Blood Relatives

14. Nikita : 24th Feb 2019

With my head on Sawyer's shoulder, feeling the warmth of his arm around me while sitting on a bench in the lush green garden with butterflies hovering over the pink chrysanthemums inside the hospital campus itself, listening to the other patients talking and enjoying with their families and loved ones on a spring Sunday afternoon, feels like magic.

It is almost surreal and sad at the same time when I look around at many other people, probably going through what I am currently going through almost all of their lives. Our pain is wishfully temporary, but probably many of theirs might be not.

Do these family members of other patients also sometimes wish that they could just fly away from everything? Just escape this thing called reality. To not be the strong one for once. To not be the one people look up to for once. Just being a normal human being, who is also capable of having emotions.

Natasha had left, without even a warning or a message of any kind by the time I went inside after catching a quick smoke in the balcony. I am not really allowed to smoke, but it was kind of a need of the hour.

I had texted on her WhatsApp. I got single tick. As her DP and Bio was still showing means that either her data was off of maybe her phone had died down.

I ponder over about what was going on in her mind when she left. Did she wish that things were different between us? Or was I just another one of her nightly "slip-ups"? No matter what, she was definitely one of mine. We were both broken souls, who found solace in each other's arms. It was not brain surgery to understand something as easy as this.

But was it right?

Was it justified to Sawyer and to her both?

There were a few unanswered questions that I had in my mind. Ever since I was a kid, I needed answers to everything. For once, I am going to let this one go. I do not have to know about the whereabouts of what happened.

I have always lived under the impression of a concrete world of whites and blacks all around. Maybe this is something that would for once come under the greys.

Did Sawyer deserve it? No.

Did I deserve it though? Maybe.

Does Sawyer deserve to know this in his current mental state and sabotage his recovery and thereafter what we have because of an emotional slip up? Definitely no.

A slender girl in her late teens, while sitting with her mother, passes a smile towards me. I recall her from about a few months ago when she came here for the first time and was refusing to eat anything. Natasha had told me then that she is an anorexia patient and used to starve herself before she was admitted here. Here she is right now, in front of me, smiling under the bright sun, eating a chocolate chip sundae, and talking to her mother.

After my meeting time with Sawyer was over and he is shifted in his room and I am sent out, I take out my phone and look up for Natasha's contact. After she suddenly left in the morning with no warning, I wished I had handled things a little better.

Still no double ticks.

I dial her up. No response.

I dial her again, no response again.

I call her about five times consecutively while sitting in my parked car in the parking lot of the hospital, all in vain. Either something is seriously wrong with her, or she slept with her phone on vibrate.

Now I need to know her address so I could barge in on her and shout on her for not responding to my calls and turning her data off. Or maybe she is just avoiding me because of everything that happened between us, considering how she even suddenly left.