A Girl Like That(64)

A sick feeling spread through me. I wanted it out of my skin. My cell phone vibrated in the pocket of my pajamas. I opened it to see a series of missed texts from Porus.

i know what mamma did

pls ignore her

zarin r u there pls write when u get this

My hands hovered over the keyboard, a hundred questions resting on my fingertips: What happened? Are you hurt? Who was it? Did it happen when you were at work?

And on and on.

But then I thought about what his mother had said to me and couldn’t help thinking she was right. No good had—or would—come to Porus from being around or engaging with the likes of me. I swallowed the lump in my throat and turned off the phone.

*

I woke up that night at around 10:30, stomach cramping, and stumbled into the bathroom to relieve myself. Sweat broke out on my forehead. I was tired. So tired.

Voices buzzed in my brain.

Stay away from him.

… divorced men … looking for young girls to marry.

He won’t even tell me what happened.

I know this has something to do with you.

When I rose to my feet again, white spots appeared before my eyes.

The napkin I had used to wipe my hands was the first thing that fell to the floor. My body followed, head lurching forward, my cheek pressed against the cool bathroom tiles.

*

The colors at the Al-Warda Polyclinic in Aziziyah were sterile and functional. White walls, white tiles, white-coated doctors and nurses with white scarves marching the corridors and laughing, chatting in a mix of Malayalam, English, and Arabic.

Their sounds drifted into Dr. Rensil Thomas’s office, where I was perched on the examination bench, which was covered with translucent white paper. My head still hurt from the fainting spell and I wondered if it was some delayed aftereffect of the drug Rizvi gave me, even though logic told me this was impossible.

I could feel Masi’s gaze on me, so I kept mine lowered and stared at the waxed white floor. Tonight the office smelled like Dettol, cleaned minutes earlier, I guessed, by the clinic’s janitor, who now swept past the office, mop in hand.

“Are you mad?” Masi had demanded when Masa suggested taking me to the clinic half an hour earlier. “What if that fool tells someone? His daughter goes to Zarin’s school, remember!”

“Dr. Thomas is a professional,” Masa had said firmly. “He would never break doctor-patient confidentiality. And we have been going to him for years.”

Dr. Thomas entered the room now and shut the door behind him. He had a round face, gray hair, and eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled. Masi claimed to never have liked him, but I always got the sense that her dislike stemmed from the way he had suggested counseling for her years earlier. “He thinks I’m mad!” she had raged. “He wants to have me locked up!”

“Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Wadia. How are you?” Dr. Thomas smiled at us. “Now where’s my favorite patient—ah, there you are!” I felt my shoulders relax at the sound of his voice, the South Indian accent I’d been familiar with since I was a child.

“Let’s see here.” He studied my file. “Your uncle said you fainted in the bathroom? Has this been frequent?”

I shook my head. “It happened tonight.”

He went through a list of questions: “Vomiting? Nausea? Blood in the stool?”

Then he put on his stethoscope. “What was the last thing you ate?”

“Um. A bag of chips? At school?” After Porus’s mother called me, I’d pretty much lost my appetite. I had locked myself in my room, not bothering to step out. Masi didn’t come to fetch me for dinner either. The last thing I remembered was Masa wishing me good night through my closed bedroom door.

“Well, your BP is normal,” Dr. Thomas said after taking my blood pressure. “You don’t have a temperature either. My guess is that you had a temporary drop in your blood sugar. This can happen when you haven’t eaten in a long time. You were probably also dehydrated, which is not uncommon in this country. Do you drink water regularly?”

“Not as regularly as I should.”

Dr. Thomas shook his head disapprovingly, but all I could feel was the relief flooding through my veins. It was only dehydration. And lack of food. “So I’m okay, then?”

“You’re okay.” Dr. Thomas smiled at me, but there was a flicker of something else in his eyes—something that looked like worry. “You need to start eating again, young lady. And stay hydrated.”

He turned to Masi. “Now, Mrs. Wadia, would you like to go and have a snack in our cafeteria with Zarin while I write out a prescription for some medication and send Mr. Wadia to the pharmacy? The Cafeteria is downstairs and to the left. Family entrance separate from the one for single men.”

“No!” Masi snapped. “Whatever you need to say, you can say in front of me.”

Dr. Thomas paused and glanced at Masa. He had been the one who had first observed the anxiety tapping out of Masi’s nervous laughs at her appointments, her constant state of alertness when she was around me.

“Mr. Wadia.” The doctor hesitated. “My daughter goes to Zarin’s school, as you know. And over the past couple of weeks I’ve been … hearing things. You know kids these days, always on their phones, always reading things online.”