looked a bit changed. She got a nice hairstyle which of course did not go unnoticed by him.

When Pramod took his eyes off, the other started observing him. His eyes looked red from shedding tears and hardwork for sure.

"Uh, just in case you didn' know, Priya was going to get engaged by this week. Suddenly Mom's health issues came up and.. Nevertheless, the proposal is a good one and we're happy. The guy is a cardiologist."