It was always there

Something More

November 2004

Anu

Beep...Beep...Beep. The heart monitor eerily makes the comforting yet dreadful sound. At least he's alive. Shallow breathes wheeze out of his mouth covered by the oxygen mask. I gently hold his languid hand with shaky fingers avoiding squeezing too hard to irritate the ivy poking out the inside of his elbow. Nothing in my life could've prepared me for the call I got two nights ago.

Eyes wide open staring at the ceiling; I couldn't fall asleep after arguing with Sid for the second time in two days. My veins burnt with the anger I had boiling through my blood, indents of my fingernails scarred my palm with how tightly I fisted my hand and all I wanted to do was lash out and yell at him some more. But all of that seized when a soft knock and low deep voice sounded outside my bedroom door. Papa barely opened the door poking his head inside to check up on me, or I thought he was.

"I'm awake," I begrudgingly sighed turning flat on my stomach burying my face into the pillow. My dad always had a way of knowing when I was feeling angry or sad and somehow always managed to cheer me up. He would come to me with a cup of chai and my favorite chocolate chip chunk cookies without me even showing him any signs of distress. I thought that's why he was knocking at my door but at two-thirty in the morning, something else had to be the matter.

"Anuksha, sweet, did Sidharth come by tonight?" I turned my face pressing my cheek to the pillow facing him, my nightlight casting a soft glow on his face. "I just want to know, you won't get in trouble," he reassured.

"Yeah he was here, but he left a long time ago, around twelve-thirty, maybe" thumps of my heart beating began to drum against my ears. Heat blazed through my stomach and my hands went clammy with a worried sweat.

"Alright," he said a little too quickly and already half way out of my room.

"What's going on?" I asked sitting up in my bed throwing off the duvet.

"He hasn't returned home yet," and just as he said that his cellphone rang and he stepped out into the hallway trying his best to whisper. "He was here, yes, she said he left a while ago, half past midnight, alright call me back," and he the call ended. But papa stayed right outside my door waiting for his phone to ring. After a long two minutes, I thought papa had gone back to bed but the muffled ring tone of his cellphone echoed in the hallway.

"What! I'm on my way," with his worried whisper and fast feet away from the room I immediately jumped out of bed and raced after him.

With that same rate, I ran down the stairs and followed my dad to his car with maa trailing right behind me. Both of them knew to not try and stop me because it would only end in misery for everyone. I kept running, even in the car I anxiously shook my feet counting down the minutes until we reached the Mouth Sinai Hospital. My feet couldn't run fast enough to keep up with my nervous mind as I jumped out the car before it was even parked and ran up to the security guard to get clearance to enter the emergency area. And that's when it came crashing down from top to bottom. Room 19. The number is permanently engraved into my mind as I repeated it to myself like a mantra, over and over again until the number appeared on the little blue square to the left of a thick wooden oak door.

Through the window looking into the room, I saw his mom grasping his hand pressing it to her mouth as her fingers combed through his thick black hair. His dad hovered over him silently inspecting his numerous wounds that even after two days of sitting by his bedside I've been too afraid to examine myself. A deep gash scarred his forehead stretching from the center of his head to his left temple. The sharpness of his nose stood swollen on the ridge and his pink lips busted on the corner turning slightly black and blue around the wound with the passing of each minute. From the first glance at him, that's what I noticed but every time I came into the room and sat with him another wound seemed to appear out of nowhere.