Page 140 of Reasons We Break
“No! That’s the thing!” Her voice is heated. This conversation is definitely not just about Simran anymore. “If you were completely terrible, it’d beeasyfor Simran to walk away. But you’ve devoted your life to making hers better, you’d cut off your arm for her without a second thought—and look at the girl you’ve raised Simran to be. Clearly you’re doing something right. But you’re also doing something wrong. You think it’s a coincidence Kiran and I both left you?”
“Whoomp, there it is,” Kiran mumbles into her bowl.
Simran’s mother looks at Simran. Her anger has faltered. In her brown eyes, the same ones Simran sees in the mirror every morning, there’s fear. Real fear.
Simran wonders what would happen if she said,Yes, you will lose me, too. If that would break her.
But she’s done with threats. What kind of healthy relationship can come out of an ultimatum? Tiredly, she takes another step toward the door. “I’ll be back soon.”
Her mother speaks again, softly. “You’re making a mistake with him. And you’ll have to live with it forever.”
Simran pauses again.
She knows what some people would say.Follow your heart, not your parents. But that makes it seem so simple. As if her parents won’t always influence her heart. They are, after all, a part of it. And everything her mom has ever done, including this, has come from a place of love. A misguided love, maybe. An overwhelming love that she lacks the words to explain in all its complexity. But love. Simran’s never doubted that.
However, they’re arguing two fundamentally different debates. To her mother, stability is happiness. And Rajan is the opposite of stability. He’s a risk; he said it himself.
But, in a different way her mother doesn’t understand, heisstability. He is a shelter in the storm. A reliable comfort even on bad days. A listening ear whenever she needs it. He is stability...to her soul. And when she almost lost him last night, she felt a part of herself drift, the same as when she first heard her mom’s diagnosis. She doesn’t want to lose either of them.
But that’s not up to her, is it?
“You’re right,” Simran says finally, and her mother exhales, at least until Simran goes on. “For the rest of my life, I have to live with my choices. I know you’re pushing me away because you’re trying to stop me from making a mistake. You think I’ll regret this and he’ll break my heart. I don’t know how I’ll feel in ten years, Mom, but I know that if I don’t go see Rajan right now, I’ll regret it. And the only one breaking my heart right now is you.”
Without waiting for a reaction, she pushes out the door.
RAJAN WAKES UPto some doctor shoving a tube between his ribs.
He swears at them. A lot. Once he’s been wrestled back into the stretcher, they explain that actually, he agreed to this procedure five minutes ago. He has broken ribs and fluid in his chest that needs draining.
Why are his ribs broken? His memory’s a blur. They don’t know, either. He was dropped off at the hospital by an unidentified driver.
It hurts enough to breathe that he lets them finish. While they do, they ask him what other drugs he took. Rajan doesn’t remember taking any drugs at all. His stomach drops when they show him the bruises on his arm, and explain exactly how much Narcan he got. He relapsedagain? And with the needle stuff? What the hell happened?
Rajan asks for something for his splitting headache. Instead of just giving him fucking Tylenol like normal people, they spend twenty extra minutes shining lights in his eyes and poking at his skull. That’s how they also diagnose him with a concussion.
He’s admitted to the hospital for a short stay. Overnight, he lies awake; he gets only the weakest meds for pain because everyone knows he’s a user. Gradually, memories float back, in pieces. The Aces. The ledgers. Simran at Neetu’s engagement party. Zach Singer. That asshole tried to OD him, didn’t he? So how did Rajan end up here?
Several times during the night, he has the urge to rip out his chest tube and escape. Everything about this place reminds him of his mother. The monitors, the beeping call bells, the tubes around him. The rattling gasps of the guy one bed over. Rajan wonders if this is how his mother died: accompanied by nothing but the misery of a hospital in her final hours.
He holds it together until around three in the morning. Then the tears start. So suddenly that it surprises him—body-racking, silent sobs he smothers into the thin blanket. God, heshould have been there. That he is glad he wasn’t can only mean he was a terrible, terrible son, right? He wishes he were still delirious, if only so he could see her again and apologize. Maybe he’d be able to take her hand; the same hand that led him to his first day of kindergarten, stroked his cheek when he was upset, corrected his badly made rotis, and sewed him a bunny from scratch. Her skin would be soft and fragrant from hand cream, not sallow and cold with veins sticking out. She would hug him. He would tell her he was trying to be better. And maybe, just maybe, she would believe him.
Eventually his tears dry up. The fog in his brain starts to lift, and with each passing hour, he feels his mother drift farther away. By the time the day nurses come by, he’s itching to get out of this hellhole and away from the memories.
But of course, while he’s waiting to be discharged, he has a visitor. He releases a sigh when she walks through the door. “How’d you know where—?”
Simran sits on the bed next to him, drawing one leg up under her. Her expression is inscrutable. “Nick.”
Of course. Nick must’ve been the one to find him.
Simran flips her long braid over her shoulder. Rajan watches it dangle off the bed as she says, “You almost died.”
He looks up to see her staring at the chest tube running down the side of the bed. “Listen—”
“All I could think last night was, what if they didn’t find you in time? And you know what? Everything I’ve told myself about why we shouldn’t be together seemed sopointlesssuddenly.” Her voice breaks.
“Stop,” Rajan says, and she does, her mouth quivering, unshed tears sparkling between her lashes. He grips his blankets to keep himself from wiping them away. “You should go. You’re not thinking straight.”
“No. I’m thinking more clearly now than ever.”