by Zeenat Mahal
She remembered the way Fardeen used to look at Neha. He’d never once looked at her that way. She knew what he wanted. He’d have it once his surgery was done. That was what was eating away at him. The absence of Neha. He had to put up with her but that Neha-shaped hole in his heart would forever be there till she came back in his life.
She was the executioner at her own beheading. She was making sure he was fit for Neha again. He’d never been hers really. That handsome, charming, happy Fardeen had never been hers. She’d been the keeper of the damaged, haunted, tortured shadow of him. Once he’d rid himself of his demons, he’d have a way out, back to his true love. The thought never left Zoella and there was no one she could talk to about it.
If she were honest with herself though, she had to admit, she would always have something in her heart for this dark prince.
After visiting the children’s ward, where a magic show had been arranged, she went to see Fardeen’s psychologist, grateful that she wouldn’t have to go back to him and tell him there was still a half hour before the magician wrapped it up. She had separate sessions with his psychologists. The doctors told her about the physical and other repercussions of the process Fardeen was going through. It was life-altering. The changes would be difficult to adjust to, so Zoella should be prepared for his temper tantrums, his mood swings. She would need to be patient and supportive. She nodded and assured them she would. What else was there to do? At times she wanted to scream at them, what about me? Don’t I matter? Who’s looking after me? Who has ever cared for me?
***
“The folks are adamant about coming this time.”
“Really?” asked Zoella with relief.
Fardeen watched her reaction with annoyance. Was he so bad that she couldn’t wait to be released of her ‘duties’? Realizing immediately that he’d made sure of that, he snapped, “Why’re you so happy? It’s been four bloody months and they’re coming now? Where were they before? You had to bear the brunt of the worst of it.”
As always she was ready with excuses for others.
“Abba had that big case, and when they wanted to come earlier, you wouldn’t let them. You didn’t want Ami to see you that way. It was really tough, the first few times.”
“I still don’t want them to come. It’s not a walk in the park even now I assure you.”
“I know that. That’s not what I meant,” she said in a sympathetic voice.
Fardeen glanced at Zoella. Was the ice-queen melting at last?
“So you won’t hold my crankiness against me?”
Zoella’s face closed like a shutter and Fardeen’s heart hardened in response. So that’s the way it was going to be. Hell hath no fury. Did that never get old?
With a wicked gleam in his un-bandaged eye, he added, “You promised to take care of me. Are you getting tired? Are you reneging on your noble promises?”
“No. I’ll be here,” she sighed. “It’s just that your family wants to see you.”
“Oh yeah? Now why didn’t I think of such subtleties?”
“Fardeen, please.”
“What was that?” he asked, pleased that he’d finally got under her skin.
“Nothing,” she said in that patient voice again. Her patience was almost as unending as her desire to hang on to her anger. She was so contrary.
The next day Abba and Ami landed and came to the hospital straight away. His mother burst into tears on seeing him bandaged.
“See? This is why I didn’t want you to come. Two months back it was worse. You cannot see me like this. Go home, Ami. I’m not strong enough to reassure you right now.”
“No. No I won’t cry, I promise.”
“That’s worse. You’ll get sick with worry. Zoella, I told you this was not a good idea. Why don’t you ever listen to anything I say?”
“Fardeen, it’s not Zoella’s fault. We wanted to see you. It’s been four months.”
“Well Saint Zoella’s been making me talk to you nearly every day, even when I didn’t want to.”
“We talk with Zoella two or three times a day. The poor girl has to deal with you and on top of that we have so many questions,” said Abba.
“Oh-ho. This is not the time,” said his mother.
“Well, Zoella signed up for it. Hook, line and sinker. Didn’t you, Saint Zoella?”
“Ami, why don’t I take you home?” Zoella said looking away.
“We’re booked into a hotel nearby, beta. You already have enough to do as it is.”
“How can that be, Abba? Saint Zoella will have a heart attack. She’s…”
“That’s enough, Fardeen,” Abba interrupted, giving him a stern look. Then he turned away and smiled at his daughter-in-law. “Zoella, come with me. Fardeen’s mother can stay with him for a while.” Abba took hold of her hand and led her away, giving Fardeen another dirty look.
He just laughed in response.
As soon as they left, Ami rounded on him, “Fardeen, what is this? Is this who I raised you to be? How dare you treat Zoella this way?”
“She knew what she was getting into.”
Fardeen’s latent shame was being summoned to the forefront by his parents and he didn’t like it one bit.
“I don’t know why you had to come here. I was fine. She’s fine.”
Ami didn’t say anything more, thank God. She was too worried about him. Abba took a good two hours with Zoella and then returned alone.
“Hey, what did you do with my beloved wife?”
Abba sat down and handed Ami the small basket he’d been carrying.
“Zoella sent this for you. Just some sandwiches.”
Then he looked at Fardeen. Didn’t say a word. Just looked. Fardeen laughed again but felt the first stirrings of real discomfort.
“Zoella’s at home. I told her she shouldn’t come here for the next two days. That we were here, so she could rest.”
Fardeen laughed and said, “I’ll bet you my right arm she’ll be here tomorrow. She can’t help herself.”
“If she is, it’s because she’s a good person. Unlike some I could name.”
“Maybe you should’ve adopted her instead of forcing me to marry her.”
There was a sudden oppressive silence. Fardeen looked up and saw Zoella standing in the doorway.
“I’m sorry,” Zoella said in a hesitant voice.
Fardeen’s heart lurched uncomfortably. He began to laugh to cover his embarrassment.
“Oh my God. She didn’t even stay away for an hour! See what a good little wife I have, Abba?”
“Zoella, beta, he didn’t mean…”
“It’s okay, I just came to return this,” she handed Abba his wallet, “You forgot it on the table. I thought you might need it.”
She turned and walked out.
Zoella didn’t even have to try to hold her tears back. She didn’t feel a thing. She was so very tired. She went home and slept. She slept through the evening and the night, and she woke up the next day at noon.
There were several messages on her phone from her parents-in-law. She bathed, dressed and went to a coffee-shop nearby. She got herself a caramel latte and a cheese and tomato croissant and sat outside in the warm autumn sun to enjoy her late breakfast.
She didn’t want to face her parents-in-law or their sympathy. She didn’t want to battle Fardeen again so soon. She wanted to be free. She wanted breathing space.
She sighed.
She knew she had none.
She had to go back and be that woman again. She had to go back and be a wife; a responsible person; a person who’d been raised to do the right thing. She ate the last bite of her warm croissant and downed the last of her latte.
Then she started off towards the hospital again.
When she entered, Fardeen exclaimed with false enthusiasm, “There she is, my saintly wife.”
“Fardeen.” Abba sounded tired.
Already! Fardeen hadn’t even got started yet. What did they know?
“It’
s okay, Abba. The psychologists say it passes. Usually.”
Fardeen chuckled at her reassurance to his father.
“Did I tell you Saint Zoella thinks I’m the prince cursed by a wicked witch into this beastly form?”
Ami hugged Zoella. “She’s right. And I can name the witch.”
“Ami.” Fardeen’s voice was suddenly different, serious, as if warning her.
Zoella’s heart tripped despite herself. So Neha couldn’t be called a witch even in her absence and Zoella was his punching bag? She left the room. Ami followed.
“He’s not in his right mind, you know that. Don’t let his nonsense get to you, okay?”
Zoella smiled and nodded.
Fardeen behaved better for the rest of the time his parents were there, which wasn’t long. They left after two weeks. Zoella had another twelve weeks all by her lonesome self with the beast.
***
Fardeen soon forgot his parents had ever come. The same old routine took over. His team of doctors visited in the evening as usual. It was nearly five months now that he’d been there, going through the same routine on and off.
“You’re healing well, Fardeen,” the doctor said. “You’ll be able to go home to your wife soon. We can schedule the remaining surgeries after a week of recuperation at home. Being around loved ones always helps expedite recovery.”
Fardeen glanced towards Zoella. She’d lost weight. She looked frail. His resentment bubbled. He felt he was being crushed under the weight of her goodness and his evilness. Ever since his parents’ visit he’d been trying to curb his instinct to lash out at her. He knew that he’d deliberately set out to punish her for all the ‘crimes’ he thought she’d committed against him, and maybe she understood that too. She didn’t look all that happy at the news that he’d be going home to her either, which made him angry at first. Then he got perverse pleasure out of it.
“Isn’t that wonderful, Zoella? You’ll have me all to yourself again,” he mocked.
She smiled weakly.
Coming ‘home’ was the worst idea ever. In the hospital at least, he didn’t have to control his impulses with his estranged wife. There, he didn’t have to concentrate on not noticing her flowery scent, or that pouty mouth, which had nothing to say to him. With the current lack of communication, how was he going to bridge the gap time and hurt had made deeper with every passing day? Now he couldn’t bring himself to approach her in a physical way either. She was so distant, so quiet, so unlike the girl he’d married so unwillingly.
There was a part of him that said he’d agreed to the surgeries for her. He had wanted himself back not for his own ego but for her, because she deserved better than a broken man. Perhaps though, he was forever a broken and divided man, because he felt both a strange protective instinct for her, and deep resentment.
Zoella’s attitude didn’t help either. It was difficult and painful to speak because they’d just done his mouth, but he managed to garble in annoyance at Zoella’s silence, “I don’ understand….Isn’ this wha’ you wan’ed? You know… how dih’icul’ this is…you beha’ like I…”
“Don’t tax yourself, Fardeen. Shall I get the doctor?”
Exhausted with the effort, he closed his eyes. Nothing eased the tension between them. She’d have to come around eventually. The lack of control on his life, his body, the pain made him perpetually cranky. Time lost all meaning.
The few smiles she deigned to share with him were reluctant and dried up. Nothing like the full-blown gorgeous sunny smiles he’d become used to since their marriage. She continued to resist his hesitant attempts at reconciliation. He was here, getting the surgeries she’d forced on him. Was there ever a man who didn’t make a bad patient? She should’ve known it wasn’t going to be easy.
Despite everything though, as he got better, whenever Zoella walked into the room, his heart lightened.
“Hey,” he said, smiling carefully with his now unblemished mouth. The upper half of his face was still bandaged though. She gave him a lop-sided smile that she had to work at. He swallowed his irritation and tried again, “So, what do you think?”
“About what?” she asked without looking at him.
“My new smile?” he asked hoping to get a positive response.
“Devastating,” she drawled, still not bothering to look at him or his new mouth, which had by then, settled into a sulk. Defeated, he lay back. She couldn’t do this to him. How could she do this to him? He seemed to have rotten luck with women. He switched on the TV.
The apartment seemed to shrink for the next few days. They bickered. He stormed out. He yelled. She stormed out. They walked around each other afraid to say what they wanted, afraid to hear.
After five months of constant torment, his face was almost restored. His mouth wasn’t puckered and tight at the corner any more. His skin didn’t feel stretched and taut. People didn’t avoid looking at him anymore. The constant anger that he’d lived with for almost two years since his accident, began to dissipate—except for the irritability with Zoella.
Often, the thought that he’d been ready to condemn himself to a lifetime of emotional and psychological pain, for no reason than misplaced pride, made him think how much he owed her. He didn’t feel angry about that anymore. He felt overwhelmed. She’d helped him see what he was doing to himself so needlessly.
He thought he should try another tactic of rapprochement after a few days. Maybe, he should try thanking her. Tell her how grateful he actually was to her, maybe that would help thaw the ice a little.
“Listen, Zoella, sit down for a minute, will you?” Smiling, he added, “I owe you thanks for all your time and the patience you’ve shown with me these past months.”
Giving her a smile he leaned in to kiss her.
Zoella turned away.
“You don’t owe me anything, Fardeen. Nor I, you.”
She simply got up and left. He was dumbfounded. He couldn’t believe it. When he’d been an obnoxious brute, she’d seduced him and now in all the good-looking packaging she’d insisted upon, she rebuffed him.
His reactionary sulk had no effect on her. He tried being curt. She seemed unperturbed. He pretended to get sick. She called the doctor. What was he to do? As if that wasn’t enough to drive him up the wall, a week later, she went and smiled in that sunny way she had, with a young new doctor.
With a pang and his one unbandaged eye, he recognized her old smile, the one that made the sun come out. The one he hadn’t seen in six months. The one he’d found so irritating when it used to come naturally to her.
And it wasn’t for him.
Dr. Simon said something else and she smiled again. Fardeen had the sudden urge to ram his fist into that pretty boy’s face. Even after the doctors had left, she had a faint smile playing around her lips. He felt a distinct burning sensation somewhere around his gut.
“I’m glad to see someone can make you smile,” he snarled.
She stiffened. Alarm bells went off in his brain but he couldn’t stop. His blood was seething and his head was pounding.
“I think we just found the solution to our bedroom problems. Maybe if you pretended it was him in bed with you, you’ll be a little more animated and not bore me half to death?”
She still had her back to him. She turned, with a fake smile, and two chips of ice that had been her eyes.
“What a good idea. I’ll remember that.”
She stepped out of the room and continued to walk, leaving him to follow, or not. He was pretty sure steam was coming out of his ears as he went after her.
***
A few days later they were back at the hospital. His eye-patch was coming off, and if all went according to plan, he’d be done. They’d be going home in about two weeks, the doctors said.
Irritated to see that the pretty Dr. Simon also accompanied his regular doctor, Fardeen kept an eye on him. While Dr. Stein took the bandages off, reminding him that the procedure had gone well. Simon talked with Zoella, and Farde
en didn’t hear anything Stein said. He was listening to Zoella talking with that bastard.
“You’ll need to open your eyes now, slowly.”
At his doctor’s words, Fardeen was filled with dread. He might have gone blind in the eye. They’d warned him he might. He couldn’t open his eyes. Once he did, there’d be no going back, and if he couldn’t see…. Right now, like this, there was still hope.
A soft, warm hand alighted, resting in his. Zoella. Instinctively, he turned towards her and opened his eyes. His heart gave an uncomfortable flip. God, she was beautiful. The first flush of pure joy hit him. He could see. He was done. It was over. He waited for the other voice to trip him up, to say something nasty. There was nothing. There were no dark thoughts, no bitter voices to shadow him anymore. Just his own familiar voice that told him he could see and he was no longer grotesque and ugly.
“Look over here, Fardeen,” Stein said, flashing his tiny torch at him. “Congratulations, my friend. You’re all done here.”
They shook hands, laughed, talking about nothing, just meaningless happy chatter.
On their way home, with a grin on his face, he mused on how Zoella had held his hand at that critical moment. Had she got over her anger, at last? She must be relieved, happy that he could still see, that he wasn’t damaged anymore, and that all this was behind them finally. When they reached home, with more optimism than he’d ever felt in their relationship before, he swung Zoella around and gave her a whopping celebratory kiss on her luscious lips.
Instantly, she molded her body to his and pressed herself against him. The kiss turned steaming hot. Zoella’s unrestrained moaning spurred him on. His hands roamed over her gorgeous body and he trailed kisses on her throat. God it felt so good. He hadn’t felt like this in a long time. There was no restraint, no guilt. Then they were falling in bed.
