5. I am pregnant?

ROSE

For the second time I woke up in the darkened hospital room, this time alone. As I looked through my blurry eyes, I realised that it was the same room and same hospital in which I had woken up seven days after he disappeared from my life. I blinked a few more times thinking why I couldn’t see properly and realised a moment later when I felt the wet trails on my temple.

Fuck! What was wrong with me? I was a crying mess and I was tired of crying!

I just wanted to feel nothing. It was too damn much. I couldn’t stop this churning in my stomach. I couldn’t understand what I had become. I wasn’t this person. I couldn’t even imagine how I had come to this. No one would believe me if I told them that I was the same woman who had been kidnapped and suffered near rape. And still managed to live on.

But, here I was, a hollow shell of a person I once was. I felt sorry for the woman I was, a woman who knew how to fight, who was stronger than I was now but now I was nothing like her. I was just weak and pathetic.

My eyes travelled over my left hand which was bandaged about five inches wide across my wrist. I felt like a failure, I fucking tried to kill myself and apparently I failed even doing that. An IV was hooked up and I realised that unlike the other time when I was here because of not eating for days, this one was attached to a blood bag, telling me that I probably lost a lot of blood.

My attention snapped to the door as the click of the door sounded in the darkness. A figure stepped inside. I couldn’t see who it was, and the person didn’t say anything. There was no light, so it took a few moments for the person to come make his way to me and I tensed up at his silent approach.

“Who is there?” My voice came out scratchy as I asked the question. But there was no reply. The person reached the foot of my bed. “Michael?” No reply.

I was starting to get frightened. My free hand crept to the side of the bed looking for anything that I could use as a weapon or even for the light switch. A hand clamped down on my arm effectively stopping my search and when I opened my mouth to scream, his other hand clamped on my mouth.

I was scared. My eyes were wide, wanting to see the face of the person. And, then the dim light near my hospital bed turned on, it mostly only prompted the shadows in the room and still I didn’t see the face of the man who had captured me as there was a black mask on his face.

“Uh..Mmm..” I tried to yell against his gloved hand but I couldn’t, all I managed was moving my head from side to side as I tried to shake off his hold.

For the someone who was seizing me and holding me against my will, his fingers were careful as he slid the IV out of the back of my hand, but that was the only moment when he was careful because after that I was flung out of the bed.

My legs shook as I tried to balance on my wobbly legs but he didn’t give me a choice as the man slammed me hard into the wall.

“You want to die, huh?” His hissed through his clenched teeth. His hands closed around my throat as he squeezed. “Let me help you.”

Grabbing my unhurt wrist in his hand he dragged me toward the bathroom.

Once inside the dark bathroom, he started the shower and yanked me under the cold water. I gasped and tried to move out of the rushing water but he yanked me back, grabbing the handful of my hair as he held me there. A moment later his one hand squeezed my throat tight and when I gasped for air his other hand came across my mouth. He was pushing me backward at an odd angle that my face was tilted up and the water from the shower was going into my nostrils.

I started hyperventilating. I couldn’t breathe. I was choking so badly. My hands scratched at his hands. I tried to punch him but I was took weak. Just when I thought that I was going to faint, he yanked me out of the shower.

“Do you want to die now?” The words were spoken into my ear in a thick voice.

I shook my head side to side. “No. No, please.” I gasped as I spluttered and tried to catch my breath.

“Who are you?” The question confused me, and apparently I took too much time as the man yanked my hair almost ripping them from my scalp. “Who the fuck are you?!!”

“Rose Kapoor!” I screamed, tired of these bullshit games from this stranger if he wanted to kill me then fine. “Just kill me.” I didn’t realise I had spoken the words aloud as a second later the man slapped me hard across the face.

And, once again, I found myself under the cold shower and fingers tightening around my throat. Black dots danced around my eyes, I was sure I was going to crumple down on the floor in a dead heap. “Pl.. please..” I gasped out. This time his hold was terrifying I was sure I was going to die. “I am—I, I’m sorry.” I didn’t know why I was apologizing, but I also didn’t know what else to do to make this horrible man go away.

“Who are you?!!” He asked again, more threatening than the first time.

“Mrs. Rose Johnson Kapoor,” I whisper yelled my name, tears slipping down my cheeks mixing with the cold water as I sobbed. The water was going into my nose, my hands were slipping against his arms.

The tight grasp around my throat jerked for a moment, lessening the force, but then as if it had angered him even more, he came closer to my face, his nose brushing mine as he roared, “Who the fuck are you?!!!”

And, I heard him. My lion.

“A lioness!!” I screeched.

Dragging me to the small mirror on the wall, he forced me to turn around and look at my own reflection, then holding my injured hand up for me to see, he whispered into my ear, “You couldn’t be. A lioness is a fucking queen, not a coward.”

The gravely voice, the dark pools for the eyes and the warmth of his body took me in the different time zone. And, I knew, I wasn’t wrong. “Ryan..” I breathed out his name. I turned around into his arms, my fingers trembled as I reached up to caress his face.

But at the last moment, he turned me around as his chest pressed into my back. I looked up in the mirror as he whispered into my ear. “Stop hurting yourself. Stop fucking crying.” With each word his voice grew more heavy and more gravely.

A single tear escaped from his one eye and I felt my dead heart beginning a new rhythm. I felt it coming alive. A tremulous smile came to my face. “I love you, Ryan. Please…” I felt the pinch at the side of my neck and then I felt his lips kissing the same spot when I finished, “Please, don’t leave me.”

I vaguely remember the words he had spoken before darkness closed around me. “I love you too, my lioness. I wish… but, she needs me more than you.”

__

When I woke up the next morning I was feeling light headed, and groggy, but despite that my heart was beating an excited rhythm… He was here. He was back. He came for me.

A small smile played on my lips as I opened my eyes. When I sat up in the bed and looked around, I realised that I was alone, but not for long as the door opened and automatically a smile stretched across my lips as I thought who’d be entering.

But then… Michael entered in the room and shut the door behind him. I could feel my smile slipping off as I looked into his eyes. When he came closer and sat on the hospital bed near my legs. I asked, “Where is he?”

Michael’s eyes looked at me with a frown marring his forehead. “Who?”

“Who!!?” I repeated, not able to understand. Doesn’t he know? Or, he was just being obtuse about it? I took a deep calming breath as I asked, “Ryan? Where is he?”

“Rose…” Michael looked uncomfortable, as if he didn’t know how to answer me. “Are you okay? Ryan.. Don’t you remember, he left three weeks ago...”

I was shaking my head even before he finished. “No. No… no..,” I smiled as I tried to make him understand. “I am talking about last night. He was here, Michael. He was here last night.”

Michael took my hands in his, trying to calm me as he said, “Rose… I was here all night.” When I just looked at him, he licked his lips before saying, “You must’ve dreamt it. Ryan didn’t come back.”

I pushed his hands away from me. And, scurried away. “You are joking, right?” I looked around the room. “He was here. I could still feel his hands around my…” I touched my throat, but there was no tenderness there. “He said that he loves me too.”

I didn’t realise when the tears started to roll down my cheeks, as I shook my head vehemently, not believing that it was all just my imagination.

“Rose.. Rose, calm down… You were on heavy medication, it may be... was side-effects.”

I looked at him with big horrified eyes. “Fine, if he wasn’t here then he wouldn’t mind if I kill myself, right!??” I yelled and marched to the attached bathroom.

Once inside the bathroom, I stopped short. The bathroom was as dry as Sahara. And, perfectly organised. But, I remembered how he had pushed me in the shower, how he’d threatened me and how angry he was seeing me hurt.

“What the hell, Rose?” Michael came hurrying toward me. “You can’t hurt yourself!!” He shouted at me.

“If you’re saying that it was all a dream and he wasn’t here then I’ll make sure this time he’d be meeting my corpse!!”

My face turned sideways with the force of the slap. My left cheek stinging from the pain. Michael slapped me. He fucking slapped me. I was frozen as I regarded him.

He raked his hands through his hair and hissed out, “I am not sorry…” Grabbing me from the elbow, he dragged me out of the bathroom.

Pushing me on the bed, he leaned over me and I realised why Ryan and Michael were friends. They both knew how to make others listened to them. As I watched Michael battling with his anger, I realised that they both shared controlling traits.

“You will live. You will smile. You will not harm yourself, instead you’ll take care of yourself.”

“Why would I be taking care of myself, why would I be wanting to live… There’s nothing for me to live… He left me! He fucking broke my heart and left me in pieces!!!”

“I didn’t know you were this weak, Rose! I would’ve thought you to challenge your faith, to get what you wanted and Ryan also believed you to be his lioness, didn’t he?” I closed my eyes as pain engulfed me hearing the endearment. “But, what I’m trying to tell you is most important… He didn’t leave you alone, Rose… he left you with something more precious… And, you have everything to live…”

I didn’t know what he was saying, I was still focused on his first sentence, he was right. I wasn’t this weak woman. I was a lioness. Ryan’s lioness. And, fine, I’ll fight for him. Then Michael’s words registered in my mind and second time, in not so many weeks I found myself fainting.

"You are pregnant, Rose.”

____

A. Gupta

I KNOW MOST OF YOU'VE ALREADY READ IT, BUT IT WAS TO HAVE YOU IN THE FLOW OF THE STORY... IT'D HAVE LOOKED INCOMPLETE WITHOUT IT SO.... AND FOR SOME READERS WHO ARE NEW, THEY CAN UNDERSTAND IT AND YOU GUYS CAN ALSO READ THE PREVIOUS BOOK: My Boss Is My Tormentor, FOR THE WHOLE PICTURE.. OR JUST ENJOY READING, YOU'LL

GET IT!!!