Page 20 of Born in Grief

“Why don’t we try again later?” Dr. Raina stepped in to soothe everyone’s ruffled feathers.

Dhrithi’s mother still looked miffed but she didn’t say anything more. She was probably reserving it for Dhrithi for when they were alone in the room together.

“Mrs. Gokhale?” Dr. Raina murmured.

“Dhrithi,” she murmured, the very mention of that name making her skin itch.

“Dhrithi.” The doctor smiled politely. “The antibiotics seem to be working and the infection is slowly receding. All surgery sites seem to be healing well. If you could just try to get on your feet, we could look to even send you home soon!”

Home. A visceral wave of fear surged through her at the sound of the word. Where was home? She couldn’t go back to themansion he’d kept her trapped in…she couldn’t! Her heart started to race, the machine she was hooked up to starting to beep.

Dr. Raina put a calming hand on her shoulder. “For now, you rest. We’ll check in on you later today.”

She looked at Amay, her frantic gaze seeking the steady confidence of his. But Amay wasn’t looking at her, his eyes on the machines that held her broken body together, keeping her alive.

He stepped closer to her bed, tapping on the machine and scanning whatever reading it was giving him. Dhrithi turned her head in the bed to look up at him, his free hand dangling right by her face, his fingers curled into a loose fist.

Without volition, her hand moved, reaching for him, reaching to touch him for the first time in years. Just before she could make contact, he moved, turning from her machine and her without a second glance and striding from the room, his retinue falling in line behind him, leaving her alone in her bed, her hand grasping thin air.

Chapter Twelve

AMAY

Amay leaned against the wall in the empty hospital corridor and stared at the shut door of Suite 402. He shouldn’t be here. He was at the end of a hellish twenty-hour shift and had just finished checking on a patient in ICU. Every bone in his body ached with exhaustion, and his mind felt as though it were wading through quicksand. He should head home, collapse into his bed and forget about the world for a few hours until it was time to get up and do this again.

But he hadn’t done that. Instead, he’d called the nurse in charge on this floor and asked her if Dhrithi had walked. She hadn’t.

And so, he’d found himself here, standing like a ghost in the hallway, trying to summon a rational excuse for why he still cared so much. But there was no reason—at least none he was ready to admit.

With a disgusted grunt, he pushed off the wall and opened the door to her suite, his eyes adjusting to the dark room, the only light coming from the softly beeping machine by her bedside.He looked over at the attender’s bed and was grateful to find it empty. And then finally, he looked at her.

She was looking right back at him.

For a heartbeat, neither of them moved. The weight of her gaze struck him like a current, dragging him under, water lapping over his head, cocooning them in a world that was only theirs. Whatever words he’d rehearsed on his way here dissolved, leaving nothing but silence and the sound of the machine’s soft beeping in the background.

And then, he exhaled and stepped closer.

“How are you feeling?” he asked roughly. It was the first time he’d spoken to her directly since she’d woken from surgery.

She swallowed hard, her eyes widening, the significance of the moment not lost on either of them.

“Better,” she whispered finally. “The pain has eased and my body doesn’t feel as hot and sensitive.”

Amay nodded. The antibiotics were working which meant they were on the right path.

“You didn’t walk,” he said, his eyes still caught in hers, a hundred unspoken words hovering in the air between them.

“I couldn’t.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and tried to push herself into a sitting position.

Amay surged forward, placing one hand on her raised shoulder and stopping her before she ended up opening up any partially healed stitches. Her gaze dropped to his hand, to where it touched her, seemingly riveted by the innocent contact.

And for a moment, the past settled over the present, a vintage overlay of emotions and memories.

He should stop touching her, he thought dimly even as his hand stayed right where it was. Slowly, ever so slowly, she raised a trembling hand with the cannula still attached to the back of her palm and placed it over his.

And Amay’s heart shuddered.

He pulled his hand away, ignoring the way her fingers tightened over his before letting go, and straightened. “You’ll hurt yourself,” he said gruffly. “Let me call someone to help you.”

---