The entire way down to the parking lot, I’m leaning heavily onto Khizer’s arm, unable to process a single coherent thought. The pain is excruciating, so is the fear of going to the place where it all began, and with it the disgust of having to depend on a man to save me from it all.
The world is a twisted place like that. It throws in your face what you run away from most.
And I’m non the wiser infront of it. I succumb to it, gripping onto Khizer’s arm tightly once we arrive in the parking lot, and letting him help me into the car. Memories of my last visit here flash through my head, and I allow them to takeover my thoughts, reliving every single moment and reminding myself how weak I am.
How powerful I have to be.
Khizer gets in the back seat after me, and his driver pulls out of the parking lot.
“You have a high temperature. Did you take your medicines today?” From the look on his face, he’s probably saying this in a soft whisper, but I hear it as if he’s shouting in my ear.
“I did.”
We don’t speak after that, and I close my eyes against the pain, thoughts blank and full of misery.
I only open my eyes when the car stops and Khizer gets out. We must’ve arrived.
He helps me out of the car, and we walk the few feet to a very worn out and small clinic.
“Careful. There are three steps ahead.” Khizer murmurs in my ear.
I hiss. “Don’t. Its as if you’re shouting.”
He whispers an apology, and helps me up the stairs. By now I have lost all my self esteem to this man, but I don’t even care as long as he helps me get that fucking wound healed.
We’re greeted by a doctor the moment the door of the clinic shuts behind us, and he looks very familiar too, but I couldn’t care less.
He ushers the both of us inside another room, while speaking at the same time. But he’s talking very fast, and the very thought of processing his words is exhausting.
The room is very small, and dirty as well, with the same musty smell that house had, as if it’s barely even used. There are yellow bulbs all over the stone roof, and the room itself has two cupboards and one rickety bed with yellowed sheets. Yet it’s crowded with only the three of us in it.
A cockroach skitters between the two cupboards and Khizer rubs my shoulder.
I pull my eyes away from it and look at him. He nods towards the bed.
“Lie down.” I oblige gratefully, and let him help me lay down on my stomach, my chin resting on the pillow, eyes trained on a small cobweb at the edge of the wall, inches away from my face.
A huge bee is stuck in it. I wonder if the web was strong enough to have trapped such a huge prey, or the bee was foolish enough to have fallen in such a weak trap. Maybe it was both.
The doctor pulls up my kurta, and I remember the day I forced Sana to take a picture of my wound and show it to me. That was the day I stopped hating Dr. Asif for looking and touching my back.
My back had been mutilated completely. The wound was huge and jagged, because of which the stitches were uneven, making it look like a badly sewn piece of clothing. The skin around it was pink and wrinkled now, and no man would ever look at it and not flinch away. So it didn’t bother me anymore who touched or saw my back in all its scarred glory. This dilapidated part of me was the last thing that would arouse man.
I couldn’t see what the doctor was doing, but he was continuously speaking to Khizer, so I got to know most of what was going on.
Apparently I had done a lot of movement today, because of which pus had developed in my wound, which was also the reason behind my high fever. The doctor, who Khizer addressed as Ali, which I remembered was the other doctor in that house, said he was going to clean up the wound and take out all the pus before it caused an infection.
“This might hurt a bit Ms. Mansha.” He tells me. I don’t respond, but brace myself for the pain anyway.
A moment later, something cold splashes onto my back, but a second later it’s burning my skin and I’m screaming in pain. It’s as if someone has put me on a sizzling grill.
Khizer grabs onto my hand, and I squeeze the life out of it, channeling all my pain into it.
“It’s just alcohol.” He rubs my hand, his hot breath hitting my cold cheek. “Breath Mansha.”
His face is blurry, and I realize I’m crying. And then his thumb grazes my cheek, and the blurriness is gone, and he’s looking at me. “Breath.”
I breath. I focus on his eyes, his hands on my face, on my misery, on fucking anything but the fingers digging into my back and pressing and tugging. But it doesn’t help. The pain is blinding, and I scream again when the fingers press on an extremely sensitive area, the air leaving my lungs. I’m almost positive I will die, but I don’t.
And after the doctor is done and I’m lying limp on the bed as he cleans me up, I wonder if dying would’ve been a better option then this. I wonder if that’s what the girls think, after they get raped and beaten up.
Dying isn’t an option at all.
×———-×
Khizer’s POV:
I stare at the blood on the cuffs of my shirt. Mansha’s blood. Its funny how I’ve seen so much of it and still my head reels at the sight.
I force my gaze away from it, looking at Mansha instead, sitting besides me, staring blankly out the car window.
“How does it feel?” I ask softly.
She turns her head, and her dark, teary eyes lock with mine. “Like I’ve been stabbed a hundred times over.”
I don’t reply. No consolation is good enough.
She sniffs. “By the way, I’ve wanted to ask you how much the hospital bills cost for a while now.”
“You didn’t go to the hospital.”
“You know what I mean.” Her voice is hoarse.
I raise an eyebrow. “You wanna pay me back?”
“I do.”
I scan her profile, from her tear stained cheeks to the way she’s slumped on one side, exhaustion filling her eyes. And yet she speaks with such power- such strength should be preserved for when the time is right.
“Then you owe me one. Not money, but anything else I want.”
She contemplates this for a while. “I’ll only pay if it doesn’t harm me.”
I nod. “Trust me, it won’t be anything that includes you getting stabbed.”
She doesn’t reply, and we stare each other down for a while.
“You need security Mansha.” I finally say. ” The mayor won’t leave you after this.”
“The Mayor’s son you mean.”
I shake my head. “The Mayor. You did file the case against his son, but the place where the crime happened is the orphanage that’s funded by him. His son tried to kill you, but he clearly didn’t succeed. And with the elections soon approaching next year, he wants you gone, whether you drop the case or not.”
Her brow furrows. “Why do you know that?”
You get to know a lot about the criminal world when you belong to it. “I’ve asked around.”
She keeps staring at me, her eyes scanning mine suspiciously. I twist my lips up into a smile. “Penny for your thoughts?”
The diversion works. She looks away, irritated. “Security huh?” She says after a while.
I nod. “Mhm. I’ve already arranged it for you. They’ll be with you, but from a distance. Wherever you go. Much better then those bodyguards who save you after you get attacked. And won’t even draw attention.”
“Yet you still have Saleem.” She gazes out the window.
“Some things are for show.” Armed bodyguards sitting in the back of your car are a formality in this country. It’s a symbol for a man in power. The real threat are the loaded guns you can’t see.
“And how much is the security? And who’s giving it?” She’s staring at my dark reflection in the window.
“They’re trustworthy men, the same ones that were at the house.”
“I never saw them.”
“They aren’t meant to be seen.” I’ve put Irfan and one other of my man up for the job, but once Mansha recovers and goes back to work, they won’t be enough.
“I’ll pay you for the security. I don’t want to owe you for two things.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Scared?”
“Smart.”