"Things'll get worse before they get better." ― Karen M. McManus
Jaipur, India
It was over twenty minutes and Akanksha hadn't returned. Vihaan glanced at his watch and then tried to look over the entire hall but couldn't find her. He dialed her phone but it was switched off. He remembered looking at her phone in the car and it was fully charged. But still, he gave himself the benefit of doubt and tried not to panic.
The restlessness settled below his fake smile as people greeted him to make connections. He was all stressed and his fingers were clammed in sweat.
Something didn't feel right.
Something was definitely not right.
A few more minutes passed by and still, there was no sign of her. It had been over half an hour since she was missing. As he was unable to control, he walked straight up to Anika.
"Di?" he called her. Anika excused herself from the guests and turned to him. "Yes?"
"Did you see Akanksha?" he asked her.
"No, I didn't," she answered. "Is everything okay?" Vihaan nodded and turned on his heels to find her.
Even though his face didn't show, he was internally panicking. He walked around the hall, checking every corner but there was no sign of her. The ticking of his watch increased his heartbeat. He went to the food section because he thought she might be there. But there was no sign of her.
"Vihaan!" Aditya exclaimed, "Come here!" He waved at him in excitement. Vihaan walked over to him and noticed that Pranav and Chirag were also there but there was no Akanksha.
"Have some food," Aditya offered but he politely shook his head, refusing it.
"Did you by any chance, see Akanksha?" He asked them instead.
"I haven't seen her in a while," Chirag told him. Vihaan's face dropped which was easily caught by them.
"Is everything okay Vihaan? You look tense," Pranav asked him.
"We were done with dancing and then she abruptly left, giving a vague reason. Something is not right." Vihaan sighed. The three of them frowned thinking what could have happened to make her leave suddenly.
As they were standing there, a large group of people started gathering around the other side of the hall. A huge commotion had followed behind them. Curious, the four of them followed where the people had gathered. Vihaan pushed through the crowd to see what had happened.
"Akanksha!" A loud cry of Anika alarmed him as he made his way through the crowd and neared the ladies washroom. The view in front of him stopped him in his tracks. It was as if time had stopped and everything was frozen around him.
The door to the washroom was wide open and he saw nothing but the love of his life in a pool of blood. Akanksha's head was on Anika's lap as the latter tried to splatter some water and pat her cheeks to wake her up.
There was blood, so much blood.
She was lying there, unconscious, battered in a dishevelled state, her saree undone. No one had dared to step in to help her. The people were just standing there, speaking in slow voices. Another cry of Anika got him back to his senses and without wasting any other second, he rushed to her. Taking off his coat, he covered Akanksha with it. He cradled Akanksha in his arms and hugged her close. He could feel the wetness of the blood.
"Wake up," he whispered to her as he caressed her cheeks. His eyes had moistened looking at her tired and battered figure. His mind was not in the right place to think and make a decision.
"Shay!" Pranav shouted as they entered the washroom and kneeled beside. Vihaan was too shocked to notice who had arrived. Noticing his hands shaking, Chirag signalled Aditya and Pranav to pick her up. Aditya lurched forward and carefully picked Akanksha in his arms.
"Di, please give your dupatta. We need to press it on the wound to stop bleeding." Pranav told her. Anika immediately stopped crying and unpinned her dupatta from her shoulder and handed it to him. Pranav crumpled the dupatta together and tucked it between her head and Aditya's arm.
"Chirag, we are going in your car. Di, please call Reyansh Jiju and come along with him," Pranav instructed and Anika feebly nodded. At that very moment, Reyansh along with the rest of the family members entered one by one.
"Move aside!" Aditya said, carrying Akanksha through the door. Chirag followed him and Pranav helped Vihaan get up and dragged him along with them. As the five of them left, Reyansh and the rest of the family crowded Anika and asked her what had happened. Anika couldn't control herself and threw herself around Reyansh and started crying loudly.
* * *
Aditya carried Akanksha through the back entrance to the private garage. Chirag immediately rushed towards his car and then drove to them. He quickly got out of the car and helped Aditya to help him get Akanksha in the car. Whereas Pranav made Vihaan sit in the front seat and got himself seated in the back beside her. No sooner than later the engine revved and they had hit the road. Chirag drove the car like a madman, crossing the speed limit. Nobody was speaking anything but the tension was easily felt by them.
Fifteen minutes later, Chirag pulled in front of the hospital. Pranav helped Aditya get out of the car and Chirag went ahead to call the doctor. In a few minutes, nurses came with a stretcher and Aditya placed her on it and they rushed inside the hospital. Pranav looked back and saw Vihaan still sitting inside the car. He walked over to him and opened his side of the door and shook him. "Vihaan just snap out of it! Shay needs you," his voice broke as he muttered the last few words.
Vihaan looked at him and then blinked his eyes realising what was happening. He had finally gotten his senses back. He got out of the car and then he, along with Pranav, rushed inside the hospital where they had taken her.
They ran through the hospital corridors and saw Aditya and Chirag standing in front of the Operation Theatre.
"Where is she?" Vihaan panted as he asked them. Chirag pointed towards the OT and sighed as he sat down on the metal chairs outside the OT. Aditya buried his face in his hands and sat beside Chirag. "God knows what would have happened to her?" he said, bursting into tears. Pranav patted his back as he took a seat beside him.
"I don't want to imagine it," he sniffed as tears clouded his eyes.
"Why is it always her?" Chirag sighed as he tried to control the tears that were threatening to spill from his eyes.
Vihaan stood silent watching the trio. He was tearing up too. He felt so helpless but more than that he was angry at himself. He knew something was wrong and she behaved weirdly. He should have followed her. He shouldn't have left her alone. He should have questioned her what she was thinking.
He felt frustrated.
Half an hour had passed and there was no news about her. Waiting for Akanksha to come out of the Operation Theatre felt like ages to him. He couldn't breathe. Loosening his tie, he sat beside Pranav, throwing back his head and closed his eyes. Just the thought of her felt like a whisper in his imagination, and he was incapacitated; so helpless, so miserable. There were no thoughts, no focus, only the desire for her well being and the pain of waiting.
He looked at his hands, the blood had dried on them. The blood of his love. Each one of them had blood smears on their shirts and none of them bothered about it.
Loud footsteps emerged at the end of the hall. Vihaan saw Anika and Reyansh running towards them, the rest of their family followed behind. He got up and walked towards them. Anika stumbled on her way and Vihaan lurched forward to help her.
Holding on to Vihaan's arms, Anika panted and asked, "Where is she?"
"In the OT," he answered. Vihaan looked away as he noticed her covered in blood, it made him nauseous. His blood boiled imagining what could have possibly happened in there. He was not going to let this off the hook that easily.
Someone tried to mess with an officer's wife and he was soon going to come after the person who caused her pain.
He had decided to investigate the matter on his own.
And at that very moment, the OT opened and the doctor finally came out. Everyone got up from their seats and looked at the doctor in anticipation.
Pranav rushed to the doctor. "How is she?"
"Thankfully you brought her here on time," He said, "Things could have been difficult if she would have lost a lot of blood. She has two concussions, one on the forehead and one on the back of her head. Thankfully there is no haemorrhage so we have effectively stitched up her wounds. She will be transferred to the normal ward. That's all I can say at this moment. The rest we can discuss in my cabin." Saying this the doctor left and everyone took a sigh of relief.
Vihaan took a moment for himself as his breathing turned normal. One weight was lifted off his chest. It was about time that he did some necessary investigation.
"Di," he said and Anika looked up to him. "I know this is not the right time but I really want to ask you something." Anika nodded, indicating him to go on. "How did you find her?"
Anika took a shaky breath. "After you left, I noticed that she wasn't there in the hall. So I called her but it switched off. So I tried finding her and bumped into the reporter guy from Something Shady. When I asked him, he said that she was near the washroom area. So I went to the washroom to check up on her and that's when I found her." Anika shuddered as she re imagined. Reyansh wrapped his arms around her, pacifying her.
"Was the washroom locked?" He asked her. Anika shook her head. Vihaan noticed the rest of the family looking at them and he sighed.
"Dad, you and everyone else should head back home," he told Vikram. "Everyone is tired and Swati must be alone at home." Vikram nodded and slowly everyone started to leave.
Mukesh came forward and gave a pat on his shoulder. "Just give me a call when she wakes up," he requested, to which Vihaan obliged.
"Anika you should come too," Mukesh suggested. "Anyways, the doctor isn't going to allow too many people to hover over the patient. Also, you should get cleaned up." He said, pointing towards her bloodied clothes.
Anika was reluctant to go. "It's okay Di. The four of us are here," he tried to assure her.
"I will send some fresh clothes for you guys. Just call me when she wakes up." Anika told them.
"Will do," Aditya said as he gave her a brief hug.
Anika and Reyansh left after being assured that everything will be fine here. After they left, the four of them headed to the doctor's cabin.
Vihaan knocked twice on the door and entered, followed by the trio.
"Please be seated," the doctor said and Vihaan and Aditya took the seats whereas Pranav and Chirag chose to stand.
"I think you guys might have guessed already that this is a case of physical assault. So we have no option but to involve the police so that they can get the patient's statement." The doctor stated and all the men took a sharp breath. Vihaan fisted his palms.
Taking out his ID, he said, "ACP Vihaan Singh Chauhan. I will be looking over this case." The doctor nodded in response. He handed over her medical file to him
"W-Was she raped?" Chirag asked, gulping heavily at his words.
"No," The doctor said and everyone heaved a sigh of relief. "There aren't any signs of molestation as well."
"But she wasn't in her best clothing state when we saw her," Pranav mentioned.
"I can't say why she was in that state. But we had our experts in the OT who checked up on her and noted that there were no signs of molestation but, there are signs of struggle. If you haven't noticed, she has strangulation marks on her neck which means she was deeply choked. There are bruises on her stomach and palms which indicate that she was pressed onto something for a long time. There are traces of blood in her nails. For further investigation, we have collected the dried blood from her nails and have been sent to the lab to check if it matches with her blood or not." He finished speaking.
"When will she wake up?" Vihaan asked him.
"She will be out for a few hours since we have injected her with sedatives. On waking up she might feel dizzy or feel like vomiting; these are the after-effects of the concussion, nothing to worry about. The bruises on her neck will hurt a little and also she might have trouble making movements due to her stomach. We will be keeping her on observation for a few days to check up on her and to note that her head injury doesn't turn dangerous for her. That's all for now," he said, politely smiling at them.
The four of them left the cabin after thanking the doctor for his timely help.
"I must take my leave," Vihaan told them as they came out.
"Why?" Aditya asked him.
"I need to go back to the hotel with the team to check the washroom and try to figure out what happened there. I will try to gather some evidence and talk to a few people. Since Akanksha is asleep I can't ask for her statement. I need to reach there before someone tries to erase the evidence if there is any." He informed them. "And I know for a fact that you guys would take care of her more than anyone in this world, even more than me." He added, giving them a warm smile. Pranav patted on his shoulder and nodded understandingly. They left him after bidding their goodbyes.
Vihaan watched the trio heading towards the Private Ward in which Akanksha was shifted to, and taking a heavy sigh he turned around and walked the opposite way, to the hotel.
* * *
The next morning had arrived. The sun rose as a canopy of gold, bright amid the blue, bidding the stars for the time being. As the darkness surrendered, every colour of the sky changed from tinges of charcoal to vibrancy.
Akanksha slowly opened her eyes, but too slowly to be normal. Drowsy with the heavy effect of medicines, she could only open her eyes halfway. She observed her surroundings.
It's a hospital, she thought to herself. She was safe. He was gone. The tension that her body held due to last night's events slowly left her, her body and her mind at ease.
Her eyes slowly travelled to her right and then to her left and noticed that her friends were sleeping by her. She tried to open her mouth twice but closed it as her throat felt dry.
She moved her fingers and then raised her hand and kept on Pranav's head, whose head was lying closest to her, by an arm's length. Chirag and Aditya were by her legs, all asleep.
Pranav opened his eyes, feeling the touch. When he looked up, he saw Akanksha smiling at him.
Pranav closed his eyes and took a large breath of relief. He slowly caressed her hair. "Thank god you're up," he muttered.
"Adi, Chirag, wake up! Shay's up!" Pranav announced. Aditya rubbed his groggy eyes and got up and then widened his eyes as he saw her awake, finally. Chirag mirrored his reaction and then got up to give her a light hug. "Finally I can breathe in relief." He spoke.
The other hummed in agreement.
Pranav pressed the button below the bed which elevated a portion of the bed that made her lay in a sitting position.
"Should I get some water?" Chirag asked her to which she slowly nodded. A few minutes later, Chirag came with a glass of water and handed it over to her. Akanksha drank the water in one go.
"More?" He asked. She hummed. Chirag poured the glass with water and handed it back to her. Akanksha drank the water, the cool of the water settled in her throat, settling her long impending thirst.
She handed the glass back to him. He waved the water bottle but she slowly shook her head.
"How are you feeling?" Aditya asked her, holding her hand.
Akanksha looked down at her hand which he had held. Giving a soft smile she said, "Safe." When she spoke her voice trailed slowly like her words are unwilling to take flight. There is a sadness in her eyes, the brown too glossy.
She hadn't realised when the tear had slipped out of her eyes and she was crying. Chirag, Pranav and Aditya held back themselves and let her cry her heart out before she could tell them what happened.
Akanksha cried and cried, for herself, for being so helpless and pitiful that she couldn't even defend herself. She cried for letting her fears overcome her again.
She cried for a long time. When her crying stopped and turned into sniffs, Aditya handed her his handkerchief. She gladly took it and wiped her eyes and blew her nose. "You should have given me sooner," she mumbled. The trio laughed, shaking their heads.
The laughter had soon died and seriousness had taken over the atmosphere. "What happened yesterday?" Pranav straightaway dropped the question.
Akanksha rubbed her palms against each other to calm herself. She closed her eyes and all of last night's occurrences appeared in front of her. Her breathing was slowly getting ragged. She wanted to delay this but she needed to let it in front of them before someone else came to know about it.
Aditya gently took her hand and squeezed in reassurance. "Don't let this anxiety get to you, Shay," he told her. Akanksha smiled at him and nodded.
"While I was dancing with Vihaan," she started, "I saw something passing by on the opposite side of the hall. We are working on a high profile case and were looking for a specific type of person with a tattoo. I thought I had seen him," she told them.
"What happened next?" Chirag probed further.
"Then I called Mr. Singh if he had seen someone weird on the cameras. He refused. So I tried to recall where I had seen him then I remembered him near the washroom area. I headed towards the washroom. There was no one in the men's washroom and it was the same in the women's washroom. Then I thought that I had probably made a mistake by seeing someone else so I brushed it off. My saree had come off undone so I decided to redo it." she told them.
"Is that the moment the attacker arrived?" Pranav asked her. "Because your saree was still undone when we got you to the hospital."
Akanksha nodded and sighed. "I never got the chance to tuck the pleats since the lights went off. I searched for my phone which was on the basin cabinet but it wasn't there. Then I tried to search for it and then I saw him holding my phone with the flashlight on. He was standing right behind me." her voice shook as she narrated. "It was that masked man," she confessed.
"What!" the three of them exclaimed, not believing what she had said.
"B-But how? It is not possible," Aditya whispered.
"I know," Akanksha said. "I know it wasn't him. But it was someone acting like him."
"How are you so sure?" Pranav asked her warily.
"I know what you are trying to say," she gave him a small smile, "Even if I don't remember most of that night it doesn't mean that I have forgotten how that monster looked. He never had a tattoo and his voice was different. Nothing in this world can make me forget his voice. Someone is trying to dig into our past and now I feel that the case I am working on and our past is linked. This man was someone else, someone familiar but not the masked man."
"If he's not that man then why do you feel he's someone familiar?" Chirag raised his doubts.
"He told me something that not everyone knows about. He told me that I am not mentally sick anymore," Each one of them gasped in shock. "Even Vihaan doesn't know what was the aftermath after Ruhi died. He doesn't know that my panic attacks and nightmares had become so severe that it almost landed me in the mental asylum if Anika Di hadn't come in time to stop my parents from sending me there. He knows that I have anxiety issues but he doesn't know where it started from," she told them.
"I think I am going to faint," Pranav held his head and dropped his elbows down on the edge of the hospital. He couldn't wrap his head around the news.
"There was something else he had said before I passed out," Her words caught their attention.
"What was it?" Pranav asked her.
"He told me that my naivety is going to lead me to my death," she said, "What does he even mean by that?"
"He means that," Aditya paused, remembering something familiar he had told her long ago, "you don't see and understand things that are in front of you."
Yayy! Another chapter is done! I am thinking that you guys must be so proud of me lol. There wasn't any scene of Vihaan and Akanksha but some interesting things are revealed.
What was your favourite part from this chapter? Let me know in the comments below.
And please VOTE on this chapter. Even a small heart will mean the world to me.
How's January treating you? Covid cases are rising again and I hope you guys are happy and healthy.
With Love,
Akii.