Body Remembers - II
1167 Words
V. Language of Bones
For a moment, neither woman moved.
The envelope lay between them like a small, mute witness. The room felt suspended; not in time, but in breath. Aanya’s eyes darted toward the scan, then away, almost violently.
“Who gave you that?” she whispered, her voice paper-thin.
“It was in my bag,” Sharda said gently. “I think you slipped it in with your other reports.”
Aanya’s shoulders tightened imperceptibly. Her fingers curled into fists against the rug.
Sharda watched the way her friend’s body folded in—not dramatically, not visibly, but inward like a collapsing beam.
“Aanya,” Sharda said softly, “you don’t have to explain anything to me.”
Aanya let out a sound that was not quite a laugh and not quite a breath.
“There’s nothing to explain,” she said quickly. Too quickly. “It was… long ago. I was clumsy. I fell a lot.”
Sharda inhaled sharply.
“Aanya,” she said, her voice firm now, “those fractures were not from falls.”
Aanya flinched.
“They were old,” Sharda continued. “Repeated. Poorly healed. That kind of pattern doesn’t come from clumsiness.”
Aanya bit down on her lower lip so hard that Sharda saw the skin whiten.
“Stop,” Aanya whispered. “Please.”
Sharda stopped.
But she did not leave.
She folded her legs and sat beside her on the floor, leaving a respectful distance between them.
The room hummed with quiet, the kind that forms when the truth has entered and refuses to leave.
“Aanya,” Sharda said again, her voice softening, “Your body remembers what your mouth refuses to say.”
Aanya shut her eyes.
A tear escaped.
She wiped it so fast it might have been imagined.
Sharda’s chest tightened.
She had seen grief in a thousand forms; violent, loud, hysterical, numb. But Aanya’s grief terrified her in a way none of her patients ever had.
Because it was silent.
Silent grief was the most dangerous kind; it built pressure in the softest, most hidden places.
VI. Aanya’s First Fracture
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Aanya whispered.
“You don’t have to,” Sharda replied.
“Then why are you here?”
“Because you shouldn’t be alone with this.”
Aanya swallowed.
Her hands shook.
Sharda saw it; the tiniest tremor, like a secret trembling to escape.
Slowly, deliberately, Sharda placed her palms flat on the floor, mirroring Aanya’s posture. Not touching her. Not reaching. Just aligning.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, “if you don’t have words.”
Aanya’s breath shuddered.
It was an involuntary thing....raw and childlike, unguarded. Sharda had only ever heard it from patients before anesthesia, or mothers after loss. But hearing it from Aanya; composed, unreadable, meticulous Aanya; was wrenching.
“Aanya,” Sharda said softly, “may I ask one question?”
Aanya hesitated. Then nodded.....barely.
“Were you a child?” Sharda asked.
Aanya closed her eyes.
And for the first time, she nodded.
Just once.
But it was enough.
Sharda felt something c***k inside her.
Not a sound.
Not an emotion.
A structure.
Something in her spine softened, bent, became almost unbearably human.
She let out a breath that felt like it had been trapped in her chest for decades.
“Aanya,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
Aanya shook her head fiercely. “Don’t. Don’t say that.”
“Why?”
“Because it makes it real.”
Sharda’s throat closed.
She understood too well.
VII. A Surgeon’s Breaking Point
Sharda had spent her entire career holding other people together.
But that night, watching Aanya sit with her demons in silence, something inside her....Sharda, began to fracture.
She felt a burning at the back of her eyes.
A warning.
She blinked rapidly, swallowing hard.
Not now.
Not in front of Aanya.
Not when Aanya was shaking.
But Aanya looked up then, and her voice broke:
“I didn’t want you to see it.”
Sharda froze.
“See what?” she whispered.
“The truth,” Aanya said. “The mess. The… evidence.”
Her hand moved toward the scan, hovering above it like a wounded animal unsure if it wanted to touch the trap.
Sharda reached out; not to touch Aanya, but to gently, lightly place a hand over the envelope.
“I’m glad I saw it,” she said, her voice raw. “It means you don’t have to hide alone anymore.”
Aanya inhaled sharply. “I wasn’t hiding. I was… surviving.”
Sharda nodded. “You were. And you did.”
Aanya’s chin quivered.
Then something happened that neither of them expected.
Sharda’s vision was blurred.
A tear slipped from her left eye.
Aanya blinked. “You’re.............crying?”
Sharda pressed her lips together. But she couldn’t stop the tears. They were small, silent things; just a shimmer in her lashes, but they betrayed her completely.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I don’t… usually…”
“You never cry,” Aanya whispered.
“I know,” Sharda said. “I know.”
Another tear.
Aanya reached out....not touching Sharda, merely placing her hand close, like an offering.
“Why are you crying?” she asked softly.
Sharda exhaled shakily.
“Because,” she whispered, “I keep thinking… you were a child.”
Aanya’s face crumbled.
And then—without ceremony, without preparation, she leaned forward slightly, her forehead touching Sharda’s shoulder for a single, trembling second.
It wasn’t an embrace.
It wasn’t even contact.
It was the ghost of leaning.
But it was enough.
Sharda’s hand lifted instinctively, then paused, hovering in the air before finally resting; lightly, gently; on Aanya’s back.
The contact was fragile.
Barely pressure.
But Aanya didn’t pull away.
They stayed like that, both crying in quiet; two women who had learned to be strong in all the wrong ways, finally allowing themselves to be human for a moment.
Sharda whispered:
“You’re safe.”
Aanya whispered back:
“I don’t feel safe.”
Sharda closed her eyes.
“I’ll stay,” she said. “I’m here.”
VIII. Unhealed Truth
Later that night, after Aanya finally drifted into a restless sleep on the sofa, Sharda sat beside her, watching the rise and fall of her breath.
She touched the scan lightly.
Not to reopen the wound, but to acknowledge it.
“This wasn’t your fault,” she whispered into the quiet room.
Aanya didn’t respond.
But her fingers twitched slightly in her sleep.
As if her body remembered the truth..........even if her mind didn’t.
And Sharda, exhausted beyond measure, leaned back against the sofa and let her eyes close.
For the first time in years, she allowed herself to feel it all.
The helplessness.
The grief.
The rage.
Her last conscious thought before sleep overtook her was a single, devastating truth:
What we survive shapes us.
What we bury becomes us.
- Writer
