Rajjo leaned on the counter and whispered, her eyes dancing bright like an excited child up to a trick, her disheveled curls framing the innocence on her face, ‘There is a woman crying, huddled down the corridor and a man appearing on the second floor before bursting into flames and decapitated shadows wandering through the halls at night. What happened here?’ The scared Mary took a step back. ‘Perhaps it was an execution hall a long time back?’ Mary was rooted to the spot. Was she playing games with her – was it public knowledge that years and years ago there was a military hospital here, and then a burial ground before this swanky hospital was constructed. It was a well-kept secret she knew since she worked here for the last twenty years. It was time to take a break from this floor, or perhaps from this hospital. Before Mary could turn away Rajjo added, ‘You know why you keep putting on weight on that belly of yours lately? Because you can’t stomach your guilt! Let it go. You made a mistake and you have been forgiven. He says he knew.’ Rajjo walked back to the room with her dreamy eyes.

Mary’s heart was in her mouth and she had a flash of her dying husband on the hospital bed. He had looked at her with so much love as he squeezed her hand. All Mary could think about was that one night when she slept with his brother who was visiting them. The carefree younger brother with youth and dimples, charm and cigarettes, who she knew from college. They could have been college sweethearts but he went away and she married the elder brother instead. And many years later, as Mary and her husband battled through a quagmire in their relationship, he had came along one night. Wine on his breath, love on his sleeve, Mary succumbed with an aching heart. She guarded the secret as a dragon would a gold treasure, and even at her husband’s deathbed she would not let it out. It ate her insides, it ate her heart, and she wished she had told him before he died. Rajjo’s whisperes echoed in her ear, ‘He says he knew, he whispered it in my dead ear.’

Mary stared at Rajjo who quietly turned the corridor. No one saw Mary in the hospital again. They said when she left the hospital her laughter rang all the way till the parking lot. And her tears soaked her uniform. She was at peace.