Zayan blinked as unshed tears swam in his eyes. The tears stung his eyes and blurred his vision. As he closed his eyes tightly, a few tears leaked from his eyes and rolled down his cheeks getting soaked in his stubble.

Maya stared at him as her throat constricted. She opened her mouth to speak but then closed it again at a total loss of words. She hesitantly put her hand on his in reassurance.

"She's fine now." She mumbled grasping his cold hands in her warm ones. She rubbed circles across his hand, trying to ease him.

"Should- Should we take her to the hospital?" Zayan asked without looking at her. He stared at their hands as her warmth seeped into his skin. 

"I'll take her in the morning, I promise." She reassured him. Her heart was breaking seeing his eyes go red and she knew she had no idea of the pain he was going through. 

An hour ago, they had found his mother unconscious in her bedroom. She was lying on the floor, looking lifeless making them panic.

Maya examined her to find that her blood glucose had gone very high as she was diabetic. She had given her the insulin shots. The elder woman soon succumbed to sleep.

"I can't lose her too." Zayan mumbled as specks of red danced in his eyes. 

"You won't lose her." She tried to reassure him.

"I've lost far too many people in my life. I can't lose her too." He kept saying as if he hadn't heard her. The image of Leya dead crossed his eyes and he shut his eyes tightly trying to get it out of his head, trying to forget it for a moment. 

"She probably forgot to take her insulin. That's why it happened." He said but he seemed to not have heard her. He was in a trance, and she couldn't dare to break it. 

"You know when we were younger I used to be so jealous of Areesha because I thought Mama loved her more. I used to hate myself for losing my parents." He told her still not looking at her in the eye. He was talking to her but at the same time he wasn't. He just needed this load off himself. He was carrying too much and he felt like he was going to crumble under its pressure. 

"Once I heard an aunty tell Mama that she should keep Areesha away from me because I was bad luck." He admitted when Maya didn't say anything. "I didn't know what it meant but I knew it was something bad. I was bad. I was so hurt that I stopped talking to Areesha after that. I avoided her for days. She kept apologizing thinking that she had done something wrong. She didn't know that I was the wrong one. My existence was wrong. I should have gone too with my parents. I prayed so hard to Allah to take me away too. I didn't want to be bad luck for my sister."

Maya stared at him in shock. Areesha had never mentioned their childhood so she never knew that he had gone through so much. Her grip on his hand tightened because she had no words to say. Was there anything to say?

Her silent reassurance seemed to prompt him to speak more.

"I don't even know why I'm telling you this. I haven't ever told this to anyone. Not even her." He swallowed as he couldn't utter Leya's name in front of her. Life hadn't given them enough time to talk and heal their old wounds. It just gave him new wounds without ever giving him the chance to heal the older wounds.

"You can tell me anything." Maya told him, her heart breaking at his confession. Who knew that he held so much pain behind that reserved personality.

"In every single thing, I noticed how Mama loved Areesha more than me. I couldn't see that she did care about me. Maybe it was childish of me to think that way. It's natural for a mother to love her own child more. It wasn't her fault. I should have just felt blessed that I had a family. A mother who gave me her milk and raised me. It took me a very long time to accept this. By the time I accepted it, I lost Baba. I had lost my entire world by then." He had lost his Leya. He narrated to her as if he was telling a story. He no longer had those tears in his eyes. Maya swallowed down her own emotions as she heard her own heart break.

"So you see I can't lose her too. She's my mother. She's the only one I've left now." He said as if pleading this fate to not take his mother away. He was trying to make fate believe that he didn't deserve anymore loss. He couldn't handle more loss.

Maya stared at him and tried to collect together her thoughts to form coherent sentences. She silently caressed his hand, at a loss of real words to say to make him feel better. 

She had learned the skills to talk to patients and their families. They had practiced such interpersonal communication skills back in medical school. She was good at communicating but now that her husband was in front of her, she didn't know what to say.

His cheeks were still damp from the tears and she hesitantly wiped them away with her fingers. 

"She's fine. You aren't going to lose her." Maya reassured him, not knowing anything else to say. 

No child should feel unloved in their childhood, the most important developmental stage. That's the most inportant phase of one's entire life. 

He nodded slightly, trying to believe that. He ran a hand through his hair, rubbing his temples to ease the headache building up.

"Thank you for being here." He said looking in her eyes, remembering how he had stood frozen when he saw his mother like that and Maya had taken control of the situation. "I don't know what I would have done without you." 

"Another perk of having a doctor wife." She joked, mentioning their conversation from a previous day, wanting to see the smile on his face. She couldn't bear to see him so heart-broken.

"Yeah," he managed a small smile that didn't quite reach his eyes but it was something, better than nothing.

"Maya?" Zayan said after some moments of silence between them as he collected himself.

"Hmm?" 

"Why don't you pursue your career?" He asked as the thought randomly occurred in his mind and he gladly held on it, anything to escape his dark thoughts. 

"I- I just left the hospital after, after what happened." She said feeling a little uncomfortable now that she was the topic of their conversation.

"You're passionate about medicine you should leave it for anything." He said thoughtfully. "Besides I think it will be good for you."

"I don't know." She said with a small shrug. She hadn't thought about being capable of returning to her former lifestyle so she hadn't even thought of going back to medicine. "I feel like I won't be able to do it anymore."

"I don't think so. Even I know how much you love it. I think you should apply."

"I'll think about it." 

***

"Maya Ali?" A voice halted her steps as she walked down the hall of the hospital after collecting her mother-in-law reports. She snapped her head towards the voice in utter surprise.

"Professor?" She looked surprised.

"You're working here?" Professor Nick asked equally surprised. 

Clad in an immaculate green dress shirt, round spectacles resting on his nose, his white hair speckled with a few strands of black, he was the same Professor she remembered from her medical school days. His choice of ties was still the same, she noticed in amusement. She stared at the smiley faces on the dark green tie he was wearing. His ties were always of exotic and he was known to not wear the same tie more than once.

"No, Sir. I actually came with my mother-in-law for her checkup."

"Congratulations on your marriage." He said in that signature manner of his. 

"Thank you Sir." She smiled politely, not that her marriage was something to be congratulated.

"So what does the young man do?" He asked with a hint of curiosity.

"He's a lawyer, Sir."

"That's great. Why don't we have a cup of coffee at my office. I have fifteen minutes before I have to go for the surgery." He said, glancing at his wrist watch.

***

"He offered me a job." She narrated to Zayan over dinner that evening.

"That's such a coincidence." He chuckled as he chewed his food and swallowed it. "We were talking about it just yesterday."

"Yeah." She nodded lost in her thoughts. "Do you really think I should go for the interview?"

"It's not about what I think. What you think is important. Why don't you want to go?"

"I don't know. I would have declined straight away if we hadn't talked about it yesterday." She said playing with the rice on her plate, her appetite lost as she thought about that incident.

"You're going to be fine, Maya." Zayan said with so much conviction that she even believed it for a second.  A silence fell over them but her mind was full of chaos. She wanted to continue her practice but she was so scared. What if she harmed someone because of her own insecurities? She wanted to her back to her life but her fears were like unbreakable shackles on her, not letting her move. She was stuck. The more she tried to free herself from those shackles, they tightened their grip on her till she felt they were suffocating her.

"So when is it?" Zayan asked snatching her away from her train of thought, a train that could only lead her into a dark abyss.

"What?" She asked in confusion.

"The interview, Maya. When is it?"

"This Monday." She said, briefly closing her eyes and taking a deep breath to calm her thoughts.

"Go for the interview." Zayan told her after a few moments of staring at her. If she wasn't going to take the decision for herself, he'd take it for her. 

"Okay." She said to his surprise. Her thoughts found closure and she made the decision with conviction. She was going to go for the interview and get the job.

She spooned the first bite of the food in her mouth and slowly chewed the food as the flavors melted on her taste buds. The food was good.

***

I missed you all. This chapter is for the one's who've been asking me to update.