The grey canvas

📌Chapter 14- To that house, again

Nitara:

I thumped back on the couch with a terrible headache breaming in through each and every nerve of my head.

Soon enough, a slight nausea got added to it too.

Deprivation of night sleep was the cause of this havoc in me. I was hopeless when it came to staying awake at nights and the only remedy that was needed was a cup of strong tea, like the one I made for Dev everyday.

But a maid was more necessary than everything else becoz she was the one who could have the made the tea. I was not in a state to prepare anything for myself and that made me remember about Jamma bai so much that I started mourning over her, till my headache got doubled up.

I kept sitting for sometime, clutching my head with both my palms, trying to breath in and breath out air. Few minutes later when the headache receeded a bit, I got up and strode towards the kitchen. Milk tea was still not an option, I was running low on patience and hence I decided to settle with Kshitiz's green tea pouches.
I got some lukewarm water in a mug and dropped one tea bag in it and impatiently waited for the honey- ginger flavour to get thoroughly diffuse in the water. Once done, I returned to the couch and lazily spread myself over it like a fat pet cat.

The aroma was appealing all these while. But when I actually took a sip, I spat out the contents in a moment, making all sorts of disorted faces.
The tea tasted HORRIBLE!

I yucked and coughed and cursed Kshitiz for having something like green tea, but still went for another sip. I managed myself to stay calm till the cup got emptied. But somehow or the other even my body was not in a mood to digest this yucky shit. My stomach wobbled up and the nausea became so strong that I rushed to the bathroom and puked out everything in the wash basin.

It left me so dehydrated that I found myself beareft of any energy to walk out.

However, I still managed to get my lethargic limbs in a walkable state and hurried back to my room, where I collapsed upon the bed and pulled the duvet on.
Maybe it wasn't the tea, but a strong uninterrupted sleep was more necessary?

But sleep was a far fetched dream now. I couldn't fetch even one of lash of it, no matter how hard I tried. And could it have came otherwise when something else was hovering in my mind?!

That something else was a question. A simple, plain, harmless question.

But wait. Was it really harmless?

I was having an early morning headache. I was puking. My legs were tired. My feet were swollen.

Why?

Just becoz I was waking the last four-five nights in the hospital?

But then how the hell was swollen feet related to sleep deprivation??

I thought and thought and thought till I realised I was just inefficient to solve this question and when my phone rang up to my rescue.

I hopped down from the bed like a quirky rabbit and went to my phone which was plugged to a charger at the other end of this room. It was then when I found what bomb was going to be dropped upon me!

The call belonged to Raima...And I knew why was she calling.

It was the 6th day I was absent from Saiyarran...without any prior notice.. without any prior permission!

"Hello?" I murmured as I picked up the call with shaky hands.

"Nitara" came the reply, in an ultra cold, emotionless tone.