But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed.

Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

* * * * * * * *

Whenever the sedation wore out, the pain made its presence known by a throbbing headache, as the time passed, it spread to his shoulders, arms and then down to his legs. The pain always started with a mild headache and ended up taking over his entire body. He tried to move, to get liberated by it, but he could not. He couldn't move any part of his body; it felt as if there was a very heavyweight holding him down. The more he tried to move, the heavier it got.

Then his whole system would go into panic: he would scream, in his mind, as it seemed he could not do so out loud:

'what was happening?'

'Why couldn't he move?'

All the what-ifs and whys that his mind could come up with overwhelmed him enough to make him breathless with the panic he felt.

He was trapped in the darkness...

The darkness that he feared the most...

And the only one who had the power to shine in that darkness was nowhere around, he knew...

He was trapped in it without the protection of his shining star...

He called out to her, again...

As she was the only solace; her presence, the only comfort...

'Nandini...'

* * * * * *

As the automatic door opened, Dr Waltz, rushed inside of the hospital. He had been eating lunch with his wife when he was called in an emergency. If it was about something else, he would have been whining how he got off after a sixteen hours shift only to be called in right back, and how he couldn't even enjoy one quiet intimate lunch he promised his lovely and thoughtful wife after weeks of wait, but it was a very important case. And whine he could not do.

The patient had been stable after they pulled him out of the medically induced coma he was in, although it had been a week, he was still in a very delicate condition. That wasn't surprising as there wasn't a part of his body that was in one piece, unbroken by the trauma of the accident he had been in...

But the truth of having Dr Waltz, the Chief Medical Director, as the doctor to call in for the emergency had more to do with the fact that the patient belonged to a very rich family than the delicate condition he was in. The generous donations made by the patient's family, who had contact with just the right people, was what helped in keeping Dr Waltz and all of his team motivated and forced them to go out of their way to make sure the patient was taken care of in the best way possible. As he thought about it, Dr Waltz had to give some credit to the old businessman who surely knew how to get what he wanted.

As Dr Waltz walked in the patient's room, he was welcomed to the sight of a panicking nurse and a very agitated and tormented patient.

"What happened?" he asked the young nurse.

"I don't know, Dr Waltz. I can't understand what I did wrong. That is why I called you. It seems like he is in pain, so much pain. But I can't understand what to do to end it," the young nurse said, crying and sweating.

"He is. Did you inject him with the same amount of sedative that I have written in the prescriptions?" He asked, already figuring out the problem.

As he worked to end the unnecessary pain the patient was put in, he coaxed the young nurse to cooperate with him by immobilizing the moving patient so he couldn't do damage to the bandage and plaster on his body.

"But Dr Waltz, the amount written here is way too much. I thought there was a mistake," the nurse answered to justify her action while continuing to cry silently.

"There had been no mistake. He has to have the insane amount of painkillers to be able to tolerate the pain he must be suffering," he informed the nurse as he made sure the needed amount of medicines was in the system of the tormented patient.

As he looked down at the patient, Dr Waltz could only imagine what he was going through; he was weakly moving and slamming his already wounded head on the pillow, forcing his mind out of the haziness caused by sedatives but failing, again and again. He must be trying to find the will and strength to move his arms and legs which were tightly wrapped in the bandages and plasters.

And as he was unable to move his broken body, his system must be in the panic that he couldn't express. Half worn out by the pain, half-unconscious because of the sedation running through his body, he must have been trying to do whatever he could to fight back the dizziness that was taking over him without giving the much-desired relief.

Looking at him, Dr Waltz and the young nurse could pinpoint the minute the sedatives kicked in the patient's system because as a result, the force and frequency of his movements decreased till they stopped altogether. As they looked at the patient going still, they both took a sigh of relief.

* * * * * *

And as he would try to fight the pain and the haziness, out of nowhere there would be a strong wave of something unseen, forcing him to go immobile like a statue, but it didn't stop the panic he felt. Only after what to him seemed like a very long time, his brain would get dizzy enough to stop asking him questions to he had no answers...

That would be the time when he would understand that in the end, he just had to do nothing but wait for the darkness to take over him, marking and claiming him as its own, oblivious to everyone and everything...

Apart from the desire for her...

'Nandini...'

Because whenever the darkness has threatened to take possession of him, she has come to his rescue, bringing the light with her...

The very personal shining star of his...

Smiling down at him, for him, with the promise of forever, 'Hamesha' as she said...

* * * * * *

After doing the needed, Dr Waltz and the young nurse looked down at the patient as his tensed muscles relaxed, the frown on his barely visible forehead disappeared. That was what indicated that he was finally peaceful in his unconsciousness.

"Alright Jennifer, tell me what is the matter," Dr Waltz asked her as they walked to the window in the room.

"I can't take it, anymore. Dr Waltz. I can't see a patient suffer without being able to help him. And with him, I don't even know what is it that he needs. Even though it has been two weeks since he is here, but he is still in an almost comatose state. He is not in the coma anymore then why he has to be the way he is?" She questioned him even though he knew that she has all the answers.

"Because of these sedatives, he is never fully awake, I doubt he is even aware of his surroundings, or even his own self. And I can't ask him what is it that he needs in this state," Jennifer explained, shattering and crying, unable to think beyond how helpless she felt because of the patient.

"I can take care of people; it's my job to take care of them. But I am not ready for this, for him. This case, I can't work on it without feeling so helpless. I am sorry I am disappointing you, Dr Waltz, but I can't work on this case anymore," she continued as the tears slipped from her eyes.

"I will see what I can do about it," Dr Waltz told her as he gently patted her right shoulder in the sign of comfort.

As the day transformed itself into the night, young Jennifer got relieved from her duty to look after the patient as she truly was way too inexperienced to handle the case. The truth was, no matter how good she was at her job, it was only the recommendation of Dr Waltz, who had been impressed with her dedication and focus, that she got such high-profile case.

Walking back home, Jennifer sighed sadly as she thought about the situation the patient was in. But she had no regret, in fact, felt grateful for the freedom from the duty to look after the patient. She did what she had to, she made her pride understand, letting someone else take over the case was better than making the patient suffer more than he had to by her inexperienced hands.

And she would keep herself updated on the progress he would be making, she promised herself, but she had to stay far away from him till he was healed enough to tell her if her inexperience and her overly interfering nature was hurting him.

The old people, she could take care of, the tormented patient in an almost comatose state, she could not!

She took a breath of relief as she stepped inside her home. Tonight, she could sleep well, without crying tears of helplessness.

* * * *

After 3 months

* * * *

Dizzy...

He felt dizzy all the time. In fact, he felt as if he has lost the concept of time. He didn't know how much time had passed since last time... Was there even a last time? He didn't know. He knew nothing...

He couldn't tell the difference between day and night. Not aware of his surroundings, he ended up asking the same questions again and again and forgot whatever information he had been given. He knew that there was a part of him that was trying keeping track of everything. He knew that because to him, it was in his nature to keep track of things - that was how he had grown up. He could never be at a disadvantage; he could never let his guard down...

But still, he couldn't take control of things, not even his own thoughts. There were no thoughts. His brain was suddenly incapable of forming a thought. Sometimes it was the pain of his broken body and sometimes it was sedatives that left him incapable of forming a proper thought.

But whenever he had any 'lucid' moment, if there was any before, her name, her thought and she was the only one his mind could remember.

'Nandini'...

* * * * *

After almost 5 months

* * * * *

Even though he could never clearly see the face of whoever that was in front of him, he couldn't remember them, whoever that was whom he had asked the questions to, he knew that they couldn't understand what or about whom he was asking. He knew that only because they never answered him...

He could never remember that, but he knew.

He only knew that because she was never there...

So he told them about her, to find her because it wasn't possible that she wasn't there...

'Nandini'...

Her name was the first word he had tried to utter - shattered in many incorrect syllables; it was incomprehensible every time he tried to call her out. Frustrated he would try again and again, the more attempts he made, the more her name would sound broken by the added forcefulness to say it right.

Why couldn't he say it right?

He had to say it correctly, he must, because maybe that was the only reason why she never heard his desperate calls...

The chant of her name in his broken voice didn't stop till the sedative again drowned him in its effect. And then again, he will be trapped in the darkness with only the thoughts of his shining star to give him company.

Never her, just her thoughts...

Only her thoughts...

There, he could call her out...

There he would say her name the way he always did, like a prayer...

Like a whisper meant to be only heard by her...

In the same way, he had always said it; the same way which never failed to bring a shy smile on her lips, which made her cheeks tinged with blush and her eyes twinkle like the brightest of the stars...

'Nandini'...

But she wasn't there...

And even though there he could call her out in the right way, she was never there...

Why wasn't she there?

He did call her in the way he always had, then why wasn't she near him as she always had been?

What was wrong?

Something must be...

'Nandini...'

* * * * * *

"Na-ah-nan-dhi-ni..." The last whisper was heard as the patient gave in, letting the effect of sedative draw him in.

With a sigh of relief, John was glad as he heard only the noises of the machines ringing in the room because that meant he could go back to whatever he was doing before the restless patient gained consciousness.

As he looked at the patient again, he could see that his lips were still moving, albeit soundlessly. Shaking his head, John realized how it took the patient all of his remaining strength his sedated-self had, to make him understand the unintelligible word that he had been hearing ever since he took the charge of being his nurse but still couldn't get it right. In fact, the truth was, for a very long he thought it meant water. After all, that was the first thing every other patient of his has asked him in his career as a nurse.

Quite unexpectedly this one differed from the other patients; the one he was in charge of since the past four and half months was incapable of anything else than searching for someone around him restlessly, repeatedly.

Poor souls they were, John himself and the patient, both unable to understand each other. Because as for him, John talked a lot which the other one had to hear, even though he could tell under the effect of the sedatives the patient didn't actually understand whatever he said. And the patient, even though he didn't talk much, he kept asking for someone using that one unintelligible word.

God, he kept repeating it again and again as if he was calling someone out he was sure could be found around him. In his search of that someone, he would also try to get up from the bed using his still injured limbs - that was all that he kept doing.

John could not tell who was stuck with whom; he, who had to do and hear the same thing again and again or the patient, who had to hear him talking when he was so sedated that he couldn't even get himself to tell John to shut up.

As he was the exclusive nurse of the only patient, sometimes the whole repeated process got boring for John, but most of the time he was glad. He was paid extra and was not even as tired as his other colleagues were while running around from one end of the hospital to the other. But that didn't mean he had it easy, it was a struggle that he had to go through every day, mental, physical and emotional.

And boy! Was the patient not tough to handle, now more than ever!

Whenever the effect of sedatives got a little less, he would start agitating, all of sudden, his now lightly bandaged head would be moving violently as in the attempt to get over the dizziness. Then he would try to move his fractured arms and hands. His whole system would be in a panic, making the noises of the machines attached to him go wild, unbearable to hear. God, it was chaos...

A battle between John and the agitated patient...

With a sigh, shaking his head, John realized how he had to be on alert every time to make sure the patient didn't get to do damage to himself by moving his injured body. John couldn't let what happened a month before to repeat itself again.

It happened after more than three months to the day when he got assigned as the nurse to the case: he had been listening to his favorite song with his headphone on, when out of nowhere the patient had woken up, somehow putting his whole strength on both his arms and hands to drag himself up. Not to say the least, his arms ended up in much worse shape than they had been before and the whole incident had caused him multiple hairline fractures on his both hands, which weren't there before.

After the situation was handled, John, who had been already in stress and had been feeling very guilty, had to go through many long lectures from Dr Waltz and bashing from Jenifer herself, the ex-nurse of the patient, who somehow had grown very attached him during her two weeks of duty.

In an act of defense, he had taunted Jenifer for not being competent enough to handle the patient herself and running away from her responsibilities. Now whenever he thought about it, he felt ashamed, especially after getting to know her.

But that act as wrong as it had been, got a positive reaction as a result: from then on, he had Jenifer to share a few hours of his duty. Whenever things got too much for him, Jenifer would take over the responsibility of taking care of the patient. She didn't make it easy for him, glaring at him every time she looked at the patient's hands and arms in much heavier plaster than before. He prayed they healed soon as he could not take the glares anymore.

Now after almost four months of being the nurse of the same patient, he has gotten used to the pattern on which the body system of the patient worked on: as the effect of sedatives would wear out, he would start coming around, the first attempt of his would be of one to look around as he was searching for someone. And when his eyes wouldn't find the one they were seeking for, he would panic. He would try to force his unhealed body to cooperate with him into moving, maybe in an attempt to search for whoever he couldn't find around him.

That was the moment when John had to come in and stop him, block him if he was more agitated than usual, which had been happening more and more as the time passed and as the amount of the sedative and painkiller got light and lighter.

What then John had to do was to tell him where he was, to calm him down, and then to ask him how much pain he was feeling to regulate the amount of the sedative necessary in his system to tolerate the pain he was in. Adding in some more information as he injected his confused patient with painkillers. The same information which he knew the patient forgot as soon as the sedative injected would kick in his system. That is what he had been doing until the time when he had had his very first real conversation with the patient.

He remembered the first time he got to have a proper conversation with the patient, the one which had gone beyond the panic and worry of not finding the one he was searching for and then the terror the patient had felt because of the irresponsive body of his. As he looked up at the patient, he thought about that conversation again...

"Na-hn-dh-inhi?" The patient whispered, asking for something...

"What?" John asked him, as he always did.

He said it again, a little louder. But it didn't matter. The spoken word always was so slurred that it was incomprehensible for John to understand. No matter how much and how many times the patient has repeated it, he never had been able to hear the word enough to understand it. Forget to find it's meaning in the Hindi to English dictionary that he bought after hearing it for the first time.

"Sorry, I can't understand this word that you keep repeating. The dictionary says it doesn't mean water, as the water starts from the phonetic 'pa' in here," he told him as he again checked in the dictionary for confirmation.

"So I don't know what is that you want," John apologized.

As he looking down at the patient, he saw that he had his eyes tightly closed in frustration. The frown and the veins visible on his forehead and temple gave away the anger and the frustration he must have been feeling - a sight that could compel anyone to help him out.

Suddenly, John could understand what pushed Jenifer to back off from the case of this particular patient. The helplessness he was feeling for not being of any help to the one he had the responsibility to take care of...That was what Jenifer too must have had felt back then, he realized it now.

Pushing himself, he tried to find a way to help his patient out. And then, suddenly he knew what he had to.

"Okay, listen to me, Manekh. I know how we can help each other understand," he said, trying to call out his name for the first time to draw his attention to himself again.

"Why don't you give it another attempt? But this time, one word at a time. Let's play dumb charade, what's say?" He said with an encouraging smile.

After raising his eyebrow, giving him 'are you serious?' look, with a deep sigh, the patient gave in.

"Okay, let's try again, shall we?" He asked, all ready to guess.

And after several attempts, he got it right. God, how proud he was then...

"Grill? Oh, you mean a girl. So, that word is actually the name of a girl." He shouted out, all happy to guess it right.

"Okay, so that means you keep asking about a girl. Well, there is no girl here. I am sorry," he informed, apologizing.

And when he saw the patient panicking again, throwing at him a current of slurred words that he could never guess all at once, John got panicked himself. Not knowing how to handle the situation, he had sedated the patient again even though he didn't feel good for doing it.

With a sigh, he again looked down at the patient laying down on his bed, still but breathing.

He remembered it was only after he talked with Jennifer that he could understand what he had to do. She was the one who helped him understand what he had to do was to only make sure that the boy didn't use all his energy in panicking but to describe the girl he seemed so desperate to know about.

It worked. Or not really...Because doing so, he got the most bizarre description that one could get. How and from where he could find the girl who was short, had black hair, no, not just black but black as night, dark, very long, and very silk-like. He was very amused by the dreamy expressions the boy had on his face while he talked away about her in his slurred speech.

How could he find someone who has the stars as her earrings even though she herself was the 'shining star' of the boy? That was what the young boy continued insisting on. God, he sure was a poet under the effect of sedatives. Dizzy enough to give descriptions that only left him amused and laughing at the innocence of the boy's love for his girl.

And then the era of hunting down the girl started. For months, he had heard the patient's broken sentences on the girl. His mind, under the effect of sedative, sure came up with many creative ways to describe the girl he was searching for, and explain how much her presence was needed by him...

In the past two months, ever since that first conversation, whenever the patient was able to, he would repeat the same things. It would happen repeatedly, every single time the patient would get over the panic he felt after knowing he could not move any part of his body because he had been in an accident, the only thing he would do was to ask about her - only her.

Jenifer found him cute, adorable even, the whole thing to her sounded very romantic. But as for him, John could only wonder what pushed him to question about her again and again when there was no such person around him. That was what his father has said when he had asked about the girl some time back. John didn't know what to do when boy's father - whom he had only talked to once in a while to give a report on the progress - sounded so sure there was no such girl waiting for him back home. Never has been...

So who was the 'girl' the boy talked and asked about even under the heavy effect of sedatives?

Who was 'she', whose name was whispered by him, again and again...

A very interesting mystery that was...

A mystery which wouldn't be solved until and unless the boy healed enough to talk properly...

Until then all they had to do was wait...

* * * * * * * *

A/N:- Here it is, an early and long update as promised... ;)

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