I rolled over to see her concerned eyes searching my face. I thought it looked like she had been crying.

‘I’m fine, Mom.’ I tried to sit up in the hospital bed, but the room began spinning again. I leaned back, willing my body to respond to what I wanted it to do. I was far from fine.

‘Kavya found you,’ she said, holding on to my hand tightly. ‘You were on the floor in your apartment.’ I nodded my head, knowing that a lecture was coming.

‘How did she get in?’

My mother shrugged. That detail was unimportant to her. ‘Dad is here, speaking to the doctor downstairs. Jhanvi, you could have died.’ She stifled a sob.

My dad entered the room then, and a doctor followed him in. Their words sounded jumbled: my liver was suffering, my body shutting down. I was thin, too thin, and dehydration was affecting my kidneys. All I heard was that I had failed, once more at the simplest of things, at something I was born with. Beauty.

‘You need to take care of yourself now.’ My father’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. ‘This is serious, Jhanvi. Next time you could die.’ I wanted to cry, not because of my own mortality, but because I felt humiliated. Like I was a failure.

‘Where’s Kavya?’ I asked my mom, wanting to see her, needing to apologise for everything I had said to her.

My father perched himself on the side of my bed. ‘She’s downstairs, she hasn’t left since you were admitted.’

‘We had a fight, I said horrible things to her. Why would she come to my apartment? Why would she save me?’ My mother gasped at my words, not wanting to believe what was coming out of my mouth. Tears welled in my father’s eyes.

‘Because we all love you, Jhanvi,’ my dad’s voice broke the silence in the room. ‘Is it so difficult to believe that there are people who would be devastated if you were no longer …’ He couldn’t say the last words. I turned my head away from him, not wanting to see the pain I was inflicting on my parents, knowing that they had dropped everything to get here.

I saw Kavya coming down the corridor, although I didn’t need to physically see her. I felt her presence in the same way that I did when I collapsed. Kavya was tired, and I could see she had been crying.

‘May I come in?’ She looked at my parents, asking their permission to see me but also apologising for intruding on what she thought was a private moment between us. My mom nodded, smiling slightly.

‘Maybe you can talk some sense into her,’ she said.

‘Doubtful,’ Kavya said and smiled down at me. ‘But I will try.’ She sat down on my bed and ran her fingers through my hair, the way she always did when I felt down.