Page 106 of Mrs. Pandey
Avni, who had come over that morning with her little ones, stood frozen for a moment before she snapped out of it and quickly called the driver. "Car is ready," she said, voice shaking.
The ride to the hospital was a blur of pain and prayers. I squeezed Kavya’s hand so tight I thought I would break it, but she didn’t complain, only kept whispering, "You’ll be okay, Ira. Breathe. We’re here."
When we reached, nurses rushed me inside. The bright white lights of the labour room stabbed at my eyes as the doctors surrounded me, preparing urgently. My contractions grew closer, sharper, like knives slicing through me. I bit my lip until I tasted blood.
"Kavya…" I whispered between breaths, my voice weak but desperate. "Please… call Prashant. Please… he has to know… I’m having his baby."
Kavya’s eyes softened, tears glistening. She nodded quickly. "I’ll try, Ira. I promise."
Avni gripped my other hand, stroking my hair back as I whimpered. "Focus on the baby, Ira. We’ll reach him."
The doctors started shouting instructions. "BP is dropping!" one of them called out. My body shivered violently, sweat soaking my forehead. I couldn’t catch my breath properly, and panic clawed at me.
"She’s in distress. Get ready for complications," another doctor said sternly.
The pain was relentless. I screamed as another contraction ripped through me, my nails digging into the sheets. I cried out for my mother, for Kavya, but deep down, my heart ached only for Prashant. Why wasn’t he here? Didn’t he deserve to see his child being born?
Minutes blurred into hours. My body felt weaker and weaker. I was dimly aware of the doctors urging me to push, of Kavya’s cries from outside the room, of Avni pacing the corridor restlessly with her phone, trying again and again to reach Prashant.
"One more push, Ira, you can do it!" the doctor’s voice echoed faintly in my ears. I gave everything I had left, a scream tearing out of my chest as I pushed with all my might.
Then, crying. A shrill, beautiful wail filled the room. My baby. My child.
Tears streamed down my cheeks as relief washed over me. "My baby…" I whispered, barely audible. But before I could reach out, a violent wave of dizziness hit me. My vision blurred, my body went limp.
"Her pulse is dropping...she’s seizing!" a doctor shouted.
I felt something sharp explode in my head, like fire spreading through my brain. My body convulsed once, twice, then I slipped into a terrifying darkness. ______
Chapter 50
PRASHANT
"Umm… I don’t know how to start."
I stared at my hands, fingers twisting against each other nervously, as though the truth I wanted to spill was etched somewhere in the lines of my palms. My throat burned. I closed my eyes, exhaling a long, shaky sigh.
"The first thing…" my voice cracked, "...is that I never stopped loving you, Ira. Not for a second. Not when you turned away from me, not when I walked away from you, not even when I forced myself to believe it was over. I still love you with the same madness I did when I first saw you, when I instantly fell at your feet in that stupid, reckless thing people call love at first sight. And maybe it was stupid, maybe it was reckless… but it was real. It has always been real."
My chest tightened. The words came out broken, jagged, because they carried years of unspoken wounds.
"I know we’ve made mistakes… both of us. We’ve hurt each other so badly that sometimes I wonder how we’re still alive after it all. I was shattered when you rejected my proposal, Ira. Do you know what it did to me? To see you choose Aryan over me?"
I laughed bitterly, tilting my head back. "God, I was jealous, I was angry, I was destroyed. And when I lay in that hospital bed, broken and bleeding, waiting for just a word from you… and it never came, that silence killed me more than any bullet couldhave. I waited, Ira. I waited for you to walk through that door, even once, even for a minute… but you never came."
My voice trembled as I forced myself to continue. "Then later… later you came back to me, but only to use me, to fill the emptiness left in your heart. And I let you. Because even if you were using me, at least you were with me. At least I could still touch you, breathe you, feel that you existed in my arms. Do you have any idea how pathetic that makes me? To take scraps of your love just because I was too weak to let you go?"
I shook my head, smiling sadly through the ache.
"But those things…" I waved my hand helplessly, "...they don’t matter anymore. What mattered was the day I left you. That was my sin. My cowardice. I wasn’t strong enough, Ira. I left because I was terrified that I would hurt you again, that the nightmares inside me would win, that one day I’d lose control and ruin you. And I couldn’t let that happen. I thought… if I removed myself, maybe you’d be free."
I raised a trembling finger to my temple, tapping it softly. "It was all in here. My haunted memories, my demons, my failures. They screamed louder than reason, louder than love. And I gave in. I walked away from the only person who ever made me feel alive."
The weight of her memory pressed against my chest until I thought I’d suffocate.
"You remember that night?" I whispered hoarsely. "When you told me you loved me… when we were making love? That… that moment was the most precious of my entire existence. You don’t know, Ira. I saved those words in my head, lockedthem in my soul. I repeated them to myself whenever I couldn’t breathe, whenever I thought I’d lose my mind. Your voice, your confession, became my lifeline. And yet… I ruined it. I ruined us."
I paused, swallowing the lump in my throat, staring at my reflection in the mirror.
