Waiting...!

She sat in a corner, holding the toy I had once gifted her on her birthday. ‘I don’t like this scary creature, couldn’t you find anything better?’ she had asked. ‘It’s just right for you’ I had teased. She was looking in its eye while touching its nose with hers. I stood there, looking and waiting for her to turn and notice me which she never did.

‘Hi’, I said.

‘Oh! It’s you. Today you’re on time and you even remember my birthday. How unusual! I thought you always forgot.’

‘Not at all, wish you happy birthday dear’

‘Don’t say that. I don’t need any sympathy’

‘What do you want?’

‘You know what I want, and you can never give that one thing to me. Not in this life, can you?’

I said nothing. Like the other night when I walked on the open terrace all alone, disconnected from everything and everyone. She had followed me there and asked endless questions that fell on my deaf ears, making her more frustrated. ‘I’m going to jump from here’, I last heard her say, yet ignored. She leaned forward and looked at me before I extended my hand which she refused to hold letting herself go deep down.

‘See? Then, why ask? It’s okay, leave it. What if I had asked for something else?’ she now said.

‘Sure...’

‘It’s someone’s death! You know whose’

‘What are you saying? You won’t get anything from it.’

‘I haven’t gotten anything, anyways. How about a little relief?’

‘The time is running, I’ll have to leave’

‘Yes, of course. Who has time these days? And don’t come again if you can’t get me what I want.’

‘I’m worried about you...’

‘If you had said, I’m in love with only you. Just once!’

‘I am…’

‘Get lost, go and show your coward face to your looser wife and tell her you’re not brave enough to kill her to satisfy another woman, who’s madly in love with you.’

I said nothing. Each time I wanted to shed some tears looking at her plight, I would go back from the asylum dejected. She could not be healed. Doctors had given up. We were happily married until she started doubting me for not spending enough time with her, making her wait for me and had caused herself this trauma. While she’s still my wife, she believes I’m married to someone else and she’s still waiting for me. And, now I’m waiting for her… 

If I had spent these moments with her, back then...?