My Last Love Story

by Falguni Kothari

  As if they’d synchronized the move, the guys went to their knees by me—Nirvaan at my head, Zayaan at my hip. Nirvaan began to run his hands through my hair, massaging my scalp. It felt so good that I hummed in pleasure. He murmured stupid, silly things as Zayaan tugged my pants down over my right hip. I tensed up. Nirvaan bent his head to kiss my nose. His hair had started falling, the little of it that was left. He was going to shave it all off today.

  I felt the cool lick of the swab, then a quick needle prick, and a burning sensation.

  Now, for the worst of it…

  “Breathe, baby. Breathe,” muttered Nirvaan over and over.

  My breath hiccuped, and I tasted the ocean on my tongue.

  It hurt like hellfire as Zayaan slowly began to press the plunger, injecting the hormone into me. It wasn’t quick, as the liquid was thick and couldn’t be just shot in. It had to be administered slow and steady. Even so, it was done in less than thirty seconds. I started when a warm hand curved around my hip, and a thumb pressed on the site. Zayaan massaged the spot, round and round, exactly like the nurse in the demo had shown. It felt so, so good to be touched.

  Zayaan was my pillar. I could either bang my head against him or use him to lean on. He was always the one I’d counted on, more so than Nirvaan back in the day.

  My hip was sore for the rest of the day. If possible, I felt even more bloated than I’d felt in the previous week.

  The next day, I went into the clinic for blood work, and pleased with the results, Dr. Archer scheduled the egg retrieval procedure for the following morning.

  I was put to sleep for the procedure—a small blessing, I supposed.

  When I came to for the first time, Nirvaan was slumped in an armchair by my bedside, sound asleep, with a magazine on his lap. I didn’t have the energy to smile, much less call out to him to realign his posture so that he wouldn’t wake up with a crick in his neck. My insides felt as if they’d been used as punching bags. I closed my eyes and fell asleep again.

  The next time I woke up, both the guys were in the room, talking to each other in hushed tones. I looked down my body, covered in a hospital blanket, but I didn’t see the IV connected to my hand. Dr. Archer had said I could go home as soon as my anesthesia wore off. It seemed I could go home.

  My in-laws had come that morning and would stay for a couple of days, so I could recuperate without worry. I was fed hot soups and easy-to-swallow comfort foods. My mother-in-law insisted Nirvaan massage my back every time I winced, which was every time I sat or stood or walked. I’d stopped feeling awful within a day but found I wanted to be pampered. I still had to take the progesterone injections above my butt. My womb had to remain in a state of artificial gestation.

  Every day, the clinic gave us a fertilization report. They’d retrieved more than twenty healthy eggs from me and fertilized nearly all of them with Nirvaan’s frozen sperm. The zygotes were thriving. Even then, they were closely monitored, and only the healthiest and chromosomally sound blastocysts would be used for implantation on the fifth day.

  The most uncomfortable part of the embryo transfer was the amount of water I had to drink. My bladder had to be super full. Other than that, it was a five-minute procedure via a catheter to introduce the next generation of the Desai clan into my womb. We’d decided to transfer only one blastocyst—my youth really was a boon—and freeze the rest through a process called cryopreservation. If, at a later date, I wished for more children, I’d be good to go.

  I snorted. I still wasn’t sure about having this one, let alone some future brood.

  I stayed off my feet for a whole day and had been advised to take it easy until pregnancy was confirmed. No strenuous activity, no Jet Skiing, no gallivanting about town on high heels, and no hanky-panky. Not that sex was on the agenda anyway.

  My in-laws left after my day of bed rest.

  Nirvaan, Zayaan, and I went back to being a well-oiled machine. We began spending a lot of time vegetating in front of the TV or lounging in bed. I was so bloated by this time, and my breasts were so sensitive to the slightest touch that I couldn’t bear anything on my body, besides cotton tanks and elastic pajamas. I couldn’t sleep on my back or my right hip. The area of skin and muscle Zayaan continued to shoot progesterone in was black and blue.

  Nirvaan didn’t leave my side. Zayaan entertained us with stories about his latest research and findings. He read passages of his writings and asked for our critiques, recited Rumi and Ferdowsi and paraphrased parts of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins—a book I found reflected my own philosophy rather articulately. We had some interesting laughs and some abdomen-cramping disputes in bed.

  The night before I was scheduled for my first pregnancy blood test, I came out of the bathroom after a relaxing hot bath to find both Nirvaan and Zayaan fast asleep in my bed. All the room lights were still on. Nirvaan was on his stomach, one arm buried to the bicep under his pillow. Zayaan was sprawled on his back on my side of the bed. He clutched a thicket of papers to his naked chest, his other arm flung out and hanging off the bed. He was snoring softly.

  It was a hot in the house. June was coming to an end, and it hadn’t rained in ten days. Nirvaan had stripped down to his boxers, but Zayaan had kept his pajamas on. My nightgown was made of breathable thin cotton for the same reason. The house didn’t have air-conditioning, and the floor fans we’d installed were a bigger bother than help, tripping us up. So, we’d pushed them out of the way and into corners.

  It looked like the guest bedroom for me tonight. I covered Nirvaan up to his waist in a summer quilt, and then I carefully took the papers in Zayaan’s hand and set them aside on the nightstand. I stood by the bed for a long time and just watched my guys breathe. The queen-size bed looked tiny occupied with twenty-four square feet of masculine skin, bone, and muscle. Even unhealthily thin, Nirvaan filled his side of the bed. The other half was engulfed in Zayaan’s powerful, thick body.

  Emotions welled up in me like the fancy fountains blasting up from the front grounds of some fancy hotel. They shot up my bloodstream, dancing and delighting, lighting me up inside out.

  I picked up the mobile phone charging on the nightstand and clicked a picture that would be framed inside my heart forever. Then, I switched off the lights.

  There was barely any room between them, but I crawled in anyway. The right side of my hip and buttock was sore. I’d been sleeping on my left side or on my stomach for days. I dug my back and butt into Nirvaan’s side, pulling a bit of his pillow to rest my head. He grunted without waking and rolled automatically to curve his body to mine. He smelled of Tiger Balm. His head had been hurting earlier, and I’d massaged it for him. His arm snaked around me, pulling me closer, as his elbow settled low on my stomach and his hand cupped my breast. I used to feel constricted when Nirvaan spooned me, but I’d had years to get used to him, years of his slow steamrolling to mold me into shape and open me up to his will.

  I sighed with pleasure, loving his hands on my sensitized body.

  Zayaan stirred, and a soft tension gripped his prone form—mine, too, when he came awake to find me next to him. He apologized for falling asleep in a voice gruff with dreams and made to get off the bed. I hesitated only for a heartbeat before I laced my fingers through his and stopped him. He turned to me, his heavy-lidded eyes questioning.

  “Stay,” I whispered. “There’s plenty of room.” Though there wasn’t. Not nearly enough.

  He raised our joined hands to his lips and kissed my hand. Then, he tucked my hand against his chest, right above his heart, and went back to sleep in seconds.

  The smile on my face threatened to crack my cheekbones. It stayed there till I fell asleep.

  If I hadn’t been so involved with the IVF and the demands of my own body, I’d have noticed Nirvaan’s apathy sooner.

  I woke up with an awful feeling in my gut. Had I rolled onto my bruised hip in my sleep? But I was on my stomach. I rolled onto my back, relieving the pressure on it and my bladder.


  My eyes snapped open when it struck me I’d rolled in bed. If I could roll then I was alone. I squinted at the bedside clock. It was three a.m. I’d slept for five hours, not nearly enough. Both Nirvaan and Zayaan could survive on just four to five hours of sleep per night, had for years. I listened for them and heard nothing. But I wouldn’t if they were in the den or Zai’s room, would I?

  I sighed, drawing the quilt over me, wondering what they’d thought of waking up in bed with me between them. Had they made anything of it? Like my acquiescence to certain hints? Probably not. We’d had sleepovers in Surat, too, so that was nothing new. It’d mostly been at my house with the door open with Surin wandering in and out of the room as he pleased. The one sleepover at Nirvaan’s was the one that stuck out in my memory. We’d been hanging out in his room, watching movies and playing Uno. It’d gotten late, and we’d dozed off—me on the bed, Nirvaan on a beanie bag, and Zayaan on the window bench. Nisha had walked into the room in the morning and angrily shaken me awake. She’d told her mother about it.

  “I’m not saying you’ve done something wrong or that the boys don’t need to care about their reputations, too, but you’re the girl, beta. If something happens…not that it will…but if it does, you’ll be judged harsher than them,” Kiran Desai had sat me down and lectured. “You’re like a daughter to me. And both those boys are lucky to have you for a friend, but you must be careful about these things.”

  I wondered what my mother-in-law would say about tonight.

  A whisper of a moan seeped out of the bathroom, making me start.

  Nirvaan.

  My heart began to pound. I shot out of bed, and in three steps, I was at the bathroom door. He moaned again. I heard him clearly through the door. I knocked, but he didn’t answer. I didn’t bother knocking again. I turned the knob. It was locked, but the locks were a joke in this house. I snatched a hairpin from the dresser and poked it into the hole in the middle of the round doorknob. It immediately clicked open.

  Nirvaan sat on the toilet with his head in his hands, his moans continuous and torturous.

  “Headache?” I went to him, touching the nape of his neck.

  His skin was sweaty and jittery. He leaned into me, his head on my stomach. I had to breathe through my mouth. His stool stank so badly.

  “Diarrhea?” I kept rubbing him from neck to lower back and up again. I tried to think if he’d eaten something bad or if it was just the treatments and his condition.

  “Nirvaan?” I whispered again, my heart speeding up, my thoughts racing for answers.

  But he kept moaning, his head pressing into my middle like he wanted to drill a hole with it. I wondered what to do, what I could give him to stop the motions or the headache. The second I tried to step away to call his doctor, he screamed, and all the hair on my body stood on end.

  What the hell was this? It had never happened before.

  He screamed again and again. I yelled for Zayaan but kept my hands on Nirvaan’s shoulders. He jerked under my hands, like someone had shot him, and suddenly, he was on the floor, shaking from a seizure.

  I fell to the floor next to him, holding his shoulders down. His body flapped so hard that his head bounced repeatedly against the floor, as if trying to crack itself open.

  “Zai!” I screamed. He was too big for me to hold down.

  Nirvaan shook. Spittle flew out of his mouth. His eyes were open and staring at the ceiling. He passed motion again, and…dear God, it was black. He was passing blood.

  “Zai!”

  Zayaan dashed into the bathroom. He had his headphones on and was barking out our address into it. “I called nine-one-one.” He threw the headphones away and grabbed towels and napkins. He stuffed a napkin into Nirvaan’s mouth and literally sat on Nirvaan’s legs to stop them from moving.

  The epileptic fit lasted for two minutes.

  Two lifetimes, I thought with a shudder, as I stopped holding Nirvaan down.

  He curled into a ball on the bathroom floor and started crying.

  “Can’t see. Hurts.” His words were softer than a whisper, yet they scared me.

  I didn’t know whether to clean him up before the ambulance got here or take him in my lap and rock him till he quieted. I took him in my lap, digging my fingers into his scalp to ease some of the pain.

  Zayaan got off the floor and started the shower. He came back to kneel by us again. “Chodu, think you can stand for a minute?” He put his hand on Nirvaan’s back.

  Zayaan waited, but Nirvaan didn’t answer or move, just kept his head covered with his hands, so, Zayaan picked him up, as if he weighed nothing, and stepped into the shower. I helped as much as I could, but the shower wasn’t big enough for the three of us.

  I got more towels and wiped Nirvaan down once he was clean. Zayaan carried him to the bed, and we managed to dress him in pajamas and wrapped a shawl around him. He wasn’t shaking anymore, but his hands and feet were cold. Zayaan went into his room to change, and I called Nirvaan’s doctor to let him know what had happened. I didn’t leave my husband’s side till the paramedics came.

  Once they came and took care of Nirvaan, once they left with Nirvaan and Zayaan for the hospital—I had to stay behind as there was room for only one extra person in the ambulance—once Dr. Unger assured me he was waiting in the emergency room, I sat on the rocker on the porch and let myself fall apart.

  I was ready and composed when Sarvar came to fetch me at seven in the morning.

  I’d cleaned the bathroom, run two loads in the washer and dryer, changed the sheets on the bed, and made breakfast, which I’d packed to take to the hospital with me.

  Sarvar kissed my forehead and held me in his arms for several minutes. He simply held me. I told him I was okay, and he needn’t worry about me. We needed to worry about Nirvaan.

  “It’s not a good sign,” I remarked once we were on the way. “I shouldn’t have let him dismiss his headache this morning. He’s lost weight. I should’ve noticed that he hasn’t been eating well the past week. How did I not see how much weight he’s lost?”

  How would I have seen it? I angrily asked myself. I’d been too busy moaning about my hormones and bloated stomach. I’d been too busy lust-watching Zayaan when I should’ve been watching my husband.

  Gulzar Auntie was right. I was born under an unlucky star.

  “People die around me,” I stated with my eyes closed, my head resting against the car seat’s backrest. “Sam, Mumsy, Daddy, Zai’s dad and brother. Now, Nirvaan. I should lock myself away. Stay away from people. You should stay away from me.”

  As good a listener as my brother was of my woes, he scolded with similar forbearance. “If you’re quite done with your pity-party, I suggest you pinch your cheeks and get some color on your face. Forget causing people’s deaths. You look like death itself. You don’t want your husband to wonder if he’s married a zombie, do you?”

  “Har, har, har, Sarvar. Death jokes? Really?”

  But his words did what he’d meant for them to do, and by the time we walked into Nirvaan’s hospital room, I’d managed to gloss my lips, too.

  Nirvaan was his typical rapscallion self, lording it over his hospital bed. He flirted outrageously with the two nurses standing on either side of his bed, checking his vitals. They discussed the best way to administer a penile catheter—not that he needed one this time, but for future reference.

  Only my husband, I decided with a sigh. Only Nirvaan could bounce back from an epileptic fit in this way.

  “Baby.” His face lit up when I walked into the room. “Meet Tina and Sorcha. My wife, ladies.” He infused wife with copious amounts of innuendo. “I gotta come clean…Tina and I spent the morning nekid in the sponge bath. Didn’t we, sweetheart?” He waggled his eyebrows, eliciting a barrage of giggles from Tina.

  “Ah. No wonder she’s giggling, honey, if she’s been handling your parts,” I said, winking at my husband.

  He barked out a laugh and pinched my cheek. I took his face between my
hands. I wanted to smother him with smooches but contented myself by pressing my mouth to his. His lips were dry, abrasive, and cold. Luckily, I always carried a pot of Vaseline in my bag.

  The nurse duo informed us that his vitals looked good, and they’d be taking him for full body scans soon, encouraging several lewd comments from Nirvaan, before they left. Except for an IV drip on the back of his hand, he wasn’t connected to any tubes. Even so, I put the protection bag into a drawer next to the rolling table by his bed. It was more out of habit than a belief that Ahura Mazda would come charging in on a white horse and change the inevitable, but I still felt soothed with the ritual I’d forged five years ago.

  The cloth bag held my sadra and kasti—a divine armor and girdle of sorts, in the form of a sacred blouse and thread all Parsis who’d been initiated with navjots into the Zoroaster religion were meant to wear at all times. Much like the thread ceremony in Brahmins or communion in Christians, the sadra and kasti were symbols of faith and were supposed to keep the faithful safe from evil. I’d stopped wearing mine the day after my parents’ funeral. But I’d kept them—out of superstition or hope, I didn’t know.

  “You guys must be starving.” I noticed Nirvaan’s food tray sitting, untouched, on the table.

  He found hospital food insipid. But if he’d been hungry, he would’ve eaten it.

  “I brought your favorite breakfast, sweetie. Oatmeal upma.” Without waiting for an answer, I opened my basket of goodies and filled a small paper bowl.

  Nirvaan protested being fed like a child. He really wasn’t hungry, he said, but I cajoled a few bites into him with indecent promises and jokes. Zayaan and Sarvar served themselves, and within seconds, the hospital room began to smell like a coffee house. I’d brought two thermoses of coffee and one of tea. I’d brought enough oatmeal porridge, chutney sandwiches, and cut fruit for ten people, knowing my in-laws would arrive at any moment. I’d called them as soon as the ambulance had left the driveway.