At The Threshold of Time

3.

Harsh looked around. When he woke up, Harsh had expected to be in his seat on the bus he'd fallen asleep on. Instead, he was sitting on a cold metal chair beside a door with a plaque above it reading 'Operating Theatre.'

He sat up straighter in the chair, nursing his stiff neck, and checked his phone. 7:13 pm. Shit. His assignment. What was he doing here in the city hospital?

Noticing eyes on him, he looked up to see a couple sitting opposite him, who were probably in their late forties. Both looked at him with swollen red eyes.

The man got up first and took Harsh's hand in his. 'Thank you for bringing her here,' he said and tried to smile, but his face only morphed into an expression of pain.

'I'm sorry?'

Before he could get an answer, the woman too walked up to him, blotchy faced with lips trembling. 'Thank you,' she managed to croak before the rest of her words dissolved into sobs. Her husband walked her back to their chairs.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Dinesh. Walking away from the operating theatre, he lift the call.

'God, finally he lifts the phone,' Dinesh said loudly. 'I talked to the professor, and he gladly extended our deadline.'

'What? What extend? And I'm in the city hospital right now by the way, any idea how that happened?' The guys must've been playing a prank on him. It was not funny. Their assignment was due tomorrow and today was wasted.

Dinesh laughed. 'I get it, you saved her. Cool. Hope she ends up fine. Anyway, we are going to the Mahal tomorrow again, let's just hope this time we complete the assignment without you having to play the hero again.

He started laughing again but Harsh cut the call.

Harsh walked out of the hospital and booked himself a cab home. On the way, he tried recollecting the events of the day. He woke up. He met with his group to go to Baland Mahal. The bus was stuck in traffic. He fell asleep. He woke up in a hospital. Where did that girl they kept talking about come in? What had he done all day?

Once home, he googled the symptoms of amnesia. Yeah, that wasn't the problem.

Even after sleeping through the whole day, if that was what he'd really done, he was still exhausted.

He blamed it on all the sleepless nights dedicated to finishing his assignment on the woman with two bodies for his class. It was unfair of UOK to allot marks in his final semester based off of this voodoo mystery. Either way, his deadline was extended, and he could sleep in peace for once.

And yet, hours later, he lay in his bed, awake as ever, avoiding thinking about his strange day. But wait. He'd dreamt something when he'd slept in the morning that day, hadn't he? It was a strange dream too. He was looking at himself through the eyes of some girl. She had had a name too. What was it again? Ah, yes, Shivali.

And he was there too though, wasn't he? He was a king.