with a match in one hand (and my heart in the other)

Chapter 1

Samar

The hospital is all hard shiny floors and blue-tinted glass walls, lonely objects distanced in empty space, the few people he's spied appearing hushed and cautioned by it and none of them wearing familiar faces. Professional ones, yes. Kind, that too. But strangers, all. Including himself, in a sense. Crawling towards true wakefulness in a slow slog through clouds of London fog, piecing the facts together as they drift by on bruises.

The bike, he remembers. Vague and ephemeral as it all is. Remembers too looking back, over his shoulder; calling a parting I love you! out to Meera. Her pink dress. A bus, a blaring horn, a surge of adrenalin and a sudden swerve. A collision with something that maybe wasn't the bus.

His head hurts. Who does he know in this city, and where are they?

Meera was on her way to tell her father about them. To call off her engagement and announce that she had a boyfriend.

He wonders if she's done it. How it went. How soon he can get out of here.

Has anyone told Zain where he's vanished to? Never mind; Samar's been spending so many nights off with Meera lately that it shouldn't worry him too quickly to find he has their shared room all to himself yet again.

Doctor Zoya Ali Khan comes around again, and smiles warmly when he somehow recalls her name. Checks done, she adjusts her glasses and peers over her clipboard to ask him how he's feeling.

Like I've been hit by a bus and sent into a confusing free-floating orbit, he thinks . But doesn't say, because that's far too many words to scratch together in any kind of order right now, and besides, he's at least semi-confident that he actually managed to successfully avoid that bus.

She asks him his name (Samar Anand), age (twenty-four), what year it is (2002), and if he knows where he is (a hospital).

A hospital in which city? (London).

"Still London , " he clarifies, "because there aren't any places like this in my village." It was supposed to sound clever - dryly amusing, from one expat to another inside in this disturbing blue glass building - but he's really not, right now, and must look a mess too. There's a bandage around his head he's afraid to investigate any further and the leaden dullness of painkiller-numbed bruising in too many places to count.

Dr Khan gives him a somewhat forced little smile this time, writes on her clipboard, then pats his shoulder sympathetically before she leaves again.

He wants to call her back to explain his attempt at a joke, or at least the intent, but the effort that would require is more than he can muster. Instead, he sighs quietly and closes his eyes again. Rest. Let the room stop spinning first.

It doesn't, though. And the longer this empty waiting seems to stretch, the more deeply unsettling it all becomes.

Meera, Dr Khan has told him, is coming soon, and he holds onto the reassuring promise of that soon as time continues to swoop and spin around and past in all the bleary confusion of the worst concussion he's ever experienced. Jaldee , Dr Khan had added, reassuring, and the word echoes empty halls until it becomes a new mantra; jaldee, Meera, jaldee . Hurry .

Off-kilter inside yourself is a frightening place to be alone.

And then - Meera . His heart lurches forwards like it's going to make its own way to her if they don't close this distance swiftly enough, but the rest of him stays put, drinking in the grace of her gentle approach and hesitant to startle her any more than he must already have.