Shehnaaz leaned contentedly against Sidharth’s chest. She savored the feel of his warm, sturdy palm as it caressed her back. She sighed, closed her eyes, and felt the pain that had been coursing through her veins slowly leave her.
She could not even begin to describe the pain from having
her bone marrow harvested. There was a saying in Chinese
describing a “pain that could be felt in the bone marrow.” She now knew that whoever coined the phrase hadn’t been exaggerating in the slightest.
Sidharth lowered his eyes and watched Shehnaaz snuggle against him in her loose surgical gown. Her slender, delicate neck was as white and smooth as porcelain.
“…Where does it hurt? Do you want me to get Sandeep to give you a painkiller?” Sidharth’s voice was low and seductive.
Shehnaaz could feel it resonate within her. Shehnaaz closed her eyes and relaxed into Sidharth’s arms. After a moment, she smiled and said, “Comfort me, and I’ll feel a lot better.” She lifted her face to look into Sidharth’s eyes, before adding: “Kiss me, and all the pain will be gone.”
Sidharth saw the familiar twinkle return to her eyes as a rosy blush crept across her cheeks. The color had returned to her face; she no longer looked as pitiful as she had been a moment ago, but his heart continued to ache for her. He kissed her on the forehead and whispered, “Are you sure it doesn’t hurt?”
He was feeling a mixture of guilt and anxiety. At the same time, he was also deeply moved by Shehnaaz’s courage and sacrifice, and he wished he could have spared her the pain.
Shehnaaz saw Sidharth’s apologetic look, and understood what was going through his mind.
She did not want Sidharth to feel indebted to her. She had donated her bone marrow to cure Rita because she wanted to, nothing more.
Shehnaaz giggled. She said with a mischievous grin, “I fooled you, didn’t I?”
Sidharth: “…”
“I was seducing you! You fell for my trick—I was just pretending to be in pain to get you to agree to my demands,” said Shehnaaz slyly. Her body was stiff with
pain, but she tried her best to act natural.
“It doesn’t hurt? Really?” Sidharth asked doubtfully. He circled his arms around Shehnaaz’s slender waist.
“Nope, not at all.” Shehnaaz shook her head. “Well, other people may find it painful, but not me. You should know by now that Shehnaaz is no ordinary person. I’m so awesome I frighten myself sometimes.”
The corners of Sidharth’s mouth curved upwards. He slowly moved his hand upwards, from her waist to her exposed neck.
He gave a slight jolt in surprise.
His hand came away wet. Her back and neck were drenched
in sweat…
Why was there so much sweat?
Sidharth’s palm rubbed against the back of Shehnaaz’s neck, before dipping inside her surgical gown.
Shehnaaz’s eyes flew open, but it was too late. Sidharth’s palm was already pressed against her bare
back. Her back was drenched in sweat because she was in pain. It
wasn’t just her back; her entire body was wet. If Sidharth hadn’t known better, he would have thought she had just climbed out of a bathtub.
Sidharth’s smile disappeared. His brow furrowed, and his eyes flashed with anger. He looked at Shehnaaz as he swept a broad arc across her wet bare back with his hand. He sneered, “…It doesn’t hurt, you say? Why are you sweating all over if you’re not in pain?”
She was in so much pain her surgical gown was already soaked through with sweat. How dare she lie to him and tell him it didn’t hurt?
Shehnaaz could not stand it anymore. She gave a low whine, and clutched the front of Sidharth’s clothes as she bit her lower lip.
The pain was overwhelming. Her vision threatened to fade, and she shuddered with every breath.
“If you’re in pain, tell me. Don’t hold it in.” There was a hint of barely restrained anger in Sidharth’s low voice. He was furious because Shehnaaz had tried to pretend she was completely fine.
He pressed his lips together, and undid the knot behind Shehnaaz’s surgical gown. He lifted her arms and pulled the gown off of her.
She wasn’t wearing anything underneath…
Sidharth’s face colored.
He hastily grabbed the blanket and pulled it over Shehnaaz, before getting up from the bed. He said in a stern voice, “Don’t move. I’ll get you some water so you can wipe the sweat off your body.”
Sidharth knew it would be impossible for Shehnaaz to sleep when her entire body was slick and uncomfortable with sweat.
She would fall sick if she continued to lie in her own sweat
under the blanket.
Shehnaaz’s heart hammered against her chest. She was now too mortified to think about her aching body. She had not been able to summon the strength to stop Sidharth before he removed her surgical gown.
Sidharth had immediately wrapped her in the blanket, but Shehnaaz could not help wondering whether he had seen her naked body. Did he like what he saw? Or was he completely unaffected by her figure? She was now too distracted to dwell on her pain. The color returned to her delicate cheeks as she continued to wonder about Sidharth’s reaction, or lack of it.
Sidharth was not as calm as Shehnaaz assumed him to be. He had thought she would have at least her underwear on—how was he supposed to know she was completely naked underneath the surgical gown?
He walked into the bathroom with an unhappy expression on his face. He looked around for a pail or tub he could fill with water, but couldn’t find any. He grabbed a face towel, soaked it in hot water, and wrung it out before returning to the bedroom with it. He patted the blanket over Shehnaaz. “Here’s a wet towel. Can you wipe your body on your own?”
Shehnaaz nodded. She gritted her teeth and said, “… Yeah.”
Sidharth looked at her silently as he waited for her to reach out from under the blanket and take the towel.
Shehnaaz tried and tried, but could not lift her arms. Pain and exhaustion went hand-in-hand. She was exhausted from having her bone marrow harvested
several times that day. She could not lift a single finger. Her body was special, but even her extraordinary constitution could only get her so far. Most other people would have fainted from the pain by now.
“Okay, you obviously can’t. Stop pretending.” Sidharth sat down on the edge of the bed and tugged at
the blanket. “Turn over.”
But Shehnaaz could not move, at all. She looked at Sidharth, her eyes shimmering with frustration.
Her large, misty eyes looked at him, helpless and pleading.
Sidharth’s heart sank further. She must be in a lot of pain if she can’t even turn over…
Sidharth wished he had been the one to donate his bone marrow instead…
He got up, returned to the bathroom, and swapped the face
towel for a large bath towel.
He sat on the bed, lifted the blanket, and scooped Shehnaaz out. He shut his eyes and quickly wrapped her in the bath towel, rubbing her all over with it to dry her sweat.
The bath towel was 100% cotton. It was extremely
absorbent.
Shehnaaz was soon clean and dry. She sat in Sidharth’s arms, wrapped in the bath towel, her head bowed in abject embarrassment.
Sidharth saw the dejected look on her face, and knew he had been too hard on her. He cleared his throat, smiled, and said teasingly, “…Didn’t you say you were going to seduce me? Why are you being so shy now?”
Shehnaaz: “…”
Was he asking her to seduce him now?
Shehnaaz panicked, and suddenly found the strength to
move.
Although she was still aching all over, the pain was a lot more bearable now. Her muscles were no longer stiff.
She put her hands on the ends of her bath towel, and looked up at Sidharth slyly. “Well, since you asked, Sidharth, allow me to continue seducing you…” With that, she slowly released her grip, and the two ends of the towel began to slide apart.
Sidharth saw what she was doing, and nonchalantly stopped her. He pulled the towel back in place. “Don’t bother. You won’t be able to seduce me in your current
condition. Let’s wait till you’re better.”
Shehnaaz flushed. Her face was now redder than the sky during a sunset. Even her neck had turned beet red.
This is so embarrassing…
Shehnaaz was frustrated with herself. Why was she so bad at seduction?
Shehnaaz felt the pain migrate from her body to her head.
Thinking about this was giving her a splitting headache…
She said feebly, “…I’m tired. I want to sleep.”
Sidharth pulled the blanket over and wrapped her in it, before pulling her towel out from under the blanket. “Sleep. I’ll go ask Sandeep about your meds.”
Shehnaaz murmured a soft “okay” in reply. She closed her
eyes, and was immediately asleep.
She was exhausted. All she wanted was a good sleep. The human body was programmed to fall asleep when it needed to heal from injuries.
That night, Sidharth stayed with Shehnaaz in her bedroom.
Sandeep and Naina, on the other hand, spent the night inside Operating Room B, anxiously analyzing Rita’s test results. They had learned from the results that Rita’s body had begun to change dramatically, six hours after the bone marrow transplant.
Sandeep watched as the red flashing numbers on the monitor continued to climb. His eyes blazed with excitement. The self-healing mechanism was out of this world!
He had half-expected it, but the actual speed and potency exceeded his expectations by leaps and bounds.
That was when Sandeep finally understood why Shehnaaz had not been affected by the biological weapon H3aB7, and
had instead successfully created antibodies in response to it.
Naina stayed beside Rita’s operating chair in order to take care of her, while Sandeep was responsible to for recording the data with the instruments. Such incredible data made Sandeep both happy and cautious as he carefully made backups of the data outside Rita’s personal file. Just like the last the last incident with the H3AB7 viral antibody, Shehnaaz’s name had not been included in the records submitted to the military. Only Sandeep and Sidharth knew about it; not even Shehnaaz was aware that she had a special body composition. Shehnaaz’s significance to the military was the mystery surrounding her background, and neither Sidharth nor Sandeep
wanted others to discover her special ability. If the military
found out, Shehnaaz would only end up as a rat locked in a lab and subject to secret experiments. In this regard, Sidharth and Sandeep had a mutual understanding that they would agree to keep this secret for her. Since discovering her special physique six years ago, they had begun protecting her further. Sidharth had even resorted to not going home so that Kirat and the others could focus on Rita and not notice there was
something peculiar about Shehnaaz. They had hoped that
Shehnaaz could help treat Rita, but it wasn’t as simple as that. In order to have Shehnaaz help treat Rita, Shehnaaz herself would firstly have to agree. It
wasn’t right for Sandeep to assume that Sidharth would have Shehnaaz rescue his mother, regardless of what Shehnaaz wanted to do. If Shehnaaz didn’t agree, Sidharth would never force her. He had never thought
about forcing her to save his mother, nor had he wanted her
to contribute to the entire India. He was a soldier himself and would be willing to give up everything, including his life to for the nation. But Shehnaaz wasn’t a soldier and he wasn’t even certain if she was a citizen of India—there was no way he could decide for her and make
her sacrifice everything. This would be contrary to his principles as a man and his beliefs as a soldier.
…
Sidharth was sleepless the entire night and sat alone on the single seater sofa next to the bed. He worked on his laptop while checking on Shehnaaz from time to time. At around midnight, she developed a fever. It was only a low fever and wasn’t anything serious. Sandeep came over to
look and didn’t even need to provide any medication, only
saying that she could bear through it. Sidharth checked the temperature of her forehead every 15 minutes to make sure the fever didn’t climb. Shehnaaz slept restlessly. The surgery in the afternoon had been so painful
that she had nearly passed out, but in order to prevent Sidharth from feeling more stress and guilt, she had decided not to say anything. She liked him…no, she loved him and she hoped he loved her too—but she didn’t want Sidharth to be with her out of guilt. However, the pain still left a mark on her and caused her brain to be in a constantly stressful state. When she broke into a fever at midnight, she fell into a long lost nightmare.
Pain was coursing through her body everywhere. Someone was chasing her and she screamed and cried for her mother, hiding in the rubble. In the dream, a woman’s blurred face appeared at her side. She seemed to be the
figure she’d desired to be with the most in her childhood— but when Shehnaaz ran towards her, she was coldly pushed away. She opened her mouth and wanted to call after that woman, but found that she couldn’t make a sound. In the end, she softly cried out, “Dad!”
Sidharth looked up at Shehnaaz lying on the bed. In the dim night light, her small pale face was beaded with sweat: her fever seemed to have broken. Sidharth
brought a towel to wipe her face.
Shehnaaz continued to murmur, “Dad, Uncle…”
Sidharth’s hand paused as he gazed at Shehnaaz before picking up the towel again to dab at her forehead. He suddenly asked quietly, “Sana, what’s your dad’s name?”
The Special Ops had been trained to induce an interrogation
during a person’s sleep. This method was highly effective and extremely confidential. When the person woke from the dream, they would not recall having been interrogated in the dream at all. Shehnaaz was having a nightmare because the lingering pain from the surgery in the day had stimulated her brain. Since her mind wasn’t at ease, it was
easy for her to reply to Sidharth in the dream, “Dad… Dad is Dad.”
Sidharth’s heart skipped a few beats before thumping furiously, his voice trembling slightly, and he asked again, “What’s his name?”
Shehnaaz didn’t reply and seemed to fall asleep again. It
looked like it was the same as before and yielded no results.
Sidharth removed the towel and was about to get up when Shehnaaz softly said, “Santok.”
“Santok? Santok Gill?” Sidharth inhaled deeply, amazed at the breakthrough. He had finally found an important clue to Shehnaaz’s background.
Gu Nianzhi obediently answered. She was as obedient in her dream as she was in the day.
Sidharth’s brows relaxed. It would be much easier to investigate with a name. They could go to the household registration agency of the Indian Administration to conduct a nationwide search for, “Santok Gill,” and then cross check the DNA. Sidharth suppressed his
thundering heart; he still couldn’t believe what he was hearing. After six years, they had finally gotten to the tip of the iceberg. “What about your uncle? What’s your uncle’s name?” Sidharth asked softly again.
Shehnaaz closed her mouth and didn’t speak again. Sidharth inquired a few more times, but she didn’t respond. She was actually very vigilant in her sleep as well, Sidharth realized. If it hadn’t been for the extreme
pain during the day, perhaps she wouldn’t have slipped up so easily.
Sidharth stood in the middle in the room, lost in his thoughts. From Shehnaaz’s father’s name, he should be someone from India. However, they had searched for six years and investigated all of the India for people involved in it, yet didn’t find anyone with DNA similar to Shehnaaz. There weren’t even distant relatives.
How could it be possible then, that her parents were still alive in India? They had once entertained the thought that Shehnaaz wasn’t from India.
However, Shehnaaz had been questioned by him in her dream, so what she said must be true and was impossible to fabricate. These were things that, while forgotten by the person when they were awake, were actually kept in the deepest recesses of their subconscious.
Shehnaaz losing all her memories before the age of 12 was the best example of this, so questioning her during a dream could make her recall things hidden deeply in her memories. Even if her answers were ridiculous and shocking, its truth couldn’t be questioned. If Shehnaaz’s answer was true, then there must have been something wrong with their
previous investigation. However, he’d never imagined that Shehnaaz was an actual citizen of the India.
Sidharth gathered his wits and placed the towel back in the bathroom, returning to his massage chair to continue working. At around two in the morning, Deepak sent him a message, saying, “Mr. Shukla, General Shukla is here. Do you want to see him?”
“My father is here?” Sidharth looked up from his laptop. “What’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know, but he’s already at the entrance of your official residence and getting out of the car right now.” Deepak watched the surveillance footage on his monitor as he reported to Sidharth, then shared the video with him. On Sidharth’s laptop screen, a black bulletproof car was shown to have stopped in front of the official residence. The car door opened and Anand
emerged wearing plain clothes. He crossed his arms as his sharp gaze scanned Sidharth’s official residence.
Sidharth pressed his lips tightly together as he watched the video for a while before speaking to Deepak. “Open the door and let him in.” He closed the laptop and got up to check on Shehnaaz, turning away to leave when he saw that her fever had passed. Stepping calmly from the second floor bedroom to the living room,
Sidharth saw that Anand was already waiting there.
*
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I hope you enjoy reading it.
Love you all ❤️.