⚠️ CONTENT WARNING: This chapter contains emotionally intense themes, descriptions of a severe medical emergency, and physical trauma. Reader discretion is advised.

Sandhya' POV

The keys dug into my palm as I hurried toward the car, but I hardly noticed the sting. My fingers trembled so violently that I fumbled them twice before I managed to unlock the door. By the time the engine roared to life, I couldn't remember fastening my seatbelt or pulling out of the driveway.

The road disappeared beneath a curtain of rain and mist.

Headlights cut through the darkness in brief, blinding flashes before dissolving again into the gray. The windshield wipers scraped frantically across the glass, their harsh rhythm filling the silence inside the car, but I barely heard them. My hands clung to the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles ached, my breathing shallow and uneven as the winding roads of Nainital stretched endlessly ahead.

No.

There had to be some mistake.

People didn't simply leave home for work and end up unconscious twenty minutes later.

Not Arjun.

Not the man who lectured me every monsoon about driving below the speed limit because mountain roads were unforgiving. The man who insisted on replacing worn tyres before they became dangerous, who checked his brakes before every long drive, who slowed down whenever the fog grew too thick. He was infuriatingly careful. Sometimes I joked that he drove like a seventy-year-old retired schoolteacher instead of a trauma surgeon constantly racing against time.

He couldn't have lost control of his car.

He just... couldn't.

Perhaps they had called the wrong number.

Perhaps another doctor's phone had been found in his coat.

Perhaps the resident had panicked and dialed the wrong contact.

My mind clung desperately to every impossible explanation except the one I had already been given.

The words road traffic collision floated through my head, detached from meaning, as though they belonged to someone else's life.

They couldn't belong to mine.

They couldn't belong to us.

Without warning, another memory forced its way into my thoughts.

A yellow Post-it note.

Folded silver foil.

Made dal and rice. Please eat.

My vision blurred.

That had been the last thing he had left for me.

Not I love you.

Not I'm sorry.

Not even We'll talk when I get back.

Just a quiet reminder to eat dinner.

A fresh wave of panic tightened painfully around my chest.

No.

This couldn't be how our last conversation ended.

It couldn't end with me sitting behind a laptop, pretending to work while he stood only a few feet away, waiting—perhaps hoping—for me to say something that would make him stay.

Only a few minutes ago, I had finally admitted to myself that I had been wrong too. I had spent four days convincing myself that Arjun didn't understand me, when all he had done was believe every word I had asked of him. I had been so certain that when he came home in the morning, I would knock on the guest room door. I would tell him that I was still hurt, still angry, but that I couldn't bear another day of living like strangers beneath the same roof.

I had finally decided to choose us.

Not tomorrow.

Not next week.

Today.

A strangled sound escaped my throat as tears blurred the road ahead.

"Please..." I whispered to no one, tightening my grip on the steering wheel. "Please don't do this."

I wasn't even sure who I was pleading with anymore.

God.

Fate.

The rain.

Anyone who was listening.

"Just let him be alive."

The words came out broken.

"I'll tell him everything. I'll stop making him guess. I'll stop hiding behind my pride. I'll tell him how terrified I am, how much he hurt me, how much I still love him... just..."

My voice cracked beneath the weight of the sob I had been fighting.

"Just let me tell him myself."

The emergency wing didn't smell like Arjun. Arjun smelled of cedarwood, sharp peppermint, and the faint, comforting warmth of ironed cotton. This place smelled of harsh bleach, wet floor mats, and the cold, metallic tang of institutional panic.

"Dr. Iyer's wife," I choked out at the desk. The plastic countertop felt icy beneath my fingernails. My voice didn't even sound like mine; it was high, thin, and papery. "Where is he? Please."

A nurse with a tired face and a stethoscope slung over her shoulder immediately came around the counter. Her grip on my forearm was tight, anchoring me. "Mam, look at me. He's in Trauma Room Two. They are running scans right now—checking his head, chest, everything. He was breathing on his own when the ambulance brought him in, but he hasn't woken up."

"I need to go in there," I said, my chest heaving as a jagged sob finally tore its way out. I tried to pull away, to move toward the double doors that swung shut with a heavy, rubber slap every time someone passed. "Let me go to him. He thinks I'm angry with him. I need to..."

"You can't go in during the scans, ma'am," a senior doctor interrupted, his voice flat with the practiced calm that Arjun usually wore. He looked at my soaked cardigan, my shivering frame, my face which must have looked like a ghost's. "You are going to hyperventilate. Nurse, take her to the side room. Sandhya, sit down and rest. The second the imaging is back, I will bring you to his side. Right now, you are no use to him like this."

No use. The words stung, but my legs suddenly lost all their bone and muscle, turning to fluid. The nurse guided me into a small, windowless family room. It had a low boxy couch covered in cracked green vinyl and a single water cooler that hummed aggressively in the corner.

"Just try to breathe," she said softly, shutting the door.

The click of the latch sounded exactly like the deadbolt sliding into place in our kitchen three nights ago.

I didn't drink the water she left. I sat on the edge of the vinyl couch, burying my face in my hands, trying to drown out the muffled chaos bleeding through the walls—the shouts for units of blood, the squeak of running sneakers, the chime of monitors.

Just let him open his eyes, I prayed, my forehead pressed against my damp knees. Let me tell him he doesn't have to sleep in the guest room. Let me tell him I'm sorry.

A dull ache spread low across my abdomen.

I barely noticed it.

My entire body had been tense since the phone call. Every muscle ached. My head throbbed. My hands still hadn't stopped shaking. The discomfort felt insignificant compared to the terror sitting inside my chest.

I shifted slightly on the couch and tried to ignore it.

Another cramp followed.

Sharper this time.

I bent forward, pressing my palm against my abdomen as though I could quiet the ache simply by holding it still. The vinyl beneath me creaked softly as I shifted, its cold surface pressing through the thin fabric of my clothes. I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing, counting each inhale and exhale the way Arjun had once taught an anxious patient sitting outside the operating theatre. It was only stress. It had to be.

My body had been running on sleepless nights, skipped meals, endless cups of coffee and an exhaustion so deep it had begun to settle into my bones. Any reasonable person would have expected it to protest eventually. This wasn't the time to listen to it. Not while Arjun was somewhere beyond those doors, surrounded by doctors who were deciding whether my husband would wake up again.

The cramp returned without warning.

It tightened low inside me, sharper than before, until it stole the air from my lungs and forced me to bend further over my knees. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for it to pass. It didn't. Instead, another wave followed so quickly that the two seemed to merge into one long, twisting pain. I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out.

"Please," I whispered, though I wasn't sure whether I was speaking to my own body or to God. "Not now."

I had no room left for another crisis. Every thought I possessed was already occupied by Arjun. I couldn't spare even one for myself.

Then I felt it.

At first, it was only warmth.

A strange, unfamiliar warmth spreading beneath me.

My mind reached instinctively for the simplest explanation. I must have knocked over the paper cup the nurse had left beside me. I frowned and lifted my head toward the little side table.

The cup was still there.

Untouched.

A single droplet of condensation slid lazily down its side before disappearing onto the tabletop.

I stared at it for several seconds, unable to understand why my heart had suddenly begun to pound harder.

The warmth spread again.

This time it lingered.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, I lowered my gaze.

For a moment, nothing made sense.

The dark stain against my pale trousers looked so impossibly out of place that my mind rejected it immediately. I simply stared at it, waiting for it to become something else. A trick of the harsh fluorescent lights. A shadow. Coffee. Anything except what it so obviously was.

Blood.

The word arrived in my mind without bringing any meaning with it.

Blood.

I repeated it silently, almost curiously, as though it belonged to someone else's body.

That wasn't possible.

I hadn't fallen.

I hadn't hit anything on the drive here.

I searched my memory desperately, trying to find some explanation that would fit what I was seeing. Had I scraped my leg rushing out of the house? Caught myself on the edge of the car door? The possibilities came one after another, each more ridiculous than the last, yet I clung to them with stubborn determination because every one of them felt easier to believe than the truth I hadn't even begun to imagine.

Another cramp tore through me with such force that a broken gasp escaped my lips.

My hand instinctively gripped the edge of the couch while the other remained pressed against my abdomen. When I looked down again, the stain had grown larger.

Too large.

Far too large.

Even then, my mind refused to connect the pieces.

I only knew that something was wrong.

Very wrong.

"Mrs. Iyer?"

The voice reached me from somewhere far away.

I looked up slowly.

The young nurse who had brought me the water was kneeling in front of me now. Her expression was composed, but there was something different in her eyes. They flickered once toward the seat beneath me before returning to my face, and in that brief glance I saw her composure falter. It lasted less than a second before years of training settled back over her features, replacing alarm with quiet professionalism.

"Mrs. Iyer," she said gently, "can you look at me?"

I blinked at her.

"I'm..." My voice sounded strangely unfamiliar. "I'm waiting for my husband."

"I know."

"He was in an accident."

"I know."

"They said he was unconscious."

The words tumbled out without direction, as though repeating them might somehow make them easier to understand.

"I need to see him."

"You will," she replied softly, her fingers already reaching for my wrist to check my pulse. "But right now, I need you to stay with me."

I frowned.

Stay with her?

Why?

It made no sense.

Arjun was the one who needed doctors.

Arjun was the one who was hurt.

Why was everyone looking at me?

The nurse followed my confused gaze downward once more, and this time her expression changed completely. She rose so quickly that the chair beside her scraped loudly across the floor.

"I need a wheelchair over here," she called, her voice carrying across the waiting area with controlled urgency. "Now. And page Obstetrics immediately."

The word echoed strangely inside my head.

Obstetrics.

I stared at her.

"...Why?"

She turned back toward me, and for the first time since she'd approached, I saw genuine sympathy soften her face.

"Mrs. Iyer..."

She hesitated, choosing her next words carefully.

"You're bleeding."

I frowned, looking down almost absentmindedly at the crimson stain spreading across my trousers.

"Yes..."

My voice sounded distant, detached.

"I know."

The nurse's brows knit together.

"We need to take you to an examination room."

I shook my head immediately.

"No."

"Mrs. Iyer—"

"It's not important."

The words escaped before I had even thought them through.

I looked past her shoulder toward the swinging double doors leading into the trauma bay. Every few seconds they burst open to admit another doctor or nurse before swinging shut again with a heavy metallic thud. Stretchers rolled past so quickly that the wheels squealed against the polished floor. Somewhere down the corridor, someone shouted for four units of O-negative blood. A monitor erupted into a rapid series of alarms before falling silent again beneath the steady voices of the resuscitation team.

The hospital continued moving with frightening efficiency.

Lives were ending.

Lives were being saved.

And somewhere behind those doors...

Arjun was one of them.

My fingers tightened around the edge of the couch.

"My husband..." I whispered, barely aware that I was speaking aloud. "My husband is in there."

"I know," the nurse said gently.

"No, you don't."

I looked at her then, truly looked at her for the first time.

"You don't understand."

My voice trembled, but it wasn't from the pain anymore.

"He just left home." My words stumbled over one another, desperate and disjointed. "He was standing in our kitchen less than an hour ago. We... we barely spoke."

The memory hit me with cruel clarity.

His hand resting briefly on the back of the empty dining chair.

His tired smile.

I had watched him walk out the front door.

I had let him.

"He can't..." My throat tightened painfully. "He can't die thinking this is how I wanted things to be."

Another cramp tore through my abdomen.

It stole my breath for a moment, forcing me to double over.

The nurse instinctively reached to steady me, but I pulled away just enough to shake my head.

"I'm fine."

"You are not fine."

"I said I'm fine."

The words came out sharper than I intended.

"I'm bleeding."

"I know."

"But that can wait."

The nurse stared at me, momentarily speechless.

"My husband can't."

For the first time, the calm certainty in her expression cracked.

She glanced toward the trauma unit, then back at me. She had probably seen this before. Wives. Husbands. Parents. Children. People so consumed by the possibility of losing someone they loved that they stopped recognizing their own bodies.

She reached for the phone clipped to her uniform.

"I need a wheelchair in the emergency waiting area," she said, her voice low but urgent. "And call Obstetrics. Now."

Within seconds, the controlled rhythm of the department shifted around me.

Another nurse hurried over.

Then another.

Someone crouched beside me to take my blood pressure while someone else draped a blanket across my lap, discreetly shielding the growing stain from the other families in the waiting room.

"I don't need this," I protested weakly, trying to push the blanket away.

No one answered.

The sounds of the emergency department seemed louder now.

The shrill beep of cardiac monitors.

The squeak of rubber soles against polished floors.

A porter rushing a ventilator down the corridor.

A child crying somewhere near reception before being quickly ushered away.

Life carried on around me with relentless urgency, and all I could think was how absurd it felt that everyone had suddenly turned toward me.

"I need to see him," I whispered again, my eyes fixed on the trauma doors.

Nobody replied.

Two orderlies arrived with a wheelchair.

One of the nurses knelt in front of me again, her voice impossibly gentle.

"We're going to take care of you now."

A hollow laugh escaped me.

"No."

I looked once more toward the doors behind which Arjun had disappeared.

"You're taking care of the wrong Iyer."

The words had barely left my lips when another searing pain ripped through my abdomen, so sudden and so fierce that the room lurched sideways.

Someone caught me before I slipped from the couch.

The last thing I saw before the nurses wheeled me away was the trauma bay doors opening.

For one wild, desperate heartbeat, I thought it was Arjun coming through them.

It wasn't.

+++++++

The next few chapters explore grief, trauma, and the aftermath of a devastating accident. I approached these scenes with as much medical accuracy and emotional honesty as I could.

If this chapter hit close to home for you, please be gentle with yourself today.

Thank you for trusting me with Sandhya and Arjun's story.