Enough

7

The doctor was flirting with his wife.

At first Abhi doubted his own eyes. How could a doctor be so unprofessional as to flirt with a patient's spouse? And more to the point, how could any idiot dare to flirt with the wife of Rockstar Abhi - right in front of him?

But doubt couldn't change fact.

The damn fool doctor was flirting with his wife!

Dr. Aman did not spend much time talking to or looking at Abhi. He would read his charts, discuss the notes briefly with the nurses, and then spend the majority of his very short visits talking directly to Pragya.

He always looked into her eyes as he smoothly reassured her that Abhi was recovering well. Sometimes, the bastard took one of her hands into both of his for a comforting squeeze. And once when Abhi had been pretending to be asleep, he overheard the too-good doctor spending at least five extra minutes just chatting with Pragya about matters completely unrelated to Abhi's health.

That was how Abhi learned that his wife was a literature professor, on sabbatical from her job while adjusting to married life. That was how he learned that she worked at Chembur College of Arts and Commerce, where she herself had completed not one, not two, not three, but actually four and a half degrees.

Apparently the half degree translated into some other kind of credential that Abhi didn't recognize - but the too-good doctor had recognized it, and actually complimented her on it.

In that moment, Abhi felt a fierce flash of regret that he had never gone to college himself. Since he wasn't familiar with the academic world, he couldn't understand just exactly what it was about Pragya's qualifications that had made Dr. Flirtmaster whistle in appreciation and say that she was "as accomplished as she was beautiful."

Then again, Abhi suspected that if he had been able to see the doctor's face when he said those greasy words, he would have seen something other than mere academic admiration in the other man's eyes. Dr. Know-It-All was probably doing something Abhi knew that sleazy, over-educated guys often did - trying to make a woman believe they appreciated something about her other than her looks, when in reality they were just as shallow as other men.

But since Abhi had kept his eyes closed for his pretend sleep, he had not seen the doctor's face. So at the back of his mind, there remained the niggling question of whether there really was something about his wife's accomplishments that he couldn't personally understand enough to appreciate - or whether the casanova doctor was just using the advantage of his education to camouflage plain, old-fashioned gandi nazar (dirty gaze).

Either way, Abhi found it deeply irritating. He hardly knew Pragya and didn't remember anything about their relationship, but seeing that the lecherous doctor had an eye on her was triggering his possessive instinct anyway. Bad enough that he couldn't remember his own wife - now he was feeling insecure about her on top of that!

Not that Pragya was really giving him any reason to feel insecure. She didn't respond to Dr. Aman's flirting at all. She was always completely focused on Abhi himself. And she didn't even seem conscious that any man - whether a slimy doctor or her own husband - could be romantically interested in her.

Because - and this was the hardest part for Abhi to understand - she wasn't responding to his flirting either.

She rolled her eyes at his jokes instead of laughing at them. She told him briskly to behave when he pretended to be bratty to get her attention. And what he found most disturbing - she looked surprised whenever he smiled at her.

What kind of a relationship did they have if she wasn't used to him smiling at her?

And yet, even though she didn't pick up on his flirting, Abhi could feel that there was a certain chemistry simmering between them. He had not married a mere Daadi-pleasing robot. Everyone might say she was the perfect Mehra bahu, but Abhi could sense that Pragya very much had a personal interest in being his wife.