xv.

B E L L A T R I X (female warrior)

"What are you saying, Virat?" Tara asks defensively. I frown at her, knowing that she is lying.

"You really don't know what I am talking about? Why would you lie that your tumour is inoperable. Jatin told me it's not that way. What are you hiding from me?"

"I just don't want to do the surgery. It's risky, just five percent chance of getting successful. So I'm not going for it." Tara replies coldly, avoiding my gaze.

"I know that I've known you for quite a short time, but I know you enough to tell when you're lying and when you're not." Tara looks at me in incredulity and utter shock. "Don't give me that look when you know you're the one who's keeping secrets Tara. I just want to know the bloody truth!" I exclaim in anger, holding her by her wrists. 

"Virat..." her lips wobble. Closing her eyes, she takes a deep breath before opening them. "I want to try." she says, a small smile on her face. It's not the kind of smile that reflects happiness but sorrowness. Is that a paradox? A sorrowful smile? Tara shakes her head, tears rising before she collapses in my arms. I'm so scared when I see her eyes closing.

"Keep your eyes open, Tara. Please not now; when I know you have a chance. Not now, please God, let her be." I pick her up in my arms, and immediately rush inside her house. When Tara's dad sees Tara's condition he looks at us shell-shocked. But he immediately recovers from it, and calls Jatin. I gently place Tara on her bed and try to make her ragain her consciousness. Tara's lips constantly quiver, and seeing her condition I cannot just hold myself together. I want to break along with her.

"Tara... don't." I state sternly, shaking my head from ear to ear. "You cannot die on me, Tara." Holding myself together at the seams, I wait for Jatin to come. 

"He's fifteen minutes away." Tara's dad informs, giving me a pat on my shoulder.

"I'm so sorry. I know I'm supposed to hold you together in such a situation but - I'm just so sorry about this."

"It's okay. This is not the first time it's happening. Tara has been developing seizures since past two weeks. And now slight vision loss. Soon, it will affect her speech. God, how's my baby going to handle all this." he sobs, and I just stare at a sleeping Tara. Or was it a dying Tara?

"I'm so sorry for being late/" Jatin rushes by Tara's side. "Oh God -"

"- Is she going to make it?"

"She will, Virat. Tara's a warrior, Virat. She would never give up that easily."

•••

"Why are you looking at me as if I'm made of glass?" Tara asks, as I walk into her bedroom to see her lying on the hospital bed, an IV cord attached to her arm. "As far as I know, I'm pure flesh and blood."

I sit down next to her and reply, "That's not funny." I see her trying to focus her vision on everything around her but it's like she is trying too hard. When she sees me staring at her, she shakes her head, and gives me a smile, swallowing her tears. "You don't have to pretend like everything's okay. You don't have to smile at me to make me feel okay. It's really fine if you cry, Tara."

"I'm just wondering why aren't you asking me the questions which you were so keen on knowing a while ago. That's it." she crashes against her pillow, and looks at me in the anticipation for an answer.

"Because my questions were the reason behind your panic attack. I will wait till you realize that you can trust me enough with your secrets." I reply, holding her hands in mine, and planting a kiss on the back of her palm. "I'm not going to force you into anything, Tara." 

"I lied that night." she begins, closing her eyes as she takes a deep breathe. "When you told me that you loved me and I ran away... I lied that night. My mom didn't die because of a car accident." she reveals, and my eyes widen in perpetual shock.

"Then how?"

"She had a glioblastoma."

"Just like you?" I ask, frowning.

"No. I have a glioblastoma. Just like her. My mom had developed Li-Fraumeni syndrome due to a genetic mutation. She had a lifetime risk of cancer throughout her life."

"How does it even relate to you?" 

"Three years after my mom gave birth to me, she developed her glioblastoma. The doctors suggested to go for an operation, but mom didn't want to. She wanted to spend time with Dad and I instead, and she knew that going for the operation would be risky for her. She declined, but dad took her on a holiday to Dehradun and tried to convince her to go for the operation." she says, and I see her eyes had turned blood-shot as she is at the edge of breaking down. I hold her tightly against my chest.

"She died during the operation, Virat. Dad blames himself for her death."

I close my eyes, recounting how happy Mr. Dobriyal seemed always. He and Tara were made of the same rock; both knew how to smile through their tears - something about which I was equally proud and sad for.

"My dad, he masks his emotions so well. But I knew he is in tremendous pain, and it hurts so much, here," she points at her chest. "I fought with him, told him so many times that I wanted to go for the operation but he was adamant that I shouldn't go because it was going to be futile anyway. And then, I just left him. Just like that."

"Tara -"

"I know it wasn't his fault. And I only realized this after I met you, Virat. When I saw you hurting when you talked of the people who you had in life one moment, and then they just disappeared - it made me think about it, Virat. I just have five months without the operation, and I was losing on those moments because of my fight with him. I was inflicting him the pain I had been suffering. God, I was being a bitch to him, so selfish -"

I clamp her mouth shut with my hands, "- Are you stupid? You weren't being selfish, for God's sake. If I were in your place, I would have done the same."

Tara drops my hand down, and leans her head on my shoulder, "No one would like to be to be in my place. No one would like to be this ticking explosive bomb which is just counting its days."

"That's not my point. My point is you've to go through the surgery; you're not even a minor. You don't need your dad's consent for it."

Tara tips her head back and speaks, her voice slightly raised, "Just stop it!" It just reminds me of the very few times where Tara had raised her voice, and it makes me sick to stomach again. I feel hurt, because here, I'm asking her to fight back for us, and she isn't even acknowledging it. Tara's face immediately softens as she sees my expression. "My dad has already gone through so much when my mom died. I can't make him suffer more, okay? If he doesn't want me to go through the surgery, if he simply wants me to live a little longer with him, then so it be."

"You're one strong girl, Tara. I'm proud that I love you."

"That's what I love you for. Your inability to percieve my hidden flaws. I'm no warrior, Virat."

"You are. Don't even argue about this -"

"- I'm just so tired of all this. I just want to sleep in your arms for a while." She leans against my chest, and closes her eyes, letting out a small yawn. I have thousands of things to tell to her - that she still has a chance, that she can still live that happily forever if she tries, that I won't be able to breathe if she dies, but I don't say any of it. I simply cradle her against me, wondering how lean and pale she had become.

She's alseep in five minutes, because her ragged breathing evens out. I just hold her, staring at the curtains, my mind in a flurry of emotions. It's like I'm living under water. Everything seems slow and far away. I know there's a world up there, a sunlit quick world where time runs like dry sand through an hourglass, but down here, where I am, air and sound and time and feeling are thick and dense.

Tara is dying. 

Tara is dying.

Tara is dying.

Everything felt so simply until I thought about it. So much that I want to laugh. 

I slowly rise, and shift Tara's head on my lap to the pillow. When I do it, I see her shuffle in her sleep, mumbling something incoherent. Planting a kiss on her forehead, I leave the room, and walk towards Uncle's room.

At the end of the corridor, I find him, and how much ever I hate it, a feeling of uneasiness and discomfort settles in, the feelings suffocating as it seems to be played by fate.