fabulismxo
Between Wards and Words is set in SNRJ, Kolkata where survival is earned, not given.
Lena Rai, a first year GNM student from Darjeeling, steps into a world that doesn't speak her language, doesn't wait for her, and doesn't forgive mistakes.
With a background that never prepared her for medicine, every day feels like a test she didn't sign up for every class too fast, every ward too real, every silence louder than words.
Still, she stays. Still, she tries.
"I'm trying... I really am."
But in a place like this, trying is never enough.
To Arjun Sen, final year MBBS, she is one of those mistakes.
A reminder of a system that failed someone he loved, his sister who had worked hard but still got beaten up by a system which didn't make sense to him.
A seat that, in his eyes, should have never been hers.
"You don't belong here."
He doesn't hide his resentment.
She doesn't fight back.
But hospitals don't care about hatred.
They throw them into the same corridors, the same wards, the same nights where breaking down isn't an option.
Between harsh instructions, quiet humiliation, and moments that pass too quickly to understand something begins to shift.
Not openly.
Not kindly.
But enough.
"Which chapter?"
"...Chapter 1."
And slowly, without meaning to
the one who wanted her gone,became the one who helps her stay.
Not gently.
Not softly.
But enough to keep her from falling apart.
She thinks he hates her.
He thinks she doesn't belong.
And yet
he's the one teaching her how to survive there.