Khushi all of sudden woke up from a bad dream, in a terrible condition. Thankfully Arnav was there. He stood on his feet from his stool.
"La!" she yelled as her body quivered.
"Khushi," Arnav said and held her by her shoulders to get control of her.
"Please save her, she...she needs...help!" she said in quick short breaths getting impatient in Arnav's arms. She was desperate, uneasy, she wanted to run to save her best friend.
"Khushi, no, it was just your bad dream," he told her.
However, every scene was vivid and fresh in her mind that stopped her mental ability to make any difference between the reality and the imagination just like when she got panic attack.
"No, Arnav ji, there," she pointed in the corner. "Train...La!" she could even see the train scratching the side of Lavanya's SUV, until it was shredded into little pieces.
The sound of the train from the nearby railway station nothing did good but only made her certain everything was happening right in front of her. And this was not the first time, first six months she had spent in a trauma. It got okay, in between but once again to get only worst just as it was right now.
Arnav held her strongly. Khushi clenched his shirt collar as she was scared to look anywhere else. She was relaxed with the fact that Arnav was there by her side she felt protective, but seeing La struggling in an accident it shook her peace of mind.
"Sssh...Khushi...No body is there."
"Arnav ji, she is going to die!" she shouted at him.
"She needs help!" she said faintly the other moment.
As she had calmed down hearing Aranv's furious tone asking her to look around and see she was day dreaming, she looked around and then at Arnav.
He was shaking his head. "Khushi, everything will be okay!" he said.
Khushi hugged him even tighter and let her hurt, her pain, her fear, flow in the form of the tears.
Arnav hugged her and caressed her back. His chin rested on her head.
"Everything will be fine!" he mumbled.
"I...I...could not save her," her voice was weak and it reflected her helplessness. "I tried to, but she pushed me out of the car, and then...and she..."
She was once again disturbed. Her nervous system was giving wrong messages to her brain. But Arnav talking to her telling her there is not like what she is thinking of.
"Relax. Just calm yourself down," he said and rubbed her side arms.
He stood in the same pose until she had dozed back off.
He laid her and himself fell on the stool broken seeing her condition. Tears still came out of her eyes. Lines of worry, fear was still formed on her forehead. He had been just so stupid to have no idea what she was going through.
He had tears in his eyes not due to his own pain but Khushi's, as today he came to know how exactly did his La had died. And Khushi, his wife till now had been the victim of no mistake of her own.
Which he didn't know being her husband. But still she carried herself strong. And him being an utter fool left no stone unturned and making sure it hit her hard at the same time.
She was fighting alone. For whom? For him, for her best friend who had lost her life because of her own mistake and for her husband who never did anything good but bad by hurting an innocent soul.
Why hadn't the family hid the truth if he himself never gave them a chance? Nobody was at fault as everyone stayed mum because they didn't want him to hurt, Khushi didn't want to hurt him. She had herself seen her best friend loosing her life.
What a joke had a life played with him, anyways. Never anyone told the reason exact reason of his La's death. Never anyone told him it was Khushi as well fighting with the most dangerous scenario of her life until today. That had moved her only for worst.
"What have I done?" he asked himself anyways, he couldn't have blamed everything on others to hide the truth from him.
"Why did I act so stupid? Why only I saw my own pain, but not Khushi's? Why was she doing everything? Why she took a decision that destroyed her completely? She broke every relation only to find that for whom she had put everything on stake had nothing to offer her.
"If anything happened to her, would I ever be able to forgive myself? No, never."
His body begged him for an alcohol. He wanted it badly. But no, not again. Today, not for Lavanya. But for Khushi, he was not going to even think that he needed alcohol to free himself from pain.
No, he had to face the circumstances. They were harsh, but he himself had been the reason behind it. He had to learn to accept the pain.
"How will I mend her broken soul?" he winced.
"Please let Khushi be safe! She doesn't deserve any more pain. I promise I will give every right she deserves. The pain that I have given her for the past 1 year, the worst incident that she has been going through for the past 1 and a half year, with best of my abilities I would try to make her forget, I will give her enough happiness that she forgets everything over time!"
***
"Mr. Raizada!" Dr. Kapoor said, "Please come in!"
"Hi, Dr. Kapoor!" he said and took a seat. "I came to talk to you about Khushi. She woke up from a bad dream."
"Mr. Raizada, it has happened before many a times. Your family would tell me every time they called in after every trauma she had. There is nothing we can do, the fear, the incident has sit in her mind. We are afraid she will loose her mental imbalance least she could die too. As today, her heart stopped literally for few minutes if it wasn't you to give her the CPR," Arnav was shocked to learn the fact.
"And the only way is to keep her happy. She needs it. It has become so important to bring Khushi out of this whole incident, to delete the hard copy that her brain has created and whenever she is stressed out it just plays naturally.
"Mr. Raizada, we can give her every medicines, that's what we are doing, but medication alone doesn't play an important role. Khushi should be stress free which I don't feel she is. What I see in her is stress, stress, and only stress!"
Arnav was quite because he knew he had nothing to say since he was at the major fault.
"This is not the worst thing I could say it is, but the worst would be if you as her husband didn't take any precaution, you are her life partner, what if you guys would try to start a family tomorrow? With this much stress she won't ever be able to conceive."
"Please, don't say so!" Arnav said as he jumped in his seat.
"That's the worst truth, Mr. Raizada. As a doctor, I am just acquainting you with what the reality is. Better take precaution now. Also, it is the high time to change your lifestyle as well. Mr. Raizada, she is your wife. Treat her like one, I am sorry I am being personal, but for a good I am saying it."
He was nodding his head.
***
Arnav entered in Khushi's ward, although he took a step forward, but his mind was forcing to go only back. He had no courage to face her. He felt so low in front of person like Khushi.
Khushi was afraid seeing Arnav. Afraid because she never wanted him to get to know this that how did his wife died. She could already tell looking at him that he was troubled. It was an underestimation.
How much she wished to keep her trauma to herself, not even to give Arnav a hint of her pain, but it just came in front of him like this.
Somehow, she herself had been managing, for Arnav it wouldn't have been any easier. Who had truly loved his wife.
He had taken the seat close to her but nothing he had said so far.
The silence between them was making her nervous. He had covered his face, as he silently cried.
"Arnav ji, are you okay?" she asked.
He laughed softly, between his cries, more at himself. He wiped off his tears. "It's funny, this question I should be asking you!" he answered her.
A long pause.
"Khushi, I want to apologize for everything. Apologize for Lavanya's mistake and mine own. Because of La, you had been living in trauma and because of me you went through every day hurt and pain. You shouldn't have kept this truth, you shouldn't have asked family to not to tell me anything. I feel so small. I have started hating myself."
"It was important, Arnav ji," she said.
"You should have lost your life, and the condition that I saw you in toady; I would have lost you," he said and without knowing what he really meant, Khushi was looking at him surprised at his said words.
"Why were you doing this?" he asked her. "You were right it had always been about only me. I only thought only about myself."
"That's not so, Arnav ji. I and you lost the person whom we both loved. La, made a mistake, if she hadn't decided that it was safe for her to cross the railway track just on time, everything would have been different," Arnav could tell she was intimidated to talk about La.
He shook his head to stop her from saying anything. He held her hand in his. "Khushi, no more. We have to move further, in life. Together!"
"Together?!" she said.
He took a scissors from the near table and made a cut on his thumb. Khushi waited for him to explain why did he do so.
"Khushi, today, I apologize for every mistake of mine and I want to honour myself by making you my wife. Completely," with that said he filled the partition of her forehead. "Khushi, in full senses and conscious mind, I consider you my wife."
Khushi has her eyes wide opened as not even in her dreams she had expected Arnav to do so.
"Khushi, this is the promise, I will fulfil the 7 vows we both had took together. I want to not only apologize for my mistakes, but with my actions I really want to tell you that I meant what I claiming to do."
Rabba Ve, Rabba Ve, Rabba Ve
The music in their head played as they leered in each other's eyes.
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