BROKEN THINGS

29

By the time he crashed onto the bed of his new apartment, he was half sure exhaustion was going to kill him if the pain raging through his body didn't. Or maybe that was the fever raging. He wasn't too sure. He dry swallowed a couple ibuprofens, too tired to fetch his water bottle and just lay on the bed, ready to pass out just like that.

Except he couldn't. His skin itched at lying on a bed with god knows how dirty sheets. His brain kept reminding him of the things he needed to look after to settle in this house. That second part he could delay. The bed sheet thing he absolutely could not. And now that he thought about it, he wanted a shower too. It felt like dirt was physically crawling all over him.

He groaned out loud. He hated himself, in more ways than one. His head was throbbing, he felt sick, his body hurt and here his brain was- refusing to let go of its idiosyncracies. If Sourav was here, he would have laughed and teased him but dealt with everything all the same. If Sourav was here. But he wasn't. It was only Rahul. He had made sure it would be only him. Waited until he had seen all of them board the bus, followed them in his car and seen them get off and walk into the airport too. He had only left when all of them had safely entered the building.

It had been frighteningly simple really, to trick them into thinking he had left the country before them. All he had needed to do was book a car to the airport from the reception, and then book another private cab and pay the guy extra to lurk around like a creep so he could make sure his brother and friends left for good without suspecting his location. He had never intended to leave West Indies in this condition. One, he would probably be recognized by the million Indians in the world, no matter how good he hid himself. It was impossible to get through the security check while looking like a bandit, and really that was the only way he was not getting recognized. Indians were scary and literally everywhere. Two, they would never look for him here. They would first search for him in India. Probably try a few cricketing nations. Maybe America if one of them really brainstorms. But none of them would think that he had simply stayed back.

He would have groaned again, harder, if only to whine to himself about how terrible he was feeling but he lacked the energy to do more than a sharp exhale. With stubbornness that he himself hated, he hoisted himself up with a steady stream of mental curses aimed at the obsessive part of his brain that he had renamed "The Worst Rahul". First he stripped the bed of the bed sheet, the dusty dirty, icky bedsheet and promptly chucked it into a corner he was mentally labeling the laundry corner... since he didn't have a laundry basket yet. He sighed heavily and added it to the list of things he didn't have and needed, top of which was some fucking drinkable water.

Right after the bedsheet and the pillow covers were disposed of, he realized, he didn't have replacements. He didn't have anything. He could have sobbed. Everything kept getting worse and worse. He should have planned this better but in his defence, he had more often than not been surrounded by people who refused to take their eyes of him. Nosy, worried and intelligent people who couldn't have been left with a singular hint. And he had been devastatingly in pain, so his disappointing planning made sense.

Even if he hated himself for that too.

He dug out the clothes he had stuffed into his handcarry and laid a shirt across the pillow. Then he lined his other clothes in a way that it covered enough of the bed for him to lie down on. His head was swimming by the time he was done, and he could actually feel the heat on his skin from his fever. But ofcourse that wasn't enough to satisfy his itches. So he dug out a sweatpant and stumbled into the bathroom. Anyway, a shower would bring his temperature down.... Probably. He was no expert in medicine. Which reminded him that he needed to take his medicines. But for that he needed food.

He groaned again, this time unable to hold back his dismay. One more thing to do. Hunt for food. Or maybe he should just forgo it for tonight. What was the worse that could happen? He would be in pain? So what. He was very used to pain, if anything pain knew him more than anyone else did. He could take it, it wasn't like it could kill him.

"Even if it did, I am way past the point of caring," he grumbled to himself, turning the shower on. He stepped into the cascading cold water completely forgetting about his bandages and lowering his head in utter disappintment when it finally registered what he had done. Now he had to somehow wrap this shit up himself.

Everything sucked. And it was Rahul's own fault. He sighed, letting himself feel every bit of the discomfort, the dismay, the unhappiness, the irritation, that kept adding on. He deserved to feel it.