Page 15 of Born in Grief

And he knew…This was no stranger. Battered, bruised, broken she may be…but this was still Dhrithi.

His Dhrithi.

Chapter Nine

DHRITHI

“Amay,” she whispered, her voice barely audible, yet laced with a fragile sense of relief. He had come!

A sharp wave of pain surged through her body, leaving her trembling as a feverish shiver rippled in its wake. Her breathing hitched, uneven and laboured. Amay’s dark eyes narrowed, his expression tightening with focus as he strode forward. His movements were quick but purposeful, his gaze sweeping over her pale face and fragile form, taking in every sign of her condition.

He reached her side in moments, bending to place a steady, cool hand against her burning forehead. The contrast was startling, and she flinched slightly under his touch, her skin feeling like it had been scraped raw.

Behind them, the door creaked open. A nurse peeked cautiously into the room, her wide, wary eyes flicking back and forth. First, they settled on Amay, his face a mask of emotionless control, unreadable and intimidating. Then, her gaze darted to theother doctor standing rigidly by, her expression twisting with frustration and barely contained anger.

The air in the room felt heavy, crackling with unspoken tension.

“Thermometer,” he barked now, and the nurse scurried into the room to hand him one.

Dhrithi opened her mouth to say something, and he took advantage of it to shove the thermometer under her tongue. He took it out when it beeped, his expression darkening formidably as he stared at the display on it.

“Care to take a look, Dr. Raina?” he asked the junior doctor who stood at the foot of the bed, her hands jammed into the pockets of her scrubs.

When she didn’t reach for it, he handed it over to the nurse and folded his hands over his chest. “Diagnosis?” he asked the younger girl who reluctantly stepped forward.

She took Dhrithi’s wrist between her cool fingers and proceeded to ask her an exhaustive set of questions. Dhrithi did her best to answer them though it felt like her head was spinning.

“Diagnosis?” Amay asked again, his voice hard.

“Infection?” the girl asked, her voice shaking now.

Dhrithi glanced at Amay, the sight of the doctor’s panic sparking her own. “What does that mean?”

Amay didn’t look at her, his flinty eyed gaze trained on the other girl. “What else?”

“Possibility of sepsis.” The younger doctor looked like she was going to faint from fear under Amay’s hard gaze.

“Next line of treatment?”

The girl started to talk, rattling off a list of tests and medication that had Dhrithi tuning them out. She wished she could shut them out completely but the murmur of their voices was a constant irritant. The door opened and her parents walked in followed by a man in a black coat.

“Who-“ Dhrithi coughed, the movement causing pain to lance through her. She winced, shifting in the bed and trying to get comfortable. “Who is that?”

“Lawyer,” her father said briefly. He looked at the doctors standing beside Dhrithi’s bed and frowned. “What is going on? What do you want?”

“We need to run a few tests,” Amay said calmly, his eyes landing on the lawyer for a split second before returning to her father. “There is a possibility of infection. The broad-spectrum antibiotic already prescribed doesn’t seem to be working and we’ll be changing it.”

“Hmm.” Her father dismissed them with a curt nod before gesturing to the lawyer to sit in the chair beside Dhrithi’s bed. “Dhrithi, this is Mr. Abdul Hussain. He needs to speak to you about Varun.”

Even through her pain and misery, Dhrithi was acutely conscious of the waves of silent rage rolling off of Amay’s stiff form as he stood by her bedside.

“What about Varun?” She was dimly aware of the female doctor slipping a new bottle on to her IV stand and fixing it to the tube in her cannula.

“The police are investigating the accident. We need to be prepared on our end.”

She thought she heard a weird, strangled sound from Amay but when she glanced at him, he had his usual stone-faced mask on. He picked up her medical file and started to flip through it.

“Prepared for what?” she asked, mildly distracted as the nurse swabbed her upper arm and slid a needle in. “What’s that for?” she asked the nurse.

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