After Midnight- [I Lost Everything]

Brontide

[Aditeya]

"I'm only wilting in these cold worries!"

—❀—

We are born alone, we live alone and we die alone. But still a piece of us yearns for people to walk beside you to support you, walk behind you to protect you, and walk ahead to guide you. People say we all are like flowers, beautiful and unique in our own way and like the flowers of the garden, we bloom in our own time and our own individual way.

But people forget to mention the saplings that we were, the soil that adopted us like its own child, allowing us to spread our roots into the crust. It provides us everything whether it's water or minerals, without caring for its consequences. Saplings grow either in the wilderness or in the tenderness, either according to culture of convenience or against it. Some of them are soft, loved and cagey ones. However some of them are wild, untamed and free ones. Whatever their individuality, their roots are always attached to their base.

The only constant of their life.

Life goes on, some people leave your circumference and some people enter inside your circle. Some give you peace and contentment, some snatch it away by giving you a tough competition in the arena of life. But in this rollercoaster ride, some people are like words without mentioning which you cannot even start the prologue of your story.

And my grandmother is one of them!

When Mr. Sisodiya informed me about my grandmother's condition, I was literally shocked to hear it but then my mind scolded me that it can be some ploy of his to bring me back India. After confirming this with Aatreya, I immediately flew to India and George was also accompanying me.

As soon as I landed in India, I first inquired about the hospital where she was admitted and asked my brother about her health. From which I came to know that she has still not regained consciousness and the doctors are still operating on her.

The atmosphere inside the car was tense, with George typing angrily on his laptop because one of our employees messed up a presentation he had made earlier. I was requesting the driver to increase the speed of the car, but he only turned up the volume of the music system in his car. He was really getting on my nerves, first he bored me with his nonsensical conversation about how his cab gave rides to Indian celebrities as if they were dying to get a ride from— His Dhanno!

And now when I clearly told him to speed up the car, he didn't listen to me. I love listening to music when I'm driving a car but not when someone is dying to visit their hospitalized grandmother. I shouldn't have taken his cab but it was not my fault either, I was in a hurry to reach the hospital so I took the first cab I saw but I didn't know it would persuade me to murder someone. I felt an uncontrollable urge to scream until his eardrums and his music system went deaf.

"Stop playing the music or I will burn your car this very moment and stitch your mouth shut." George shouted, banging his fist on the seat on which the annoying driver was sitting. The blow was so strong that it shook the driver into his seat and he would have hit his head on the dashboard if he was not wearing a seat belt.

The hospital entrance was packed with more bodyguards than patients, a sign that I was in the right hospital. They were neither forbidding anyone to go inside nor were they allowing them to go inside without scrutinizing with their sharp eyes.

I ran to the hospital, leaving my belongings in the car as well as leaving George to handle my belongings and cab driver's fare. Slowing down as soon as I entered the building and in no time I was in front of the reception. The woman at the reception, who was supposed to be receptionist, looked at me curiously but weirdly.