How To Hate You

chapter 11

"Baby"

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June,
2015

Everything was moving a little bit beyond Ikram's pace. The sun warms up the days zealously, and the moon was more eager to fight away its rays the minute it rises. Ikram got that contract with the hotel. She spends her days in Adnan's garden painting snippets of wildflowers and elaborate brown stallions and a lot more colours she mixes and drips all over her canvas without a clue of how it's going to turn out. But it's okay. She is an artist. And sometimes the most brilliant of arts are pieces we have no sense to decipher.

And so Ikram has let the scented air fill her lungs, and she lets her hands run wild, and she created pieces that made her heart swell with pride. She smiled as everyone appreciated them. Even Adnan had let his eyes linger a little longer.

Yesterday, Ikram oversaw that they were loaded in a truck and safely transported and installed. Today, every muscle on her body was screaming for help.

Hamma Asif's wedding was just a week away, and hers was in six months. Mama and Umma were off on that Dubai trip to round off their shopping. Habeeba was writing her finals, so she had packed up to the school to focus more on reading. Suhayl has never been famous for being a good company. A mediocre one, at best. And Adnan, well, let's not talk about him.

Ikram was pretty much alone in this gigantic mansion and wallowing away with a sore body. She tried dialling Sameera's phone, but it seemed like she wasn't close.

Inside the four solid walls of her room, Ikram rolls and stretches on the bed. It was a few minutes past two. Her stomach has begun to cry out for help. As much as she dreaded to, Ikram knew she had to go down the stairs to get something to eat.

She secured the white scarf on her head and slipped on her flip-flops. She puts on her air pods and shuffles through her playlist for a slow song as she goes down the stairs.

Ikram had a little idea of how painful falling down the stairs is. It definitely wasn't nearly as painful as experiencing it. Somewhere along the nanosecond it took for her to land on the foot of the stairs, she heard the faint sound of a bone cracking somewhere in her body.

Then, when she finally got the air back into her lungs, she screamed. So loud that she thinks the solid walls around her were going to crumble to the ground.

A figure rushed to where she was sprawled on the floor. Ikram could hardly make out Adnan's figure beyond the tears that gushed out of her eyes.

"What happened?" He asked, kneeling in front of her.

"I think I broke my leg." Ikram winced as she spoke.

Suhayl rushed to the scene. He was still in his white school blazer and a pair of pyjamas short. "What happened?" He looked between Ikram and Adnan, who was struggling to pick her off the ground.

"Suahyl, get my car keys. Quick."

Everything was a blur from there. Ikram remembers hearing car honks as Adnan sped through the roads to a hospital. She remembers him carrying her for the second time, and she remembers hearing his voice, low and shaky and filled with terror as he spoke to the doctor. "Is she dead? Why isn't she moving?" And she remembers this as the voices grew further and further away from her till the darkness surrounded her.