Chapter 1: The Proposal
Farzana Rahman is a renown lawyer at Bangladesh Supreme Court. There isn't a single brief she isn’t prepared for, a single argument she hasn’t rehearsed. She has won cases that others thought were lost causes—slammed shut before the first witness even took the stand. She is the woman who walks into that grand courtroom with her power heels clicking against the marble floor like a metronome set to justice. And no one—not even the senior judges who once dismissed her as just another pretty face in a courtroom—dares to underestimate her.
They all know it: Farzana Rahman doesn’t just argue cases; she *breaks them open*.
She won all her cases apart from the one she wanted to win at any cost, her divorce case. The one that wasn’t about evidence or precedents but about something far more fragile—her broken heart. And it shattered into irreparable pieces.
She should have been used to loss by now; life had a habit of teaching her hard lessons. Orphaned young, raised by an aunt whose sharp tongue was matched only by the severity of her black burqa, Farzana learned early that love was a liability. She buried her grief in books and courtroom battles, turning her pain into precision. By the time she reached the Supreme Court, she had mastered the art of being untouchable—cool, calculated, and completely devoid of vulnerability.
Now in her mind something has changed, men doesn't flatter her heart anymore. Farzana knew for sure something is wrong when she visited Green Life Medical College for some legal matter. That's the first time she saw Nusrat and immediately knew something shifted at her heart.
It wasn't attraction—not the kind she had read about in novels or seen in those glossy films her sister Tahmina forced her to watch. It was something deeper, something that settled in her bones like a diagnosis—unexpected, unsettling, and refusing to be ignored.
Nusrat was in a hurry, as usual. A coffee cup in one hand, a stack of patient files in the other, her long black hair tied back in a messy bun, some strands escaping to frame a face that was all sharp angles and exhausted shadows.
She was always moving—against time, against debt, against the weight of a family that now depended on her in ways she never asked for.
Farzana saw the doctor from the distance, sitting alone on a rigid hospital couch, scrolling through her phone with one thumb, biting her lip. The lounge smelled of antiseptic and old coffee, the fluorescent lights buzzing like a swarm of impatient bees. She walked over, heels clicking against the linoleum floor, and paused just shy of the couch.
“Dr. Hossain?” Farzana’s voice was smooth but firm, the kind used to command attention—and obedience.
The young intern didn’t even glance up. She just tilted her head slightly, as if startled by the interruption, then set the phone facedown on the table between them.
“Yes?”
Her eyes were heavy, dark-rimmed, but sharp. They said I know who you are before you’ve even spoken your name.
Farzana sat down without invitation, adjusting the hem of her tailored shirt, letting the silence stretch just long enough to feel like intent instead of rudeness.
“I want to talk about your father’s debts.”
A flicker crossed Nusrat’s face—something between irritation and exhaustion. She exhaled through her nose, a quiet laugh that wasn’t amused at all, more like disbelief.
“You want to talk about my father’s debts? Miss…?”
“Farzana Rahman.” She crossed one leg over the other, the heel of her shoe tapping once against the linoleum. “High-profile lawyer. Formerly married to someone you probably don’t care about.”
Nusrat’s fingers tightened around her coffee cup. She didn’t offer a handshake. “And you know about my father’s debts because…?”
“Because they’re now my business.” Farzana tilted her head slightly, watching the doctor’s knuckles whiten around the cup. “All of them. Every taka.”
For a second, Nusrat almost dropped the cup.
She set it down hard on the table between them, the liquid sloshing over the rim, staining the manila file beneath it.
“I didn’t — I didn’t ask —”
“I know you didn’t.” Farzana’s voice stayed calm, almost gentle, the way a surgeon might speak before making the first incision. “You’re too busy catching amputations and stitching up motorbike crash victims in the ER. But debts don’t care if you’re stitching or studying or sleeping.”
Nusrat’s chest rose and fell sharply, like she’d just sprinted up the stairs. “How in God’s name do you know this?”
"I am the legal advisor of the hospital now, so I know about every penny that your father owed to the hospital. And now I am in charge of managing them." Farzana reached into her leather satchel, pulled out a thick envelope, and slid it across the table without opening it.
Nusrat stared at it like it might explode.
“This envelope contains every single debt certificate, every unpaid hospital bill, every loan note, every overdue interest. They’re all there. Could be signed, paid. Full stopped forever. If......" Farzana paused, letting the single word hang between them like a suspended scalpel. "If you agree to my terms."
Nusrat’s eyes snapped up, sharp as broken glass.
“Terms?”
She leaned forward, the collar of her white coat straining slightly at the neck. A single bead of sweat trickled down her temple—not from the heat, but from the effort of not losing control.
Farzana observed it all: the tremble in the doctor’s hands, the way her jaw clenched before she spoke again.
“You don’t get to make terms with me,” Nusrat said, voice low and shaking. “I don’t even know you. You walk in here like some kind of benefactor?"
"At least hear my proposal first, before rejecting at once", Farzana said with sheer confidence.
"I am not offering charity, Doctor. This is a transaction. A legal agreement. I will clear every debt in full—your father’s medical bills, the loans, the legal fees, everything. In exchange... you marry me."
Nusrat went still. Not a muscle twitched. Not a breath escaped her lungs. The lounge’s fluorescent lights buzzed like a swarm of insects around them, but in that moment, the world narrowed to just the two of them—doctor and lawyer, equal in intellect, unequal in power.
Nusrat finally managed a laugh, but it was hollow, bitter. "Marry you? You’re proposing marriage? Like... like a business deal? I am confused even about what to be shocked about. Marrying a stranger? Women? Older? What should I be of more shocked?" Nusrat shrugged with sheer hate. "Also not to mention how many harams would have to be performed?" Nusrat continued to express her discomfort at the proposal.
The unexpected comment made Farzana smirk a little. "You think marriage is a haram? Really?" Her tone was calm, but there was a glint in her eyes—amusement mixed with something else, something she didn’t want to name.
"Not the marriage itself, but the intention behind it." Nusrat’s voice was firm, tired but unyielding. "Marriage isn’t a contract to be signed like a property deed. It’s not something you reduce to ‘I’ll pay your debts, you give me your life. And it's haram for women to marry other women" Nusrat’s words had been sharp, deliberate. She raised a hand, palm out, as if to ward off the very idea. "This isn’t a marriage proposal. It's a transaction wrapped in a confession of love."
Farzana’s smile faded. She had expected shock, anger, maybe even tears—but not this. Not this raw, unfiltered judgment. Not this refusal to be bought.
She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, voice dropping to a measured tone. "I didn’t say it was about love. Love is a liability. I said it was about clearing your debts. About ensuring your family doesn’t starve. About saving your mother’s life."
Nusrat’s face twisted at that.
"Not, even I have to die. You go find someone your age and fucking lesbian like you. Don't bother me again. I will manage my debt." Nusrat dropped this missile with precision and calmness.
Farzana felt the words like a physical blow.
"Excuse me?" Farzana’s voice dropped, her composure cracking for the first time.
Nusrat stood up abruptly, her chair scraping against the linoleum. The lounge seemed to tilt slightly under the weight of the doctor’s glare. "I said, find someone your age. Or since you are obsessed with women, find someone who shares your... orientation. But leave me out of it."
Farzana's eyes narrowed, a rare heat rising in her gaze. "You don't know anything about my life."
"And I want it to be that way, get you old ass fucked somewhere else you queer delusional lady" Nusrat's anger is heating with each conversation.
"Find someone to tongue-fuck when your divorce papers get printed. Send me a copy, I’ll toast with whisky to your future wife. Just get out of my way, I have rounds to make."
Farzana's left hand clenched so hard her nail bit into the leather of her satchel. She had faced judges who trembled before her cross-examination, politicians who stuttered under her gaze—but this 26-year-old intern with coffee stains on her lab coat and exhaustion in her eyes had just reduced her to a fuming stranger in a hospital lounge.
She exhaled through her nose, slow and deliberate, like a surgeon preparing for the next cut. "Dr. Hossain, you are exhausted now. Here is my card. Don't hesitate if something changes your mind." Farzana slid the card across the table with deliberate calmness.
Nusrat didn’t reach for it. She just stared at the card as if it were a dead spider. Her chest burned, not just from anger but from something sharper—humiliation. She had spent years building walls, becoming the only thing standing between her family and ruin. And this woman—this tall, iron-willed lawyer—had just walked through every gate she’d ever built with a single sentence.
"I don't need your help," Nusrat said quietly, voice trembling with exhaustion more than rage now. "Forgive my bad manners, I don't care whatever you are. Just don't bother me again" She stood up to get to her workstation again.
"I have to go now. I have rounds to complete" Farzana kept sitting there in silence. She didn't want to stop Nusrat from going. It was better this way. She wanted her to walk away. What was she thinking proposing such a thing to a stranger? She nodded her head slightly, a sign of acceptance of her rejection. She quietly started collecting her things showing her that it was time to leave. The lounge felt heavier now, the air thick with unspoken words. Farzana slipped the card back into her satchel with a quiet click, the sound echoing in the hollow space between them.
This rejection gave her pain she never experienced before, not even when she found her assistant fucking her husband on her own bed.
She had walked out that day with her head high, her black suit immaculate, her heart locked in a vault of cold resolve. But now, this fragile intern with coffee stains on her lab coat had twisted something inside her that refused to stay buried.
---
Nusrat walked away from Farzana without looking back, but the lawyer’s presence clung to her like smoke—unnatural, persistent, impossible to shake.
She made it halfway down the corridor before her legs betrayed her. Not from exhaustion, not from hunger—though both were constant companions—but from the sheer weight of what had just happened.
She found an empty stairwell, pushed the door open with her shoulder, and collapsed onto the cold concrete steps. After sometimes she was awake again. She took out the last bit of money for the day and bought food with that. It means today she will have to return home on foot.
Green Life Hospital sits on the edge of Dhaka’s old town, its towering glass façade looming over narrow lanes of rickshaws and street vendors, where the hum of generators mixes with the call of evening prayer. Nusrat walks fast, her shoes slipping against the wet pavement from the sudden monsoon shower that had passed an hour ago. The envelope of cash—her entire month’s salary after paying the hospital’s café bill—feels like a small bomb in her pocket.
She passes a roadside stall where a woman fries jhal muri in a wok blackened by decades of heat. The smell makes her stomach clench.
She hadn’t eaten since 6 a.m.—a dried bun from the hospital cafeteria that tasted of bureaucracy and antiseptic. Nusrat hesitates, her fingers tightening around the envelope in her pocket. The cash is all she has left after transferring money to her mother’s account this morning—another sickbed payment, another promise that the next round of antibiotics will arrive before the fever comes back. She can’t spend it on jhal muri. She *can’t*.
But the aroma curls around her like an old friend—spicy, sharp, alive. Her mouth waters before she can stop it.
"That looks good," a voice says from behind her.
Nusrat turns.
A young girl, no older than twelve, is standing there with a plate of steaming jhal muri, her eyes wide with hope. She’s too thin, her cotton frock faded at the edges, but she’s smiling—missing a tooth in the front, but smiling all the same. Nusrat recognizes that kind of smile. It’s the same one she’s seen on her younger brother’s face when she hands him half of her own meal.
She looks back at the wok, the oil glistening, the spices dancing in the steam. Her stomach roars in protest.
"Go on," Nusrat says, nodding toward the plate.
She’s not sure why she does it. Maybe it’s the heat from the wok, or the way the girl’s stomach is pressing against the thin fabric of her dress. Maybe it’s because she’s still raw from Farzana’s rejection, and this small act of defiance—this tiny, useless rebellion—feels like a way to reclaim something.
The girl hesitates, then holds out the plate. "You... you want to share?"
Nusrat shakes her head. "No. You eat it."
"But you—"
"I said *you*." Her voice is firmer now, sharper. The girl flinches, and Nusrat softens.
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out two crumpled notes—a fifty and a twenty—folded together. The girl’s eyes widen.
“Buy yourself two plates. And keep the change.”
The girl’s face splits into a grin, and for a second, Nusrat feels something dangerous—lightness. It’s been so long since she’s known that sensation.
She walks on, the envelope still clutched in her palm. The rain has stopped, but the streets are slick, reflecting the neon glow of signs—*battery stalls*, *phone repair*, *fresh sugarcane juice*—all blurred by the heat shimmering off the pavement.
Nusrat has walked this route from Green Life Hospital to the bus depot a thousand times before, but today it feels different. The weight in her chest isn’t just from debt or exhaustion; it’s from the contradiction of two moments—one where Farzana Rahman offered a way out, and now, one where Nusrat has just given away half her monthly earnings before she’s even reached home.
She passes a small mosque where men in wet prayer caps stream out, their voices mingling with the drone of distant traffic. The call for Maghrib prayer floats over the rooftops, a sound that usually steadies her. But not today.
Today, the prayer feels distant, muffled by the drumbeat in her skull.
Nusrat arrives home to a familiar chaos—her older brother, Faisal, sprawled on the floor of their tiny rented flat, sketching rockets on the back of old newspapers with a stubby pencil, while her mother, Maimuna Hossain, stirs a pot of lentils over a single-burner gas stove. The flat is small: two cramped rooms, a narrow balcony where laundry flaps like defeated flags, and the perpetual scent of damp walls and fried onions.
Maimuna turns at the sound of the door, her face lighting up—not with greetings so much as with relief.
Her hijab is half undone, her cheeks flushed from the heat, and there’s a faint smudge of turmeric on her sleeve. She is not what you’d call a modern woman in the way Farzana Rahman is—she prays five times a day, she covers completely, she refuses to let her daughters see her in anything but full attire—but she reads Bengali literature voraciously, debates politics with the local *mohajons*, and has a sharp wit that could cut glass. Right now, though, she looks like a woman who fears the answer to a question she hasn’t yet asked.
“Beta,” she says, voice trembling slightly. “You’re late.
I was worried.”
Nusrat steps inside and lets the door click shut behind her. The ceiling fan wheezes above her head, pushing humid air in lazy circles.
“I had rounds to finish. And then—” She hesitates, fingers curling around the envelope wedged into her pocket. The jhal muri money is gone, but the envelope’s still there. Safe. The weight of it shouldn’t comfort her like this.
Maimuna wipes her hands on her apron and steps close. “So? What happened?”
Nusrat exhales through her nose, a sound that’s half sigh, half defiance. “Something stupid. You don't need to know. Where is your daughter in law Sharlin?” Nusrat asked casually to avoid her mother’s question.
“She came early with some food, then went out again with her friends.” Maimuna’s eyes flick over Nusrat’s exhausted face. “But I want to know—did you talk to that lawyer woman? The one your brother keeps whispering about?”
Nusrat freezes for half a second. The name *Farzana* settles in the air like a stone dropped into still water. She wants to lie. She wants to say, “No, nothing happened,” and change the subject to Faisal’s latest rocket design or the price of onions.
Suddenly a thud, a loud noise of something heavy dropping. Faisal and Nusrat rushed back to the kitchen only to discover, there mother is lying on the floor, unconcious.
Her head is bleeding heavily.
---
Nusrat's heart stopped. She dropped to her knees beside her mother, her hands trembling as she pressed two fingers against Maimuna’s throat—searching. A pulse, faint but steady. Relief flooded her for a second before terror took its place.
“Ammi!” Nusrat’s voice cracked. She grabbed Maimuna’s shoulders, shaking her gently. “Maa… *Maa*!” No response. The blood was pooling beneath her mother’s head where it had struck the edge of the gas stove during her fall.
Faisal was already on his knees, fingers pressing against the wound.
“Nusrat, call an ambulance! Quick!” His voice was thin, shaking—too young for this weight.
The gas stove hissed, the lentils bubbling over, sending a film of burnt oil settling on the floor like a dark bruise. The smell of curry mixed with iron, sharp and wrong.
Nusrat stood up—not in slow motion, but in shards. She fumbled her phone from her coat pocket, thumb hovering over the screen. The battery icon glowed red. *Less than 10%.* She had forgotten to charge it last night after a 12-hour shift.
She dialed Emergency Services. The line crackled, then a tired voice answered.
“Emergency, Green Life Hospital.”
Nusrat’s voice came out in a rush, sharp with panic. “This is Dr. Nusrat Hossain—intern. My mother has collapsed. Head injury. Unconscious. Bleeding heavily. Green Life—” She had to stop. The words tangled in her throat. “Please. She’s not breathing right—”
“Calm down, Doctor. We’ll send—” Static. Then silence. The call dropped.
Nusrat looked up at Faisal, whose face was pale under the grime. “They’re on their way,” she lied, more to herself than to him.
She dropped the phone onto the counter, the screen flickering before dying completely. The flat seemed to tilt, walls closing in. She needed to act. Needed to move. Needed to *save* her again.
Nusrat rushed to the narrow balcony where a bucket of cold tap water sat, its surface already speckled with dust. She dunked a hand towel into it, wrung it out, and rushed back to her mother. Maimuna’s breath was shallow now—irregular, struggling. The wound on her temple pulsed with every strained inhale.
Faisal was still pressing his hands to the bleeding, his face streaked with tears. “She hit hard, Nusrat.
Too hard.”
Faisal’s voice broke. “I tried to catch her, but she went down like a sack.”
Nusrat didn’t answer. Her hands were already working on autopilot—torn towel pressed to the wound, head tilted back to prevent choking, fingers checking the airway. The scent of blood was thick, metallic, choking.
Maimuna’s lips were blue-tinged. Her chest barely rose and fell.
“Maa—*Maa*—breathe, please.” Nusrat’s command was raw, desperate. She leaned down, her ear close to Maimuna’s mouth, listening for the faintest whisper of air.
Nothing. But the they hear the sound of sirens outside. The ambulance arrived.
Its red and blue lights pulsed like a warning, casting jagged reflections on the damp walls of the alley outside. The siren wailed a second too late—Maimuna’s lungs had already stilled, her chest frozen in the middle of a shallow exhale.
Nusrat stepped back as two EMTs rushed in, their uniforms crisp, their movements rehearsed. One knelt beside Maimuna, immediately assessing her pupils with a penlight while the other unzipped a black medical bag with practiced efficiency.
“Unconscious for how long?” the first EMT asked, voice clipped, professional.
“Five minutes. Maybe less,” Nusrat said, her throat raw. “She—she fell against the stove.
Hit her head.” Nusrat’s voice cracked. “She stopped breathing. I tried to— I tried to—”
She couldn’t finish. The EMTs exchanged a glance—one nodded sharply, the other radioed dispatch for immediate backup.
“Pupils fixed and dilated,” the first EMT muttered, pressing two fingers to Maimuna’s neck. His voice was steady, but his jaw was tight. “Respiratory arrest. She needs oxygen. Now.”
The second EMT yanked open a medical bag and pulled out a clear oxygen mask, attaching it to a portable cylinder with quick, efficient motions. He placed it over Maimuna’s pale face, adjusting the straps behind her head.
The hissing of oxygen filled the tiny kitchen, competing with the wail of the siren outside.
Nusrat watched, her mind spinning in place. One moment she was standing at the hospital lounge, rejecting a stranger’s proposal; the next, her world was reduced to this one breath—her mother’s failing one—between life and something far worse.
The ambulance attendants lifted Maimuna onto a wheeled stretcher. They moved with synchronised precision, as if they had rehearsed this a thousand times. Nusrat followed, her legs heavy, her white coat now stained with her mother’s blood and the damp towel she had been pressing against the wound.
She held the rail of the ambulance as it lurched forward, the siren cutting through the humid Dhaka evening like a blade. The streets blurred past her—rickshaws weaving between cars, street vendors folding their stalls, the neon glow of shops flickering in the rain-slicked air. Every jolt of the ambulance sent a fresh wave of nausea through her stomach, but she didn’t dare look away from her mother’s motionless face.
The attendants had stabilized her with oxygen and an IV line, but Maimuna’s chest barely rose and fell beneath the thin hospital blanket. Nusrat could see the faint pulse in her mother’s neck, but it was weak—a flicker of flame in a storm.
She reached out, her fingers brushing Maimuna’s wrist where the IV needle had been inserted. The skin was cool, almost clammy, and the veins stood out too clearly, like blue rivers on a map of fading hope.
Faisal had stayed behind—he wasn’t allowed in the ambulance—but he had pressed a crumpled dupatta into Nusrat’s hand as she ran out the door. “For her head,” he’d whispered, his voice raw with fear. She clutched it now, the embroidery torn at the edges, the scent of her brother’s sweat still clinging to the fabric.