A Change of Heart (9 page)

She stopped struggling. Let herself fall.

“Jess.”

That was Nikhil's voice. She focused on it. The crowding, gnawing pressure around her eased. She breathed. Let it slide off.

“Jess, if you don't come out, I'm coming in.”

“One moment.” She didn't know if the words came out. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Give me one moment.” She went to the door.

It swung open just as she went to push it with both hands, and she stumbled forward.

He grabbed her arms. “You okay?” He set her right, then let her go even before her skin registered the shock of the contact.

The door he had pulled open with such force swung back and smacked him, pushing him into her again.

This time she held him up.

“Sorry,” they both said together. Their words clashing just as their bodies pulled apart.

“I'm fine,” she said, pushing past him to the glass doors, needing to get out of the confined space. How was she ever going to explain this to him?

As soon as the thought entered her head, she realized how ridiculous it was. She didn't need to explain anything to him. He was nothing but an assignment she needed to finish and leave.

She pushed through the glass doors, and the wind hit her face like another splash of water. It was about time she got in that car and got this over with.

11

 

—Dr. Jen Joshi

 

 

W
hen she had pulled herself into the car, she had believed that she could do this. That she could block out being thrown in, being thrown out. That she could block out the box-shaped ceiling so high a man could rear up on his knees with you under him.

Don't. Don't.

The chant hadn't helped. Nikhil's silence hadn't helped. It had to have been hours, but she couldn't get herself to look out the window. Sounds kept lashing at her ears, getting louder and louder. The slash of passing trees and cars whipped against her cheek even though the windows were up.

This time the windows were up.

She refused to tremble.

Refused to feel the pop of her shoulder as it snapped out of its socket or the crunch of bone as she hit the caked earth. Or the torn wetness that burned between her legs as she rolled herself into a ball and waited for the world to end.

The car slid to a halt. A door opened and closed. Someone cursed, hands dug into her arms and shook her. She struggled and tried to get away. Oh God, please make it stop. The scream stuck in her throat. She gagged around the taste of a wet, horribly moist mouth holding her screams in place, pushing them back down her throat.
No. No.

Hands shook her harder. She struggled harder. Until wetness splashed against her cheeks, against her forehead. She sucked in a breath and opened her eyes.

Nikhil's face was inches from hers. A frown slashed across his forehead. But the hand on her cheek was gentle. She swatted it away and scrambled back in her seat.

He took a step back. “Can you breathe?”

She let a stream of air fill her lungs and looked beyond him at the thick green that stretched out behind him in an endless backdrop. Woods. There were no woods in Calcutta. She was not in Calcutta.

America. She was here in America. Where there were woods, right next to cars zipping past. And there was Jen's Nikhil.

She sat up. “I'm fine. I'm sorry. I fell asleep. It was just a nightmare.”

He pushed a bottle of water at her. It was half empty from being poured onto her face. Her sweatshirt was soaked all the way to her shirt. The wetness grounded her. She took the bottle and drank.

“We're turning around. We'll wait for the plane and go the day after tomorrow,” he said, watching her drink.

No. She had to get back to Joy. Get this thing over with. “No.”

“Well, obviously, you can't handle being inside a car.”

She could handle anything. “I can.”

“Really?”

She wasn't discussing what she could and could not handle with a man who hadn't been on dry land in two years.

“Yes.”

“Your eyes have been squeezed shut ever since you got in.”

And your hands have been shaking on the wheel. I'm not pointing that out, am I?
“I'm just sleepy, okay?”

“Sleepy. Right. That's the word for it?”

“Yes.”
And what was the word for being terrified of going back to your own home?

He looked annoyed at her monosyllables. But there was no question of getting sucked into talking about what had just happened. Again. This was exactly what she had sworn would never happen. Those bastards would not take her life away.

It had taken her years to stop avoiding getting inside cars, but she had done it. She no longer took rickshaws, or the train, or the bus, even when she could take a cab. She could handle cars just fine. It was just this car, the one that had been her coffin.

Twenty. Hours.

She sat up and stared out at the thick wall of trees behind him. Tiny yellow flowers dotted the grass-covered slope leading to it. Her hometown had been sprinkled with flowers and she had loved picking them for her mother. Aama, whom three years of cancer hadn't broken.
We are copper,
kanchi
. They can bend us and twist us but they can't break us.

She made herself turn around, eyes wide-open, and took in the dashboard, the steering wheel. Focused on the differences. No leather, there's no leather and it's not black, it's beige, and the backseat, well, that she wasn't going to look at.

When she looked back at him he was still standing on the gravel, his arms spanning the open car door, one hand resting on the door, the other on the frame. He was boxing her in. But instead of feeling threatened, she felt, well, she didn't feel threatened, and that was something.

She realized with a shock that Nikhil was the only man she'd ever met around whom she didn't feel threatened. Sweetie Raja was her best friend and flatmate, but even him she had been wary of when they had first met, the fact that he cross-dressed as a woman notwithstanding.

Out of nowhere anger swept through her. “I told you, I'm fine. I'll try to stay awake, if that's what you need.” Her voice was as cold as she could make it.

He held out his hand. “Just step out for a minute. The fresh air will help you breathe.”

She could breathe well enough. But he was a doctor so she might as well take his medical advice. He was giving it away for free, and when did doctors ever do that? She grabbed the car door and stood. For a second his body was inches from hers, then he took a quick step back and wind whooshed between them as a car whizzed by.

The air was fresh and cool and she filled her lungs. Earth and trees and spring and another scent. His sweat. Not stale and rotten-smelling like the Mumbai trains but fresh and clean and filled with life. A complete contradiction to the person it belonged to, who was trapped in death.

“We can still turn around and wait for a flight.” His voice was like his smell. Fresh and clear and gentle.

What would delaying this another two days accomplish?

Of all the things she hadn't anticipated, a car was going to ruin everything. This, this travesty on four wheels, the script hadn't covered. She should have known, because when had her life ever followed any kind of plan?

She had already told him she was fine. How many more times did he need to hear it? “Delaying it by two days won't make going home any easier.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I wasn't talking about myself.”

She shrugged. He opened his mouth, then he too shrugged. Their two shrugs, it was becoming their language.

He walked—no, stormed—to his side, got in the driver's seat, and shut—no, slammed—the door.

She gripped the door hard, took one last gulp of air, with the lingering hint of his fake-alive scent. Then she climbed into the car and slammed her own door shut.

He hit the accelerator, making her stomach somersault. His only response to the sound that escaped her was a quick look at her fingers clutching the seat.

She tried easing her grip and worked on breathing, tried to focus on the world zooming past without shutting her eyes. One step at a time. Everything passes. This would too. If he'd only ease up on the accelerator so her stomach would stop spinning.

He eased up on the accelerator. Her grip on the seat eased. Her relief was so completely out of proportion to the amount of kindness in the act, she wanted to kick herself for how much gratitude flooded through her. She liked him better when he was detached. Liked him even better when he brought out those flashes of mean that he wore like a borrowed shirt. His anger she recognized, understood, found easy to process. Anger in all its forms comforted her.

“Did you and Jen go on many road trips?”

He sucked in a breath so deep it left a vacuum between them. “Why don't you ask her?” He slammed on the accelerator again and her entire focus returned to staying upright, staying calm. Staying in the here and now.

* * *

Nikhil's stomach was pumping acid like a ripe colitis infection. It took him hours of speeding before he admitted to himself what had happened. What he had allowed to happen. The numbness that had frozen him off from the world for so long was gone.

In that moment when the woman next to him had folded in on herself, all but screaming without making a sound, her face ghost-white, he had felt panic. Not the memory of panic that had been his constant companion these two years, but panic in real time, panic for what she was going through. Panic and concern and a need to act. He hadn't felt the need to act for so long, it sat like a foreign body wedged between his ribs.

If he hadn't recognized exactly what had been concealed in those silent screams, he might have believed she had fallen asleep and had a nightmare. But being haunted by the ghost of memories that were too graphic to wrestle off when they started wrapping their arms around you like a straitjacket, and closing in strap by strap, was too familiar to him to mistake for anything else.

This stubbornly meditative woman, who shrouded herself in darkness and appeared impossible to touch, was nothing but an eggshell. One that held a torn-up yolk within. The last thing he wanted was to care. But the fact that she sat next to him, so erect, so proud, and swallowed whatever shit had spewed from her past, made him insane with anger.

If Jen was really visiting her, he needed to keep Jen the hell away from whatever sewage of horrors was erupting inside her.

“You ready for a break?” he asked hours too late.

She turned to him. Whatever she was struggling with made it hard for her to twist in her seat. She did it nonetheless.

“I'm fine. You?”

Just for that, he wanted to keep driving. “I'm ready for a break.”

The relief in her body was tangible. There was no physical manifestation of it. Her shoulders didn't sag, her face didn't relax. It was in her breathing—it eased. It had been his best skill as a physician. To know what his patients bore when they lacked the tools to articulate it. Jen had worshiped him for it. Her medical skills had been more tangible. She could make surgical magic with the most archaic supplies. Together they had been unstoppable.

He pulled the car into a parking spot so fast he hit the curb. Before he could apologize, Jess slipped out of the car. No surprise. He, on the other hand, wanted nothing more than to stay within the confines of the car, within the comfort of something.

She squeezed her eyes shut and fished her bag out of the backseat as though she were grabbing something from the jaws of a mad dog, slung it over her shoulder, and waited.

What the hell was in that bag? “Leave it in the car. I'll lock it,” he said. She was going to break her shoulder, for shit's sake.

Without a word and with only the barest hesitation, she threw the bag in the backseat again, and he felt like such a jerk he wanted to pull it out and carry it for her. He turned away and started for the glum redbrick rest area, her footsteps crunching gravel behind him.

* * *

When Nikhil came out of the men's room, Jess was waiting for him. From the look she gave him, he knew she had hurried because she was still mortified about having him drag her out of the restroom the last time. Without a word she headed back to the parking lot and without a word he followed her. But she stopped so abruptly, he almost ran into her and knocked her over. Her body froze in that way he'd seen it do so many times in the short while he'd known her. It reminded him of a dam of ice, seemingly fragile yet strong enough to hold anything in.

He walked past her, resisting the urge to touch her elbow. What the hell had happened to her in a car? He clicked the Jeep open. She started at the sound. It was the barest movement, but he noticed it. Just the way he noticed her eyes sparkling with helplessness when he held the door open. She didn't move.

“Are you hungry?” he asked to distract her, but her stomach groaned so loudly in answer that her embarrassment escaped in a smile. That sudden self-conscious quirking of her lips threw her wide-open for the beat of second.

He slammed the door shut, not ready to let that smile disappear again behind that awful combination of terror and courage.

The glass-and-metal enclosure behind them was lined with vending machines. Before he knew it, he was dislodging every kind of sodium- and sugar-loaded treat from its metal perch. Her eyes followed his plunder of the machines with so much enthusiasm—which for her meant the slightest brightening of the brown in her eyes and the pink in her cheeks—that he kicked himself for having forgotten about food. He filled her hands, then his own, and they dropped down on the grass side by side.

“I'm so sorry we didn't stop to eat. You must be starving.”

She was already halfway through a packet of tiny donuts. “I don't think I'm going to be able to answer until it's all gone.” She pointed to the stack of packets, her mouth full of donut, and proceeded to rip open and annihilate one after another.

Every once in a while she pushed something into his hand, and he in turn pushed it into his mouth and forced himself to chew and swallow. But only because he didn't want to talk about how he couldn't eat.

She folded each packet neatly into a square and tucked it under her crossed legs as she ate without pause.

“Where do you put it all?” he said without thinking when every crumb was gone.

She tilted her head, a confused frown folding between her brows. “My stomach, usually. You sure you're a doctor?”