Body Remembers - I
1162 Words
I. The Girl Who Never Cried
Before she became Dr. Sharda Bindra, she was simply “Sharda,” the girl in the long braids and clipped voice, who did not cry.
In her childhood home in Amritsar, the walls heard everything. The smell of turmeric and school chalk clung to her mother’s clothes. Her father, a government schoolteacher, believed feelings were seasonal luxuries—permitted only when harvests were good or test results exceptional.
“Strong girls don’t make a fuss,” he would say.
Sharda took that lesson and swallowed it whole.
And like all swallowed things, it settled inside her, unprocessed.
Whenever she scraped her knee, she bit her lip until the bleeding stopped.
When she lost her grandmother, she pressed her face into her pillow and inhaled until she felt dizzy, forcing her tears back where they came from.
When a teacher humiliated her in class, she simply nodded, apologized, and went home to do the assignment twice.
She believed being good meant being quiet.
Being strong meant being invisible.
Being loved meant being useful.
Some things the body remembers long before the mind understands them.
II. Night of Rewriting
The memory she revisited most often......never willingly; was from when she was seventeen.
Aman, her cousin, had been walking back from school when a speeding car struck him and kept going. A neighbour carried him home, unconscious, blood pooling around his uniform shirt.
There was shouting and panic. There was too much blood for someone so young.
She remembered pressing her hand to his abdomen, her fingers slipping in the thick warmth of it. Someone screamed for a taxi. Someone slapped a neighbour who suggested taking a video “for evidence.” Someone else fainted.
But Sharda did not cry.
She did not break.
She held Aman’s hand and whispered, “Stay. Stay. Stay,” like a mantra.
Her uncle chose the private hospital because it was closer. The guards stopped them at the door.
“Deposit first.”
“He’s dying......”
“Deposit first.”
They waited.
Twenty-three minutes.
Sharda had counted each one like a bead on a rosary.
Aman died on hospital steps, his hand slipping from hers as if even his body had decided it could no longer afford to wait for mercy.
That night she rewrote the architecture of her entire life.
Her father said, “We should be strong for the family.”
Her mother said, “You mustn’t let it affect your studies.”
Her relatives said, “God’s will.”
Sharda didn’t accept any of it.
She made one silent vow:
I will become someone who is allowed to save people.
I will never wait at a door again.
Guilt settled in her like sediment.
Not logical guilt......
there was nothing she could have done.
But guilt isn’t logical.
It’s simply loyal.
Her body held it.
Stored it.
Carried it.
Even now.
Especially now.
III. Burden of Healing Others
Years later, working the trauma ward in Delhi, Sharda moved with the precision of someone who had spent years turning guilt into skill.
She had treated everything; car crashes, acid attacks, domestic abuse, suicide attempts, stab wounds. She learned how skin tore, how bones shattered, how organs fought to stay alive when everything else had given up.
She learned how people lied about their injuries.
“I fell.”
“I tripped.”
“It was an accident.”
But broken bones told their own truth.
There were fracture patterns that came from falling.
And fracture patterns that came from being thrown.
There were bruises caused by walls.
And bruises caused by fists.
Sharda didn’t always ask.
Some truths were punishments when spoken aloud.
But she saw.
God, she saw everything.
Sometimes she thought the human body was a diary; stubborn, unwilling to forget even when the mind insisted it had moved on.
Bones remembered.
Muscles remembered.
Skin remembered.
And so did she.
IV. The Scan
Her shift was supposed to end at 6 p.m., but a pile-up on the highway flooded the ER with patients. She worked eight hours straight...........no food, no pause, no thought. She sutured, she intubated, she checked vitals, she called families who did not answer.
It was only when she emptied her jhola onto the dining table at 2:17 a.m. in her flat that she saw the envelope.
Aanya Mehta.
MRI: Lumbar Spine.
Sharda frowned.
Aanya must have slipped it in accidentally last week when she had accompanied her to the hospital for a routine check.
She unfolded the scan.
Her breath stilled.
Old healed fractures.
Multiple.
Irregular healing.
Likely non-accidental trauma.
Her vision blurred for a moment.
Not from exhaustion.
From rage.
But rage was a luxury she had never allowed herself.
Instead, she sat down, placed the papers neatly on the table, and pressed her hands to her eyes.
Every instinct in her body screamed.
Every medical training told her exactly what these fractures meant.
Every emotion she had buried for decades clawed up her throat.
Aanya.
Quiet, careful, self-contained Aanya.
The still one.
The strong one.
The untouched one.
Not untouched.
Never untouched.
Her breath shook.
She whispered to the empty room, “Who hurt you?”
A question she had never spoken to a patient in that tone.
A question she could not ask Aanya unless Aanya let her.
But she knew.
She knew.
This was not a childhood injury.
This was violence.
Systematic.
AND
Intentional.
Her chest tightened with a fierce, protective grief she had no name for.
She stood abruptly, grabbed the scan, and left her flat.
She drove through the silent Delhi night, her hands tense on the steering wheel. The city was full of ghosts, and she had no patience for any of them tonight.
She reached the house with the blue door at 2:49 a.m.
She did not knock.
Aanya didn’t lock the door at night.
A habit that terrified Sharda now.
She walked inside quietly.
The living room was dark, except for the dim glow of Aanya’s laptop screen. Aanya sat curled on the rug, asleep over her drawings, head resting on her arm.
Her breathing was shallow.
Her shoulders were tight.
Her face looked like a child’s; the kind of child who learned to sleep alert.
Sharda stood over her for a long moment, the scan clutched in her hand.
Aanya stirred.
Slowly opened her eyes.
Saw Sharda.
“Sharda?” she whispered, disoriented. “What… what are you—”
Sharda knelt down beside her.
She didn’t speak at first.
Not until her voice was steady.
Not until her heart stopped hammering in her ears.
Finally:
“Aanya,” she said softly, “I saw the scan.”
Aanya froze.
Absolutely, utterly froze.
Like a small animal caught in sudden light.
Sharda placed the envelope gently on the floor between them.
“You don’t have to say anything,” she whispered.
Aanya’s lips trembled.
Sharda continued:
“But your bones spoke for you.”
- Writer
