Cold Wars - a Lawyer-Cop Romance

Hospital

Vishwa tried his maximum to listen to what Shankaree and the doctor were talking about. Something about dressing the wound, and then he reached out to touch her face. Possessiveness washed over him for the first time in his life.

‘Why should he touch her face? It’s her leg that is injured.’ He wanted to say it out loud. He kept moving closer to know what exactly was happening.

Then Vishwa saw the doctor pull her eyelids down. He was embarrassed for a minute that he had misunderstood the Doc’s action. Doctors do look in their patient’s eyes, mostly to check for paleness. He clearly heard the Doc declare Shankaree had anemia. He asked about any other sickness and she whispered something which he couldn’t hear. So, he moved closer to listen in but was yelled at by her. Now he was actually embarrassed. He felt like he was eavesdropping, which honestly, was exactly what he was doing. He was determined to move forward and he did. She didn’t say anything after the ‘What?’ thing, like she gave up the fight to keep him away. Exactly what he wanted. He wanted to remain close.

He tried to rationalize it by ‘she’s resisted arrest’, ‘she fought with police officers’, ‘she threw things at me’, etc. but the more he rationalised, the more a voice in his head said, ‘of course, you would lean in to doctor patient conversation normally, ‘or is it just because you like her?’, ‘she shouldn’t have been arrested in the first place’ etc.

He looked at the doctor waiting for his diagnosis, then he looked at her for absolutely no reason. Her eyes were drowsy like she was sleepy.

“I’m gonna faint.” She said and just fell back. She had already hit the bed before he could swoop in and catch her. She fell perpendicular so only the middle portion of her body was on the bed. She was unconscious with her head hanging over outside the bed. Vishwa quickly went to her and lifted her. He slid his hand behind her neck, held her hand with his other hand and raised her up. By then, the doctor and the nurse standing near the bed, helped him turn her so that she lied on the bed fully. He lowered her bed level a little so that she lied down at a lower angle.

The Doc asked the nurse to bring something and wake her up; some chemical Vishwa didn’t catch the name of. His police colleagues had also come around the bed to find out what happened.

“Probably fatigue. She has anemia and she said she’s on her periods.” The Doc said. Vishwa didn’t know one thing about periods or how women dealt with it. Of course, he knew about it in theory, but since he had no close girl-friends or a girlfriend, he had zero realistic knowledge.

Fatigue and anemia, on the other hand, he knew. Fatigue possibly, no, definitely because of all that happened at her house. She definitely must have been exhausted. As for anemia, he just wondered if it was a resultant of her eating habits or something else.

The nurse came quickly, with a small tray and it had a bottle and some cotton balls. She whispered something in the doctor’s ear and he nodded. Then the Doc took out a cotton ball, soaked a cotton ball in it and took it to Shankaree’s nose. Vishwa eagerly stood at the end of her bed waiting for her to wake up. A minute later she opened her eyes, still drowsy and blinked several times. Her face told him that she was trying to figure out what had happened. She looked around and locked her eyes on him. Maybe because he was the only familiar face for her, everyone else, she met them for the first time a few hours ago. Vishwa’s lips twitched when she looked at him.

She immediately crooked her eyebrows like she didn’t know what he was doing there. She turned her head to the doctor who was standing closer to her and asked,

“I fainted, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did.” The Doc said and placed the cotton ball back on the tray.

“When did you last eat?” the Doc asked.

Shankaree rolled her eyes up , like she was thinking.

‘How hard is it to remember when she last ate? Can’t be that long ago.’ He thought and folded his arms.

“This morning.” She proudly proclaimed.

“What did you eat?” the Doc asked.

She gave him a tight smile and in a low voice said, “Lime juice.” She looked at the doc like she was embarrassed.

Vishwa almost didn’t hear her say it but he went ‘What?’ in his mind.

“Is that even food?” Vishwa interjected. He didn’t mean to, but listening to her saying that the last meal she had was a glass of lime juice was unbelievable to him. She glared at him and scoffed.

“Ok, what about before the juice?” the doc asked. She thought again.

“I had a pizza last night.” She said like she remembered it right at that moment.

The doctor smirked at her in amusement. Vishwa saw it through the corner of his eyes. She looked back at Shankaree, who had her lips together in embarrassment.

“I don’t cook.” She said and laughed nervously.

“You don’t cook, you cuss too much for a woman, you yell and fight with police officers like a goon, what kind of woman are you?” One of the policewomen interfered and asked.

Shankaree’s embarrassed expression quickly turned into pure hatred when she turned her head towards the policewoman.

“Just because I’m a woman I must cook, not cuss and be scared of police officers?” Shankaree asked. She waited for a reply and when the police woman, or no one for that matter, spoke, she continued without taking her eyes off the policewoman.

“Hmm? Should I be? Also, what exactly is too much cussing for a woman? And should a police officer even be lecturing me about cussing?” she asked rhetorically. Vishwa tried to keep his expression at a minimum, not to give away anything. He didn’t cuss, but all his colleagues did. Cussing was something he didn’t do, something he never felt the need to do. Nor did he find it appropriate, maybe because of his upbringing.

Vishwa thought she was done, but no. Shankaree was still speaking.

“Ma’am, your husband might want you to cook breakfast, lunch and dinner, do his laundry, clean the house you both live in, take care of a child that’s half his and then he expects you to go to a job, a challenging job like a police officer. That’s a textbook case of patriarchy and patriarchy is exactly why I don’t cook. I want to show it's okay for a woman not to cook.”

Everyone was quiet in the room, like Shankaree was a beast they didn’t want to provoke. Vishwa tried to hide the smile which was budding on his lips. He was starting to like her. Not just her body, but the person within that body. How she always moved against the current, pushing forward, smashing expectations. Something Vishwa never did, or thought of doing. She was a wildflower in the midst of a sunflower field.

“You fought the police?” the Doc asked to ease the tension in the room.

Shankaree turned to him, smiled and said, “A little”. She pressed her thumb and index finger together to show ‘a little’ and then winked at the doctor.

‘Did she just wink at him? Oh, come on.’ He thought.

“Your ankle is sprained, it’ll need a cast. You’ll have to rest the leg for three days. I’ll ask someone to dress your wound and after that, let’s set you up with an IV.” The Doc said while he wrote something on his pad.

“IV? Why do I need a drip? Can’t I just go home?” Shankaree asked.

“Girl, you’re on the first day of your periods, you’ve had no food for at least 12 hours, you have 2 injuries and you ask why I’m putting you on an IV.” The Doc said like he was chiding a small child. Shankaree lowered her head and nodded.

‘That’s how you silence her? Vishwa had been trying to do that since the moment he met her and a doctor had just done that in 2 seconds. Unbelievable.’ He thought.

“After dressing, they’ll take you to a room.” The Doc said.

“Room?” she raised her head to look at him. Vishwa felt like she was confused. To be honest, he was also confused. Why put her in a room? The answer immediately came to him. DIG, he said he’d come to her.

‘God, let there not be any problem.’ He prayed, and at that moment he decided he was staying by her side. Whether it was the emergency room, a hospital room or anywhere. He decided that he was staying until all this was over, until she was back in her home and he would be the one taking her back home.

“I have instructions to give you a room.” The Doc said, “You have to get an IV anyway, better have a room.”

She nodded with a questioning expression like she wasn’t sure.

Dressing her wound and putting her in a cast took less than half an hour and the staff brought a wheelchair to transfer her to a room. During the process, Shankaree almost dozed off, or should one say passed out, once or twice. Vishwa reached near her head and she looked at him. He noticed that she was tensed, even though she tried her maximum not to show it. Was she scared of being in a room? He wondered.

“I’ll go buy you some food. And I’ll deliver it to you in your room.” Vishwa said in a soft voice. No one even heard what he said, only her. She just gave him a nod. They looked at each other in silence.

‘I won’t let anything happen to you.’ He said in his mind. Like she understood what he said, her eyes softened, her eyebrows back to rest and she gave him a tiny smile.

Vishwa left and went to look for places which hadn’t closed. It was already 11pm. Most places had closed. He found a restaurant, very close to the hospital, which was still open. He ordered take away and while he waited, he thought about how Shankaree responded to him minutes ago.

‘It’s like she knew what I was saying. The hell was that?’

He quickly came back. The Doc said Shankaree was on the first floor, room 101. He went straight up and entered her room.

“What the.. Can’t you knock, DC?” she said and sneered at him. She was already on the IV with a tube running from her forearm to a bag hanged upside down on a stand.

It was then he realized he hadn’t knocked, he just came in like he had absolute freedom in the room.

“Oh, sorry. I… I forgot.”

She was sitting on the bed, legs resting, the hand with IV resting on the bed, while she had the other hand on her hair. It seemed to him like her hair was free and she was trying to tie it.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Yeah, that. I let my hair loose thinking of tying it again, forgetting I had the drip. I’m trying to tie it.” she said, trying to hold her hair together and twisting it in many ways.

“Trying and failing.” He said. She immediately looked at him. He saw her pouting and then let go of her hair in protest. Her hair spread all across her shoulders and reached at least until her abdomen. He was startled for a minute to see an unkempt version of her, which had a magnetism of its own. He was staring at her when the spell broke and he walked towards the table in the room and kept the food he bought on it. He stood by the table for a minute, not knowing what to do, when he turned around.

He turned around anyway and saw Shankaree still trying to tie her hair. He walked up to her, she only noticed it when he was right next to her. Her hand was still on her hair. Vishwa looked at her, then looked at her hair and slowly reached out and took the hair tie from her hand. She was looking at him dumbstruck, not knowing what he intended to do. He wasn't even sure about what he was going to do.