Those last few weeks brought with them their own brand of hell. Gehna was in almost constant physical discomfort of one kind or another. In her head, she handled it all—the backache, the sleeplessness, the urgent need to pee every five seconds—like a pro, with grace and stoicism.

‘Stoic my ass,’ said Varun. He had found himself a new girlfriend and a new apartment, and wasn’t drinking until the sun went down. His parents believed that these were all signs that he was fine now, but Gehna wasn’t so sure. Mental health was a tricky bastard. She knew from experience that depression could lurk silently beneath the surface for weeks, even months, and then ambush your brain on any random Tuesday. Varun’s need to get high was the same. ‘You whine about this shit all the time,’ he said.

‘Well, you try carrying a bowling ball attached to your middle day and night for a few months. I’m so done.’

Her patience was further tested by the fact that she had to put the launch of BeHive on hold until after the delivery. The co-working space was ready, but she didn’t want to throw open the doors and then not be around to tend to it. Nina Rai had argued that, even if Gehna launched BeHive after the baby, she still wouldn’t have time to do both things, at least for a while. She seemed determined to prepare Gehna for the hard life that awaited her after the baby. Her way of doing that was to recount horrid tales of sick babies and exhausted moms. Gehna had only a vague sense of what ‘after the baby’ looked like. When she tried to picture post-birth world in her mind, she imagined herself running a hugely successful business by day and cuddling a clean, fat baby by night. Obviously, the kid would need to be fed on occasion, and may even howl a bit for no reason, but mostly Gehna and she would babble at each other in their secret language and be very happy together.

The clock slowed to a near-standstill in those last few weeks. Gehna, never before overly fond of the television, now started binge-watching shows to pass time. Often, Eram would join her under the covers of the bed. She would lie there for all the hours between one mealtime and the next, with his arm around her, while following stories of slick, good-looking vampires or Colombian drug cartels or American politics. She stayed away from shows involving suicidal teens and hospital ERs. Even though months and months had passed by since the sadness had last gripped her, she still anticipated it. It was like riding a bike that way—once you had been crushed by hopelessness and despair, you never really forgot the feeling.

On December 31, a couple of hours before the year ended, they were taking a walk along Carter Road. Eram had insisted that Gehna come out with him even though she had hotly contested the issue.