The child; where is the child? Fear surged through him again. Before he could speak, the younger man opened the front door and got in, carrying Smrithi, who was cowering in his arms. He stroked her hair and spoke softly to her, soothing her in Sinhalese. The old man sat in the driver’s seat. He reached for the keys where Rajan had left them in the ignition. The man was comfortable in a stranger’s car as he took them quickly to the hospital. It was only one block away. So close, they had been so close.

CHAPTER 13

Nala didn’t move. She smelled pine. It was sickly sweet and incongruous with the shimmering coldness of the white walls and sheets and floor. She could recognise hospital disinfectant anywhere. Rajan’s hands had a faint trace of it. She lay on her bed quietly as he rattled off words. Third degree, partial second degree, tissue oedema, infection, emergency escharotomy, hypertrophic scarring, grafts, flaps. The words continued. She couldn’t feel them, so she didn’t need to understand them.

He arranged the sheets around her body carefully. She was breathing, surviving, but she was raw. The burning had melted back layers. It revealed something unhealed, unfinished inside. She cleared her throat. The tube had been taken out of her mouth a few days before.

‘Do you believe in karma, Rajan?’ she asked him softly.

‘What?’

‘Do you believe in karma? Do you think we are punished for the things we’ve done wrong?’

‘No, Nala, please don’t talk like this, you’re a good person.’

Was she?

‘Perhaps,’ she replied, unsure—unable to lie to herself for a moment. ‘I don’t think so.’

•

She awoke early to find him slumped in the chair next to her hospital bed. The stiff lines of his collared shirt had crumpled around him. She coughed loudly, and he stirred, confused at first, sleep still clouding him. He rubbed his face with his hands and became clinical again, as he began the first of many daily examinations of her injuries.

‘Don’t,’ she said, reaching for his hand weakly.

‘Don’t what? Does it hurt?’ he asked, worried, pausing for a moment. ‘The wounds are too deep; they shouldn’t hurt.’

She laughed at that. ‘No, it doesn’t hurt.’

‘Then what?’ he asked, returning to his examination. He had a routine that he liked to follow.

‘Don’t,’ she swallowed the dryness in her mouth, ‘treat me like a patient. Sit. Talk to me,’ she said softly to her husband.

He sank back into the chair and she reached out her hand to him again. It was the only one she could still move. He took it and pressed it to his lips. She smiled and didn’t remind him about his views on kissing and infection control. She waited a long time and finally he spoke.