Crash

Manya rubbed her eyes again, and then whirled around to look at Arjun. His face was visible to her, totally clear and recogniseable; but then how could she not remember or recognise her own sister's face?

The reality hit her hard, as the words of the doctor came rushing back to her and she almost drifted back to the scene of that conversation, disconnecting from reality.

                 ************************

"Manya, I have a piece of bad news for you. You might have remembered everything from your past, but there is a difference between remembering everything and getting fully cured. You have to go through the entire process of treatment for prosopagnosia. For that, you will have to stay at the same place for some time, and also tell everyone about this. There is one more thing I wanted to share with you, it is a little serious, and I suggest you bring someone along with you."

"I am better alone, doctor, tell me what do you wanna share with me. And trust me, I am capable of digesting extremely scary news and information, so don't worry, go ahead and tell me!"

She had tried to smile, "Miss. Rahal, uh... Manya, actually, we suspect the presence of a small tumor in your head, and in order to study it carefully, we need to get you admitted."

"Tu-Tu-Tumor...in my head? I don't even get a severe headache frequently, then how is it possible?" She said, stuttering a little.

"Listen Manya, you have reported over the past few months that you usually have a headache, almost on a daily basis, and it's normal to have that! But you can relax, I personally don't think it is cancerous, but benign as it may be, a tumor is still a tumor. So I suggest that you get admitted, so that we can remove it as soon as possible."

"What are the procedures you are going to follow?"

"Chemotherapy and if that doesn't work- surgery." 

She felt hot flashes all over her body, followed by a cold shiver up the backbone of her body, as she heard about the probable method of her treatment. She had always been fond of her hairs, especially after the care her grandmother used to take in maintaining them. She had always been scared of losing them and this connection to her; and going through the process was worse than death for her. As she made up her mind to never go through that, she left the clinic, adding it to the list of places she was never going to visit.

                 ************************

*She had managed to convince herself that it was okay, if she could manage to live for even a year, by running from one place to another. But now, she had finally been confronted with the reality, or rather it was the first time she had accepted it. She couldn finally see that by running away, she might be able to hide from her problems, but they don't really vanish- it's just that those problems stop appearing in front of our eyes for the time being. How stupid she had been, to imagine or even entertain the thought that she deserved a happy and normal life! She had been absolutely delusional, despite knowing and seeing everything for herself. She was a curse on her family, a burden that had been forced on her family and was now being endured for the sake of it. She was definitely good for nothing other than the jinx which was there to ruin everyone's happiness.*

Arjun and Sia were looking at her face, concerned about why she had been rubbing her eyes so aggressively all of a sudden, and had now gotten lost in soem kind of trance, as she was not looking at them or noticing anything.

Arjun stepped forward and patted her shoulder, saying, "Minnie,what happened? What are you thinking about all of a sudden?"

She didn't respond, she didn't even seem to have heard anything. This was the time for Sia to freak out, and freak out she did!

Grabbing Arjun abruply by the arms, she almost screamed out, "Are you guys pulling some prank, or di is having the episodes of panic attacks again, or what? Can someone tell me what js going on!" saying this, she let go of him and vigorously shook Manya's hand, but she doesn't seem to respond to that either.

Up until that moment, Arjun had been thinking that there might be a probability of Manya pulling a pranks to hide the idea of them running away from Sia. But now, it was confirmed for sure that she was not pulling anything, she was not even in her senses! It didn't seem like she was getting the panic attacks either, as he have memorised the symptoms of her panic attacks, not willing to take any risks whatsoever. What she was doing was his first time observing this, Manya was not the kind of person to freeze up in the circumstances of getting caught. She was always the type of person to show her panic responses by shouting, or reacting till her brain shut down automatically and she fainted. There was something definitely wrong.

He was about to hold her and to turned her towards himself. But before he could do anything, she turned and looked at both of them one-by-one, shouting out "I can't marry you, no! No, I can't drag you down along with me , you belong to Heaven, and deserve exactly that. I can't take you there, I can't hurt anyone anymore. It's better, it's better for me to leave."

She had almost run out of breath while saying this, but somehow found the strength to turn around and just like that, she started running. By the time Arjun and Sia could have processed her words ,she had almost crossed the corridor; Arjun started running after her, and Sia followed him.

Manya hopped into her car and started the engine, she knew they would definitely be following her. And so, she had to rush her car as fast as she could, she couldn't take any more risks. Her car was once again talking to the breeze within moments, and she still did not care about slowing down. *The only thought in her mind was that if she would be in his life, he would be heartbroken once again, after she would be gone. And the better option of the two, was to leave him alone. He might hate her now, but he would eventually forget her after some time, taking her to be a liar, coward, whatever- she could live with that.

But if she decided to stay, then anything that would happen to her would definitely leave him heartbroken like hell, without any hope- and she could't be selfish now.*

She glanced again in the rear view mirror, only to find that  his car was still following her! She was about to push the accelerator further, when she heard a loud noise. She slammed the brakes as fast as she could, swerving at the last moment and leading her own car to crash with the divider!

 God was on her side that day, as the car whirled and stopped with a bang. Thanks to the seatbelt, she wasn't hurt much. She rushed out of the car to see copious amounts of blood splattered on the road, and Arjun was nowhere to be found.

*That, that was the exact reason she wanted to leave. And just like that, her worst fear had been turned into reality- why God why?!*

She knelt down on the road and hid her face in her hands as she started sobbing. Within a minute, she felt a hand on her shoulder; she looked behind, and hugged the person standing behind herself, standing up quickly.

                 ************************