Clash Of Cultures

47. Why Are You Here? - Part 1

Noor

'I love you, I am in love with you'

'I can't get you out of my head'

'I honestly don't know how to live my life without you anymore'

'I want to marry you...I want you to be the mother of my children'

I kept repeating Salman's words in my head, long after he had left me standing alone in that stairwell. My heart was still beating like it was going to jump out of my chest, but my legs refused to move, as my brain slowly processed what had just happened.

'If there is any part of you that feels the same way about me'

There wasn't a 'part' of me that felt the same way...ALL of me felt the same way about him. Which is something I would have told him had he let me.

In his true self, Salman had just dropped a truth-bomb, made a bunch of assumptions about me and then disappeared. But I also knew that this time was different. He loved me...and he had not held back in expressing his feelings. The analytical part of me was thoroughly impressed by how far he had come since the first time I met him.

Stop analyzing the situation...the man you love, the man you broke off an engagement for, and went up against your parents for, actually loves you!

I broke out in to a huge smile, as the gravity of what had just happened finally sunk in. I looked around to make sure there were no cameras in the stairwell. I could only imagine the security officer laughing at the crazy woman doing a happy dance on the 20th floor stairwell, across from room 35.

When I reached back to the resident room, I must have still been smiling because Kimberly took one look at me and said, "So when are you two getting married?"

"You had something to do with this, didn't you?", I exclaimed.

"I had to! Your plan to wait and see, sucked. And besides him not calling you made no sense, so I asked. Dummy had blocked the evite's email address, so he never got the wedding cancellation notice"

That was news to me, but explained why he had not called or texted and then abruptly paged me in the middle of rounds. Which was really bad timing because I was on call that night and was stuck in the hospital, even though all I wanted to do was see him again and tell him how I felt about him.

My call ended up being an absolute disaster. I was so distracted the rest of the day that I kept putting in wrong orders for patients, got yelled at by a couple of nurses, had to be told by Samantha to stop smiling when we went to update a family that their child may have an incurable blood disorder and to top it all lost my pager and spent almost an hour walking around the hospital looking for it.

As the day progressed, the timing of Salman's confession started to bother me. There were only two days left till what would have been my wedding day, and despite everything he had said to me that morning he had made no attempts to let me know of his feelings before then. In fact, when I had asked him point blank if I should marry Omar, he had asked me if I loved him. Even if I did...shouldn't a person who doesn't know how to live without you, at least try to convince you not to marry someone else?

It struck me then exactly how close I had been to ruining my life...and Salman's. If that racist mom hadn't thrown hot water on me, I would not have gone to the ER, met Salman and finally convinced myself that I needed to call off the wedding...only five days before the event itself!

The call night was even worse than the day. We were admitting a new patient almost every hour and I barely had a minute to sit down. I didn't even have time to run to the cafeteria and get coffee, which says a lot! And during all this, Salman and the scene in the stairwell earlier in the day would randomly pop in to my head, completely throwing me off.