Barrister Babu

Chapter 87: A Long Night

The operation had ended only minutes ago, but the weight of it had not left Som even as he stepped away from the emergency corridor.

The hospital continued its late-night rhythm around him, nurses moving between wards, a distant trolley rolling down another wing, voices kept low out of habit. Yet none of it reached him properly, as though sound itself had lost permission to enter where his mind had gone.

His fingers still carried the memory of what they had been forced to do inside the theatre. Even after washing them twice, he could feel the imagined trace of blood that had already been cleaned away, the stitched wounds that would never look like anything other than damage no matter how carefully they were repaired.

He had spent years learning to separate procedure from person, but tonight the separation refused to hold. Chandni was not a case file, not a chart, not a report to be handed over and forgotten.

He pushed open the door to the washroom and stepped inside without looking back.

The latch clicked behind him, and only then did his control loosen enough for his breath to break unevenly. The mirror above the sink reflected him too clearly, and for a moment he could not meet it.

His hands went to the edge of the basin, gripping it as though it could anchor him in place while everything inside him shifted out of balance.

"Boudi's Dugga Maa..." he said under his breath, the words rough and unsteady as they left him. He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again as if searching for something in the reflection that would explain what had just happened. "Why her? Why Chandni?"

His voice did not rise, but it carried the kind of strain that came from holding too much in for too long. His fingers tightened against the sink until the knuckles paled. "She did nothing," he continued, the words slipping out faster now, no longer shaped by restraint. "She only wanted to sing. That is all she ever spoke about. Her dreams were not harming anyone."

A harsh breath escaped him, half disbelief, half something that felt too close to anger to name properly.

He looked up at the mirror again, and this time he did not look away. "We helped her leave because we thought she would be safe," he said, voice tightening. "Because we thought she would live her life freely. She trusted that."

His throat worked as he swallowed, but the tightness did not ease.

The memory of her lying under the hospital light returned without permission, and his grip on the sink faltered for a fraction before tightening again.

"She had just begun to live," he added, quieter now, as though speaking too loudly might make the reality sharper. "This was not how Tulsipur was supposed to welcome her. I had not even..."

He stopped mid-sentence, the rest refusing to take shape. His jaw clenched as he forced the thought down, but it rose anyway in fragments he could not fully silence. He had not told her anything. Not once. Not when he had watched her walk away toward her dream.

His voice cracked as it came again. "I never even told her."

The words hung there, heavier than anything else in the room. His eyes lowered, and when he spoke next, it was quieter, less controlled, more exposed. "I kept thinking there would be time. That she would come back, and I would tell her properly. That Kaka, Dada, and Boudi would go with a proposal, and everything would be... normal."

A bitter laugh left him then, short and broken, not carrying humor but disbelief at his own certainty from before. "I was waiting," he said again, as though repeating it might make it less painful. "Waiting for her to return. Waiting for the right moment."