Crush - KarEena

Chapter 14

Karishma was relieved to learn that her illness wasn't fatal, but the cause was imprecise and that bothered her. She wanted a quick fix and was disheartened to learn that it usually didn't work that way.

"You may never experience another one," the doctor told her, "Or you may have them periodically for the rest of your life."

Karishma studied the subject, researched it, and exhausted the material available. While she hated to think of thousands of others suffering as she did, she was comforted to know that her symptoms were common.

For a while, she saw a therapist weekly and took the prophylactic medication that was prescribed. Finally, though, she persuaded both doctors and himself, that she was cured, "I'm over it," she told the psychologist, "Whatever triggered the attacks, and it was a combination of things, has passed. I'm good to go."

And for the past ten months, she had been. That was how long it had been since her last panic attack. She'd been fine. Until tonight. Thank God it wasn't a severe one, that it had been short-lived. She'd recognized it for what it was and had talked herself through it. Maybe the rubber band had helped after all.

She waited five minutes more to be certain it had passed before she began driving again. She took an entrance ramp onto the west freeway and drove with no particular destination in mind. In fact, her mind was empty except for thoughts of Haseena Malik.

Her panic attack might have been precipitated by hearing that, at sixteen, Haseena had been involved with a married man. Her father's business partner no less, probably much older than she. She had been a teenage home wrecker.

That teased Jaya's description of a teenage hell-raiser. A girl who would drive around town almost naked in her wet see-through dress, who would also sleep with her father's partner, destroy his marriage, and probably laugh about it later.

Janpad's moral majority would be outraged by such behaviour. Throw into the mix the fatal shooting of her father's business partner and it was little wonder that her parents had said good riddance when they sent her to boarding school.

But all that was clashing with the woman Karishma knew. Granted, she'd been in her company all of two times, but from what she had observed, she believed she had a fair grasp on her character.

Far from a party girl, Haseena had the social life of a monk. Rather than flaunting her sexuality, she shrank from being touched, going so far as to say "Don't" when Karishma would have touched her cheek.

Now, was this the behaviour of a seductress?

She couldn't reconcile the two Haseena Malik's and it was making her nuts, and for reasons that had nothing to do with the Roy connection and Billu's murder. Her objectivity had flown, and Santosh knew it. That's why Santosh was monitoring her activities, tracking her like a damn bloodhound.

But she couldn't really be angry at Santosh. Okay, she was pissed that Santosh had hit her so hard, and she was dead wrong about Haseena. But Santosh was doing her job. She had recruited Karishma to help her do it, and instead, she had added a complication.

Suddenly she realized that her driving hadn't been as aimless as she had thought. She was on the street where she had grown up. She guessed her subconscious had directed her here. Maybe she needed to touch home base and get grounded again. She pulled the car to a stop at the curb in front of her family's house.

She had sold it after Anubhav was killed. It would have seemed like blasphemy to live there without Anu. She didn't know if the couple who'd bought it from her still lived here or if it had exchanged hands since then, but the present owners were good trustees. Even in the dark, she could tell the place was well-kept.