Chapter 1: The Last Request
The only light in the bedroom was the sickly yellow spill from Amit’s bedside lamp. It didn’t fight the gloom so much as define it, painting long, desperate shadows up the walls. The city’s restless hum outside was a distant thing, drowned by the two rhythms inside the room: the faint, mechanical tap-tap-whirr of the oxygen concentrator in the corner, and the ragged, wet sound of Amit trying to breathe.
Priya smoothed the sheet over his chest, her fingers brushing the sharp ridge of his collarbone. He was a landscape of bones now, the strong man she’d married reduced to this archipelago of pain. The air smelled of the warm masala chai she’d forced him to sip an hour ago, now cold in the cup, and beneath that, the permanent, cloying scent of antiseptic and wasted flesh.
“Priya.” His voice was a scrap of paper.
“I’m here.”
His hand, trembling with the effort, emerged from under the sheet. Clutched in his fingers was a folded piece of paper. He pressed it into her palm. The paper was warm from his grip.
“Kolkata,” he breathed, the word triggering a cough that seized his whole frame. She moved to help him, but he waved her off, a feeble, angry motion. When the fit subsided, he was grey. “Doctor… friend. In Kolkata. A specialist. But that’s not why.” He fixed his watery eyes on hers. “The Ghosh account. The factory inspection. If it collapses… we collapse. Go. You have to go. Save it.”
She stared at the referral. The doctor’s name was a smudge. The company details were a ledger of impending doom. The weight of it in her hand felt physical.
“Amit, I can’t leave you. Not now.”
“You can. You must.” He closed his eyes, exhausted by the speech. “Rohan… he will manage here. The nurse comes twice a day. Go. Be my voice. Be my… strength.”
He was sleeping, or pretending to. The tap-tap-whirr filled the silence. Priya stood there, the paper crinkling in her tightening fist. Save the company. Be his strength. The instructions were simple, monumental. A life’s work, a marriage, a future—all narrowing to this one trip she didn’t know how to make.
She walked out, closing the door softly, and leaned against the cool wood. The main living area was a testament to halted life. Rohan’s half-packed suitcase lay open like a wound, jeans and t-shirts spilling out onto the rug that still smelled of yesterday’s ghee. Her laptop, a sleek, frightening thing, was closed on the dining table.
“Ma?”
Rohan emerged from the kitchen, holding two fresh cups of chai. At twenty-four, he was all Amit’s height but with her softer features, though his eyes lately held a watchful intensity that was entirely his own.
“He’s sleeping,” she said.
“And the paper?”
She handed it to him. He scanned it, his brow furrowing. “Kolkata. Okay. Flight’s booked for tomorrow afternoon. I’ll finish packing.” He placed a chai cup in her hands, his fingers brushing hers. They were warm, solid. “We need to go over the presentation. The Ghosh people will want the figures. It’s all on the laptop.”
A familiar dread coiled in her stomach. “The laptop. All those tabs, Rohan. It’s like a maze. And that… spreadsheet. The numbers jump.”
“I’ll show you. Again. It’s easy, Ma. I promise.” He guided her to the table, his hand on the small of her back. It was a casual, caring touch. It shouldn’t have made her feel so anchored. She sat, and he pulled his chair close beside her, not opposite. His shoulder pressed against hers.
He opened the laptop. The screen lit up his face in a blue glow. “See, this is the file. Here.” He took her hand, moved it to the touchpad. “Just click here.” Her hand felt clumsy, childlike under his guidance. She clicked. The spreadsheet bloomed, a grid of terrifying numbers.
“I don’t understand this formula.”
“Here, let me.” He leaned over, reaching across her to type, his chest against her arm. He smelled of soap and the faint, clean scent of his sweat. He explained slowly, his voice a low murmur in the quiet apartment. The only other sound was the ghostly tap-tap-whirr from the bedroom. Priya tried to listen, to follow the logic of cells and sums, but her awareness splintered. The warmth of his body beside her. The absolute nightmare abstraction of the numbers on the screen that represented their survival. The sound of her husband dying in the next room.
Her breath hitched. A stupid, helpless sound.
Rohan stopped talking. He didn’t pull away. “Ma.”
“I can’t do this,” she whispered, staring at the screen. “I’m a fifty-five-year-old woman who still buys sarees from the same shop in Colaba. I don’t know pivot tables. I don’t know how to talk to these steel men in Kolkata. He’s asking me to be him, and I can’t.”
“You’re not him.” Rohan’s voice was firm. He turned her chair slightly, forcing her to look at him. His eyes were deep, earnest. “You’re you. You’re sharper than you think. You built this with him, side by side. You just never had to do the talking before. I’ll be with you every step. On the phone, on video. I’ve set it all up on your mobile, see?” He picked up her phone, his fingers flying over the screen. “One tap. I’m there.”
He was so capable. So present. A surge of something raw and terrifying washed through her—a gratitude so deep it felt like vertigo. Without thinking, she reached out and clutched his forearm. The muscle was tight under her fingers. “What would I do without you?”
He covered her hand with his own. His palm was rough. He didn’t answer. He just held her hand there, on his arm, for a moment too long. The space between them in the dim room seemed to thin, to become charged with a silence that was louder than the oxygen machine.
It was she who pulled away first, flustered, turning back to the blinding spreadsheet. “Show me the graphs again.”
He did. But the lesson was over. The air had changed. When he leaned in next time to point at a data point, she was acutely conscious of the heat of him, the whisper of his cotton shirt against her choli. His explanations became a hum in her ear. Her mind, traitorous, weary, adrift, began to wander to places it had no right to go. To the solidness of him. To the awful, lonely comfort of that solidness.
Later, she stood in the doorway of the bedroom, watching Amit’s sunken chest rise and fall. The duty was a stone in her gut. The fear was a cold ribbon in her veins.
And beneath it, unthinkable, was a different kind of hunger. A need for an arm that wasn’t frail, for a strength that wasn’t failing, for a promise that wasn’t edged with the smell of death. It was a shameful, roaring need, and it had just found a face.
She looked down the hall. Rohan was zipping his suitcase shut, his back to her. The muscles in his shoulders worked under his shirt. He straightened, sensing her gaze, and turned.
“All set, Ma,” he said, offering a small, tired smile.
Priya forced a smile in return, her fingers tightening on the doorframe. The journey to Kolkata was the least of the distances she would have to cross.