Alone Or Lonely?

THE SIDE EFFECTS

The Mira that entered the house and the one that had left it one week ago were two opposite personalities, with not even the slightest of resemblance between one another.
Her dad was not there at home, it was likely that he might have ventured out early. Her mom was busy instructing the cooks in the kitchen. She directly headed towards her room.

"Honey, is that you?" exclaimed her mother in glee.

" Yeah, but I am sorry to disappoint you, if you were expecting someone else." she said vaguely.

" Ouch! It hurt. Be reasonable with me alright. Don't forget I am your mom not any of your friends who is going to happily tolerate your mood shifts." she barked in defence.

" Mom! Really? Since when did you realise this by the way?" she asked in equal rage.

For the first time her mom's face had donned a stunned look at this sudden change of stance and the swift attack of words. But before she could utter anything further, Mira ran across the hallway straight into her bedroom.

She didn't even join her mother on the table for lunch, due to which her mother had to send it to her room. But unfortunately, this time the receiver had audaciously turned down the plate, which had made the sender a bit concerned now. Her patience was over. She took the plate herself and went up to her room.

The room door was locked. She knocked the door and on receiving no answers from inside she got a bit worried. She even banged on it, repeatedly calling out her name in the hope that she might revert back to at least one of them, but to no avail. Finally, the panic button in her head had given its alarm, and so she immediately called for a duplicate key to barge into the room.
To her surprise, Mira was nowhere to be seen in the room. The curtains in the room had not been drawn, there were no signs of unloading of luggage, no signs of any phone kept on charging or even any other gadget that might have been turned on.

This silence triggered something in her mind and worriedly she began searching Mira in her room. As she neared the bathroom arena, she could hear the noise of water hurriedly ushering from the tap. As though heaving a sigh of relief, with a calm composure she began walking near to the bathroom door.
To her surprise, the door was open.

A hundred thoughts ran up and down her mind in that one second. However throwing back these thoughts in the side pocket she courageously went ahead and flung open the door, just to see an unconscious body of Mira juggling amongst the ripples of water formed in the tub, due to the speedy flow.

There could not have been a more horrid site than this for her mother, who had never imagined herself going through any of this even in her wildest of dreams. Yet managing to gather her grits, she somehow took Mira to the hospital. She called all possible people she could find on her speed dial, including her husband and Rina.
.............................................................

The tension was building up in the hospital. The doctor had been checking Mira and had not yet reverted back to any of them with a solid reason.

" Rina, Cmon tell me what is it? Even in the morning when she came home it seemed as though something in her had changed. She felt different, she behaved unusual. Please tell us, is it about anything that happened there." her mom asked.

Rina was silent for a moment, but her mind had already began its work. Somewhere deep down it began making a quick count of the things that could be told and the ones that couldn't.

Before she could open her mouth to emit the specific measure of words, the doctor arrived and naturally the focus shifted on him.

" I have put her on medication and you people can meet her once she regains consciousness.
But there is this one thing I need to ask you, is something bothering her? Is she disturbed about something, maybe anything to do with college, friends, family or even boyfriend?" he asked her parents.

Her parents seemed amused now that they sensed the gravity of his question. Looking at each other and finally coming to a unanimous conclusion they both said " No doc, there is nothing as such that we know of." Her dad continued " Please doc, just be frank and tell us what is the matter? Why did she fall unconscious? Is there anything to worry about?"

" Mr. Mathur, the reason I ask you this question is because after having checked your daughter I have arrived to the conclusion that she is mentally disturbed!"

Her dad was shocked.

" Any specific reason why you say it with such conviction, doc?"

" Mr Mathur, I guess your daughter has been on drugs. These drugs showed their side effect on her body and she fell unconscious!" he ascertained.

" Drugs! How is that possible?"

" Yes Mr Mathur, that is possible." came a soft voice from the corner.
The fuming yet somewhat tensed man turned around to face Rina who looked a bit scared.

" What are you saying Rina? My daughter can never indulge into any of such thing." he said confidently.

" Mr Mathur, it was not her. It was us! We drugged her." she said.

" What!"

" Yes we did and I am really sorry for that. I didn't have the slightest of idea that it would have such an effect on her. I swear if I knew any of this would happen I would have never taken such a drastic step."

" We? Who we? And why did you do this?" he asked angrily.

" We, by that I mean me and my other buddy, Sameer who happened to by chance meet and join us there."

" To hell with that. Just come to the point. You still have not spilled the beans yet. Why did you drug my daughter?" he asked almost screaming.

"She left us with no choice, uncle. Just no choice!"