A Distant Heart

by Sonali Dev

  She loved the smile he gave her—pride mixed with a genuinely invested caring so rare in doctors. Even Dr. Girija, who had been like a surrogate aunt through her life, worked hard to maintain a healthy doctor-patient distance. But Dr. Gokhale had the kind of bedside manner where he let you in. Or at least he had always let her in.

  “I know,” he said. “Girija’s been keeping me posted about your progress. You know how rare it is to not have any rejection episodes. It seems to have been a really good match, and add to that what a great patient you are, and I just know we are going to beat the odds.”

  “Yes we are,” she said and hugged him again and met Rahul’s eyes over his shoulder. “This is my friend, Rahul Savant.”

  The two men shook hands. “Ah, so this is Rahul. Pleasure meeting you. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  Rahul said nothing. Which was fine because Dr. Gokhale was obviously more interested in what Kimi had to say. He led them into his private office. It was filled with pictures of him hiking up every major peak in the world. He had loved to talk about his hiking trips, and his stories were what had inspired Kimi to give it a try, and now she loved it so much she had sworn to make it up every one of these peaks.

  “You already know I’m planning to do Everest Base Camp next year,” he said. “The offer to come along is still open.”

  He had asked her to go with him to Nepal earlier this year. She was already running and doing longer and longer hikes by herself, and Base Camp was definitely on her list of things to do. The only reason she hadn’t said yes was that she didn’t want to give him the impression that she returned his interest in any way. Of course he was interested. He had all but put it out there before she went back to Mumbai after three months of postoperative care under him. When her future had seemed so set in her mind.

  Now that it hadn’t turned out that way, she had to find a way to go on around it. She was going to find a way. “Everest Base Camp sounds lovely. Let me think about it again.”

  “You’ll have your own personal doctor with you. So there’s nothing to worry about,” he said in that soothing physician’s voice.

  Rahul had taken a seat by a sunny window so the fact that he pulled his sunglasses on again seemed normal enough.

  She sank into the leather couch next to the doctor, which was great because sitting across from a doctor’s desk wasn’t her favorite thing, and she was immensely grateful to Dr. Gokhale for knowing it.

  “So how can I help you, beautiful girl?”

  She wasn’t a fan of the constant references to her looks, but the fact that Rahul made the effort to deliberately relax into his chair made her hang on to her smile. “I’m thinking about writing a book about the transplant experience.”

  Again, the enthusiasm in Dr. Gokhale’s face was warm and genuine. “I think that’s a great idea. Each experience is so unique. It would be great for people to know what your journey was like.” It was so easy to talk to him. He always said the right thing.

  She slid Rahul a glance. He stood and started studying the photographs on the walls, but his entire attention was focused on their conversation. He was on the case.

  “So you’ll help me?” she asked.

  “Of course!”

  “I was hoping to speak with the donor family. Do you think you could introduce me?”

  She had thrown that out without warning, but instead of getting defensive his expression stayed calm. “You would have to talk to the transplant surgeon about that.”

  Rahul turned to him with an alertness that had DCP Savant written all over it in block capitals. “Do you do only postoperative care then? I thought you also did surgeries.” He finally broke his silence. Good thing he spoke because she was speechless.

  Everything was fuzzy surrounding her surgery, but she could have sworn that Papa and Dr. Girija had both told her that Dr. Gokhale was her surgeon.

  “Of course I do surgeries,” Dr. Gokhale said with a little more arrogance than was strictly necessary. “I’ve done thirty open-heart surgeries and two transplants. But Kimi’s transplant was done in Mumbai. She was only brought here postop.”

  Kimi stood. “That can’t—”

  “Is that common?” Rahul cut Kimi off and removed his sunglasses. One look at his eyes and she controlled her shock.

  “Not common. But we are one of the best postoperative and rehabilitation facilities in the world. So, complicated cases coming to us post-surgery isn’t uncommon either.”

  Kimi’s mind was racing. She had no memory of going into surgery, of coming out of it. But she had always thought that was normal because of all those drugs, and the fact that she was on a heart-lung machine and mostly comatose.

  “You definitely did an excellent job with her treatment,” Rahul said. “Thank you. How does that work, though? You must have to consult very closely with the surgeon, at least initially.”

  Dr. Gokhale shrugged. “I spoke with Dr. Bhansal a few times. But Dr. Girija and I were the real team.” He smiled at Kimi. “And our star patient, of course. Without her hard work and willpower, we’d never have seen the success we’ve seen.”

  Kimi tried to return the doctor’s smile, but all she could think was: Who the hell was Dr. Bhansal?

  Dr. Gokhale was about to say more when his phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his shirt pocket, his expression turning quizzical as he looked at it and then at Kimi as Rahul watched.

  Before he could answer the phone, Rahul tripped over something, falling on the doctor and knocking him off his feet and his phone out of his hands.

  “What on earth!” The doctor landed on his butt on the carpet.

  “Sorry, my foot caught the edge of the rug.” Rahul helped the doctor up and bent down to pick up his phone, which had stopped buzzing in all the commotion. He threw Kimi a loaded look, and she went to Dr. Gokhale, holding his hands, dusting him off needlessly while Rahul quickly studied the phone behind him.

  “You aren’t hurt, are you?” Kimi tried to hold the doctor’s gaze away from Rahul.

  He blushed and seemed to forget all about Rahul. “I’m fine,” he said with a shaky laugh and rubbed his thumbs across Kimi’s hands.

  “Rahul can be really clumsy sometimes.” She pulled her hands away gently. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.” He took the phone Rahul handed him.

  “Thank you,” Rahul said. “You’ve been a great help.”

  Kimi thanked the doctor too as he hugged her good-bye and reminded her of Everest Base Camp. But her mind was miles away, pulled between the place and time where there were no memories and so many lies, and that look Rahul had just thrown her.

  Rahul took her hand as they left. She knew she should yank it away. But she needed it. To feel anchored in this moment, where truth floated just out of reach. His hand in hers was truth. The fact that it was the only hand that she had ever wanted to hold was truth. The fact that she didn’t even have to tell him the questions running rampant in her head was truth.

  He was already on the phone with one of his intelligence guys to track down Dr. Bhansal before they were inside a cab, his focus on his job again, his hand back on the other side of those two feet of distance they couldn’t seem to bridge.

  “What did you see on his phone?” she asked when he ended the call and turned all the considerable focus of those eyes on her once more.

  He reached across that buzzing distance and took her hand again, sending awareness flaring through her body, making warmth set her heart to rights even though she knew what was about to spill from his lips would set everything off-kilter again.

  “That call Dr. Gokhale received was from Kirit-sir.”

  29

  Rahul

  Present day

  Things that tested you were supposed to make you stronger, weren’t they? Rahul didn’t feel strong. He felt as powerless as he had as a teenager, wanting to put his fist through a brick wall. Dr. Gokhale seemed like the perfect match for Kimi. He understood her ill
ness. It wouldn’t throw him off. Wouldn’t make him want to pick her up in his arms and tuck her in bed until whatever was leeching her of color passed. If it passed. Would a doctor have this ball of fear inside every time she looked like her knees were going to buckle?

  And when she looked that stoic, a doctor would know how to respond to that. Wouldn’t he? She had been in the bathroom for far too long. She’d disappeared in there the moment she made it up to their hotel room on shaky legs. He wasn’t sure if it was because she was sick again the way she had been on the plane or if it was the shock of her father constructing such a complicated lie.

  He paced their hotel room, back and forth from the wall of windows to the bathroom door. There was no way he was leaving her by herself, so they had just one room and it was where they were going to stay until it was time to catch a flight home later tonight. He could only hope that Kirit had been careful when he’d called Dr. Gokhale and that he wouldn’t inadvertently give away their location.

  He tracked the sounds in the bathroom with desperation, wondering if it made him a total psycho to knock on the door and ask how she was. His patience could only bear so much.

  Why had he said those things to her in the car on the way to the airport? Why had he let his anger take over so completely? The mess that was his family—it wasn’t her fault. Aie should never have spoken to her about things. Kimi had enough to deal with without having to soak up everyone else’s shit.

  Because she did. She was a damn sponge that soaked up her environment, dissolved into it. She had no fear of losing herself to anything. For someone who had so much to fear, how did she have no fear? That moment when she had bitten his head off for being ashamed of his own home brought on a rush of regret. Her eyes had burned with pride in him. Pride he’d seen in her eyes from the first time he’d met her. Pride that had stayed steadfast no matter what he’d done. Seeing it in his home, in his mother’s kitchen had changed everything. It had conflated the pressure of being this close to her and not being able to be with her, be hers.

  She had laughed with Aie over dinner. She had ruffled Mohit’s hair. Ruffled his hair, for heaven’s sake! Mohit, who snapped Rahul’s head off for even looking at him, had practically been eating out of her hands by the time they left. Making fun of the red and yellow spice stains on her white pants, in her hair. All that color had made her look like she had just played holi.

  Rahul had tried to wipe some yellow off her cheek, but each stroke of his thumb had painted a rising blush in its place. And heated his blood. He’d had the insane urge to touch the blush with his lips. Mohit had walked in on them and laughed and Kimi had glared. But then she had laughed too as though she and Mohit already had inside jokes to share.

  Fifteen minutes, he had left her alone with Aie for all of fifteen minutes, just to quickly wash up and change for the flight, and that had ruined everything. He had known from the way she looked at him when he came out that something had changed in how she saw him. A sense of foreboding had enveloped him, as though he had climbed on a runaway handcart going downhill with no way to avoid a crash.

  Then she had said the name he had never wanted her to say, never wanted her to know. And his anger had killed everything. He had pushed her away again. Harder than he ever had. Because she’d dared to reach for that piece of him that had turned him into a coward.

  So long as she’d been angry too, things had been fine. But one moment she was her vibrant self and the next moment she looked like she was shaking on the inside and he couldn’t remember why he had been angry. He would have done anything to pull her into his lap and hold her until it passed, but the one time he tried to reach for her she withdrew into herself, rolled into a ball, and fell into a fitful sleep. Thank God for that ridiculous eye mask she had pulled on because he hadn’t been able to stop watching her sleep, mapping every frown that creased her forehead, every wave of discomfort that pursed her lips.

  By the time they reached Dr. Gokhale’s office, he thought she was feeling better. But after he’d told her about Kirit’s phone call, she had collapsed into herself again.

  “Did you know?” she asked, storming out of the bathroom. Finally. “Did you know that my transplant happened in India?”

  “How exactly would I have known?” He turned away from the view of the city and studied her across the hotel room.

  She was in a rage, her hair out of her ponytail and cascading down her back, her face freshly washed. Her red T-shirt with a towel-wrapped Minnie Mouse, barely containing her anger. But it wasn’t just anger, it was anger darkened by betrayal and heartbreak. The way she had looked on their way back from Kalsubai Peak.

  The fact that Kirit had called Dr. Gokhale meant Kirit knew. Of course he knew. He was the one who had orchestrated the entire deception about where the surgery happened. But why?

  Kirit had told Rahul that they were taking her to Hong Kong for the transplant when they’d put her on a heart-lung machine. Then he’d sent Rahul away after blaming him for her condition. Except, he hadn’t taken her to Hong Kong until after the surgery. And everything about that felt like having stepped on the tip of a gigantic anthill of killer ants.

  “Seriously, how would I know, Kimi? You had a cardiac arrest and they took you away. I didn’t even get to say good-bye.” And the most important case of his career had been imploding around him.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have had that cardiac arrest. How bloody insensitive of me.” She let out a grunt of frustration. “And you wanted to say good-bye? Really? Is that why you left me without a word? Right after . . . right after . . .”

  He knew what she wanted to call it. But he could not hear those words from her right now. “I’m sorry I left. It was . . . I couldn’t . . . You were sick, Kimi, and I was scared of what I had done.”

  Another grunt. “You were scared? So that made it okay for you to run into another woman’s arms?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Great, are we going to do this right now? Are we going to pretend?”

  “I’m not pretending. Whose arms did I run into?”

  She looked like she was going to kill him. “Jennifer Joshi. That’s who. When did you become such a good liar, Rahul?”

  What the hell? He’d only lied to her about one thing. And this was certainly not it.

  “Jen was working with me on a case. Yes, we became friends. But that was all.” Jen, amazingly enough, had reminded him so much of Kimi. Which is probably why he had been drawn to her in the first place. “All we were doing was working on a case.” The idea of him and Jen was entirely laughable.

  “Right. You were working your case, all right. I came to see you, Rahul, because I couldn’t bear that you had left like that. I saw you with her. Was being with me so awful that you had to go kiss another woman?”

  “I never even touched Jen, let alone kissed her, I swear. I have no idea what you saw, but it wasn’t me.”

  “So carrying her up to her flat in your arms while kissing her is not touching her? It hadn’t even been two hours since we’d made lo—”

  That’s when it struck him—“How did you have that heart attack, Kimi? Where were you when you collapsed?”

  She didn’t answer. But he knew. He had gone back to see her again, because he had realized what a coward he’d been leaving her like that. It had been too late. She was already in the hospital unable to keep her heart beating on its own.

  For the past two years he had thought it was because of what they had done, but she had followed him and seen him with Jen. “You walked home through the streets of Dharavi? When you knew that your heart couldn’t take it?”

  “I didn’t know that. I didn’t think about that. I saw you kissing another woman hours after we’d made love.” She rubbed her scar again. “It hurt, Rahul.”

  She has an unhealthy obsession with you. I trusted you. You made a promise. You need to keep it and stop this madness. No good can come of it, Kirit had said before sending him away from
the hospital.

  She wasn’t the one with the unhealthy obsession. His own obsession was what had put her on a ventilator. He had sworn he’d give her up if she came back home alive.

  And he had.

  Over and over again.

  But she’d come after him with her preposterous idea and her newly healthy body.

  I can’t live without you, Rahul. And I know you can’t either. Now we don’t have to.

  It had been beautiful, the hope in her eyes. She had sparkled with it on top of that mountain. She always saw things so clearly. To her everything was in its simplest, purest form. He would have given anything to not see them as the mess they were.

  I don’t feel the same way about you, Kimi. I’ve only ever thought of you as a friend.

  It had been that easy to get her to believe him.

  “Sorry,” he said. Not because she had misunderstood something she’d seen him do, but because he’d lost count of all the times he’d hurt her.

  She sat down on the bed in front of him without accepting his apology.

  “Are you feeling better now?” he asked, because she looked better than she had on the plane, but there was exhaustion in her eyes.

  “Don’t,” she said, looking up at him. “Don’t make everything about my health. Is that all I am to you? A sick friend? Has it always been only sympathy? Is that all I am, your charity case?”

  You’re my heart. He wanted to tell her. My heart.

  He was so tired of not saying it. Of pushing her away. Of being terrified of losing her. Of causing her pain over and over again.

  But all he could do was shake his head. She was hungering for a fight right now. She was feeling pushed into a corner, and she needed to push back at something.

  “What are we, Rahul?”

  “What do you want from me, Kimi?” He couldn’t bear to look at her when she was hurting this much. He turned away and looked back at the city—giant spikes of glass shooting up from a thick bed of greenery. A lifeless thing anchored in a life-giving thing.