The Curse of a Decade

The Night That Changed Everything

**Aarush**

There was something strangely comforting about the silence of a hospital at two in the morning.

Not because it was actually silent.

Hospitals were never silent.

There was always the faint beeping of monitors, the distant wheels of a stretcher being pushed across polished floors, the occasional hurried footsteps of a nurse, the soft hiss of oxygen, and the overhead announcements that seemed louder in the middle of the night.

But compared to the chaos of the day, the night had a different rhythm.

Slower.

More honest.

I walked through the neurology ward, my hands tucked into the pockets of my white coat, glancing at the files clipped at the foot of each bed.

My first week back in India.

I still hadn't gotten used to saying that.

Back in India.

After years of studying abroad, years of planning a career there, years of being told that I had everything I needed to build a life outside this country, had somehow ended up exactly where I had promised myself I wouldn't.

India.

And, more specifically, my grandparents' house.

I smiled faintly at the thought.

My grandmother had taken approximately three hours to remind me that no matter how many degrees I collected, I was still the boy who used to sneak into the kitchen at midnight looking for laddoos.

My grandfather had been less expressive.

He had simply looked at me over his newspaper on the morning I arrived and said,

"Finally."

As if he had been waiting for me all these years.

Perhaps he had.

I had told my parents that coming back was my decision.

That I wanted to practice in India.

That the hospital I had joined was one of the best in the country.

That I wanted to build something here.

All of those things were true.

Just not the whole truth.

There was another reason.

A reason I hadn't told my parents.

A reason I hadn't told my grandparents.

A reason I hadn't even allowed myself to say aloud too many times.

Because saying her name made everything I had spent years trying to bury feel real again.

I stopped outside one of the rooms and checked the patient's latest vitals before making a note on the chart.

The patient had improved.

Good.

One less thing to worry about tonight.

I continued down the corridor.

My phone vibrated in my pocket.

I already knew who it was.

Shivi.

I pulled it out and looked at the message.

Don't forget breakfast tomorrow. Dadi said she'll kill you if you leave without eating.