Cupid never had a chance in their messy, parental-restricted love story
Karishma Jha, a twenty-one-year-old recent graduate with the world at her feet if only she chose to face it. Plagued with the worries of the future and yet healing from the scar...
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There were many rides that I was not the biggest fan of. Roller-coasters, carousels, Ferris wheels, pendulum rides, drop towers, airplanes. I found them scary and disorienting. That day I added another kind of ride to my list of dislikes. Rides in an ambulance.
I held strong for Rishabh in the ambulance. Or rather had his hand in such a tight grip that one man told me to let go.
His oxygen mask-covered face and barely breathing chest made me lightheaded. The paramedics with us bombarded me with questions.
"How long had he been out?"
"Did he have any other condition?"
"Did he eat something?"
"Is he allergic to any medications?"
My answer remained the same for all the questions, 'I don't know." I did not know as much as I would like to have.
But I did know one thing for sure. This was my fault.
"I should have been there when you had called for me. I shouldn't have given in to my mother's demands. God knows for how long you had been lying like that on the floor. I should have been there for you just like you are always there for me. Always. I swear if you open your eyes again I am never going to leave you. Forget about Delhi. I will stay right here. Just open your eyes, please."
The ten-minute ride to the hospital was full of fervent promises and bargains which I wouldn't remember later that day but they had reached him. In those minutes, I felt the gripping panic and fear that I had often read about or seen in movies. That irrational fear had you paralyzed and yet you couldn't give in as that would mean giving up on the person that you loved.
At that moment, with so much fear and confusion surging through me, I was sure of nothing but I did know that I loved Rishabh. And that made everything just worse.
They rolled him into the emergency room and a cubicle. One of the doctors barked at me to stay out of the way. I took a step out and they shut the curtains around his bed.
I walked up and down the corridor of the hospital, a montage of endless possibilities creating a mess in my mind.
Maybe he hit his head. Maybe he tripped. Maybe he fainted because he didn't have his dinner. Maybe he had an aneurysm. Maybe he had a stroke. Maybe he has a tumor. Maybe he has meningitis.
I broke the promise that I had made him about not searching his condition. Two minutes into it and I was ready to climb walls. My semi-knowledge of human anatomy and physiology made me think of possibilities that grew progressively worse by each passing second. Every episode of medical shows that I had watched started to play as a montage in my mind and I made my way to the nurse's station to try my luck once again.
Just then a doctor emerged out of the doors. I recognized the salt and pepper hair and the kind eyes that were looking at me. It was the same doctor that we had visited earlier.
