wooing Meera Rai

XVII | nothing

XVII | nothing

"We are going to try our best."

Vihaan raised his brown eyes in an unmatchable intensity. "Rephrase that."

The head of the professional team looked nervously at the angry, intimidating architect. "Mr. Chauhan - "

"How much do you charge per visit, doc?" Vihaan scrolled through his phone and showed him a payment for another tranche. "I doubled the amount you'd get in a month. I am ready to buy your entire team if it comes to that. What I want is my wife to wake up again. Alive." 

"The senior doctor... he's in Germany for an urgent matter..."

"That's not my concern. I don't fucking care if he is in Germany, Africa or fucking outer space. What I want is my wife to be conscious and out of that vegetable state she is currently in."  Vihaan always had a threating undertone to his calm tone. His cold tone was enough to send the message across. 

The message being an undeniable death threat.

"Yes sir." 

The doctor immediately retreated to the room where lay an unconscious and unresponsive Meera who was taped to tons of wires and machines. The machine that monitored her heart rate lay blinking in a bright green light over her side, another machine was imported just to note her pulse, tons of monitor screens noting her breathing, her slight and slow movements and tubes and lead wires attached to her body. 

Everything that Meera needed to recover was in that room with her. 

Best specialist team, best of medications and best of treatments. 

However, what Meera really wanted wasn't in that room. 

For the entire week where Meera Rai lay like a corpse, Vihaan refused to enter the room. He took an official leave from his workplace, and explained to his Board why they couldn't accept the flyover project. He sent his apologies and regrets to Arora Constructions, asking them to takeover and replace his firm with whoever they wanted. Without a single reason, Vihaan had walked out of his responsibilities and tons of pending work only to stay at home to look after his ailing wife.

Only that he never stepped in the same room as she was.

He studied every report the team had on her. Hourly. Daily. And by now, weekly. He sat down the team head at the end of each day and understood every single term on the report. He'd ask questions, take note of the heavy medical terms used and spend more than enough to get Meera to breathe in peace.

He was told that Meera's illness was more psychological than physical. He was asked whether Meera had any mental health issues and to that, he had no reply.

"Not that I know off." Vihaan glanced at the latest medical report in his hand. His fingers lacing over the words 'nightmares' and 'PTSD' underlined and highlighted. "She seemed...."

Happy?

She never seemed like the kind who'd have issues - like him.

"Is there anything that seemed different about her during the time she was around?"

Vihaan was about to reply when he remembered Meera's reluctance of letting him in her physical proximity. How she'd flinch when he'd get closer, or how he had to sleep on the sofa for nearly three months so she'd be comfortable, or how long she took for him to touch her. 

"I don't know." Vihaan never felt so stupid as he did in that moment. "We have been married only for six months. I don't really know a lot about her past life."

Well, because he didn't care for all that. He never cared for Meera's life stories, her experiences, her likes and dislikes - other than for the motive of deceiving her.