When Two Become One

32- Love and Effort

//Aneel

I narrowed my eyes at Aisha who was fiddling around with her soup. She groaned and looked up at me.

"Can I have the shepherd pie instead? I don't want this."

Biting back my groan, I stood up and put a slice of the shepherd pie inside the microwave. I leaned back on the counter as I waited for it to be over.

"Are you angry with me?" Aisha asked as she stepped in front of me. She smiled innocently at me as she rocked back and forth on her heels.

I turned the other way and took the plate out the microwave. "Just eat."

She huffed and sat down, taking her plate with her. I took my empty plate to the sink before sitting back where she was. Leaning back on the chair, I watched as she silently ate her food. She only had a couple of bites before pushing the plate away.

"I feel sick, I don't want to eat anything else."

It stayed silent for a while as I glared at her. She hadn't eaten anything since breakfast and now she still wasn't eating. The fear of her going back to starving herself ran through my head so many times. The fact that Nafeesa said that going back to the hospital brings all those emotions up again didn't really help.

Leaving her at the table, I went to go and sit on the sofa. She didn't waste a second before making her way towards me. "Can you tell me what I did to make you angry?"

"It's not you, babe. You haven't eaten anything since breakfast and now you're barely eating and I just-"

"Aneel." She put a hand on my cheek. I looked over at her with a frown. "I'm not going back to that, I promise." She pressed her lips against my head and I closed my eyes. "I promise you."

I nodded my head and pulled her into a hug. "I missed you." I heard her giggle and opened my eyes with a smile.

"You've said that already. But I missed you too."

I pulled back from the hug and she rest her head on my shoulder. I pulled her in closer to me and sighed. "I'm sorry I got angry. It just annoyed me that  you weren't taking care of yourself."

"It's fine. You care. It feels so good to sit down, I've been on my feet all day."

I pulled her legs onto my lap but she quickly pulled the away. "Gimme your feet now."

"No."

"Come on, I bet you they are hurting. I'll give you a small massage and then you'll feel better."

"No, Aneel. You don't have to do that."

I picked up her feet again and this time she didn't say anything. I took off her slippers, dropping them on the floor. "Just relax. Let me do this. I'm your husband and I can take care of you too."

She leaned back into the sofa and I saw her start to relax. "You've done too much already."

"Not enough."

I continued to massage her feet as she lay down on the sofa. I must have been doing it for an hour when I looked back at her to see her sleeping. A small smile made its way to my face as I leaned over and kissed her cheek. I picked up the blanket on the other sofa before putting it over her.

After I had cleared everything away, I picked her up from the sofa to put her down in bed. Making sure she was tucked in properly, I then made my way to spare room to start on some work.

As soon as I made it back to my desk at work, there were files stacked on top of each other that I had to go through. I had to go through five and decide which one would be the best for some event that we had and the rest were accounts I had to look at for the company. And one file took way longer than it needed anyways but I had four of them to get through in the next two days.