Someone Like You (22 page)

My phone rings loudly. At first, I think I am dreaming, but then I open my eyes and realize that it’s not a dream. Pia looks at me with confused eyes. I turn to look at the clock which says 3:45 a.m.

‘Who’s it?’ she murmurs, half asleep.

‘Unknown number,’ I say and take the call, hoping it’s a wrong number. ‘Hello?’ I croak into the speaker.

‘Hello? Is this Niharika?’ a male voice speaks frantically.

‘Yes. May I know who this is?’ I ask. My heartbeat increases, just by hearing the tone of the voice.
Something bad has happened.

‘Niharika, this is Mandar. Listen, I need to tell you something—there has been an accident … a bike accident on the highway outside the college. Tanmay … he is seriously hurt.’

‘
WHAT?
When? And … how? Bike accident? Tanmay doesn’t drive a bike! Where is he?’ I shoot out an array of questions at him, barely breathing. I see Pia sit up on her bed.

‘It happened a couple of hours ago. Someone took them to the hospital as soon as it happened. We got to know about it and rushed to the hospital too …’

‘But you weren’t with him? I thought he was with you!’

‘He was. But then he left for his hostel. And we heard about the accident shortly after. They were on their way back …’ Mandar explains.

‘How … how is he?’ I ask what I have been dreading the most.

‘They are not saying anything yet. He is in the ICU … in a critical condition … I thought I should let you know.’

‘Which hospital?’

‘City Hospital,’ he replies.

I hang up the call and look at Pia. I am too numb to think clearly.

‘Niharika? What is it? Who was that? What happened?’ Pia shakes me and asks.

‘Tanmay … we have to go to the hospital,’ I whisper.

‘
What?
What happened? Is he okay?’

‘Let’s go,’ I say, as tears overflow from my eyes. Pia’s looks at me in sheer horror.

We run.

Forty minutes later, we find ourselves outside the hospital. The journey from our room to the gate of the hospital has been hellish. After I told Pia about the accident, we rushed out of our rooms, only to get stopped at the hostel gate. The guard there refused to let us through. We pleaded, we begged, we shouted—nothing worked. When the warden came out, we had to beg her to let us go. In the end, she agreed to, but only if she came with us. To think that she doubted that we were playing her, when in reality, our friend was dying in a hospital, was sickening.

Once in the car, the warden shot questions at us, to which we turned a deaf ear. Pia looked like she would collapse any second. All the blood had left her face and she looked corpse-white. I, on the other hand, had trouble breathing. While
I was already scared shitless about Tanmay, I also had another impending fear …
What if Karthik was in the accident too?

Even in my semi-dazed condition, I distinctly remembered Mandar saying, ‘Someone took
them
to the hospital …’ And knowing about the fascination Tanmay has for Karthik’s bike, I can only imagine that it was Karthik’s bike that was in the accident.
Who was driving? Does Tanmay even know how to drive that monster of a bike?
There was complete silence in the car, once the warden realized that we weren’t exactly in a chatty mood.

Pia had sat in the car, dazed, shocked and staring out of the window blankly. My heartbeat had reached a new high. I could not talk to Pia because she was already on the brink of tears. She seemed to be in shock. Gruesome images flooded my head and I felt extremely agitated. I had closed my eyes and tried to shut out everything. It had not helped. The journey brought me to the brink of a cardiac arrest. I felt as though I was dying.

As soon as the car stops at the hospital gate, Pia and I jump out and start running towards the building. We ask at the reception and take the elevator to the wrong floor. We run three flights of stairs downwards to get to the Emergency floor. We look around and we know that we are at the right place; the whole football team is loitering around here. We spot a door, which says ICU and has a red light above it. We run to it, breathing heavily, sweating profusely, looking like shit.

‘Is he in here …?’ I ask a guy sitting with his head sunk in his hands. He looks vaguely familiar and his dirtied clothes confirm that he is someone from the football team. He nods.

Pia, who is still clutching my right arm, has started crying a little. We try to peep inside, but cannot see anything. There are drawn curtains on the glass door. I let out a deep, troubled breath and turn around.

‘What is going on?’ I ask Mandar, who comes running from somewhere and is panting. His eyes look bloodshot, and it is obvious that he is very drunk. But his eyes have a strange alertness too, like someone who is forced to be in his senses, even after consuming barrels of alcohol. Anyone would be shaken back to his senses, by such horrific news.

‘Did you see him? Was he hurt really badly?’ Pia asks, before Mandar has a chance to answer.

‘I … his head was bleeding and looked pretty bad … I mean—I’m sure he will be okay. I just … he wasn’t wearing a helmet …’ Mandar says. He turns to me and tells me that Tanmay’s bike hit a divider while he was on his way back to his hostel. He was drunk and must have been driving really fast.

‘What are the doctors saying?’ I ask. Pia is holding my hand very tightly and has dug her head into my shoulder. I wish I could tell her it will all be okay.

‘They are not saying much … they are operating, and will take time to figure out the actual damage,’ Mandar says.

‘They are
operating
? He’s into an operation? What kind of operation? Do his parents know yet? Who signed the papers?’ I freak out.

‘I don’t know! Someone from the team, maybe. There was a lot of blood loss … they needed to take care of it immediately …’

‘I … this is just so …’ I try to put it in words, but nothing comes out. My head is filled with a zillion different questions. And the only one who can provide some of the answers is a guy we are not very fond of—the football captain. I look up at Mandar again. I don’t know if he’s a good person or not, but he certainly does look very concerned about Tanmay right now. That’s good enough for me. I take a deep breath to calm myself. It doesn’t work. ‘I didn’t even know Tanmay knew how to drive a bike … whose bike
was it? Who was with him?’ I ask slowly, already dreading the response.

‘It was Karthik’s bike. But I guess Tanmay was driving …’ Mandar says and my mind blanks out. ‘Don’t know why anyone would drive that bike … it’s a piece of junk. The thing is a bloody death-trap …’

Tanmay
and
Karthik. I take support of the wall, as my knees suddenly feel too weak. My breathing gets ragged, as images of Karthik flash through my head. That first night in the mess, when I heard his voice and tried to look at him, using an old, scratched steel plate. The second time in the canteen, when he saved me and Tanmay from that beast Chetan and his cronies. The guy I stole glances at that day at McDonald’s, the football match, when he dazzled the entire college, that bike ride with him to have chai at a roadside stall. And then the fights—first for making Tanmay drink and then for interfering between me and Akshat. Last time I met him was at the football field, when he had wanted to say something, but I had not given him a chance, and left him there, waiting for me to turn back.

It suddenly hits me that if something happens to him … I did not even give him a chance to say what he wanted to say. My mouth turns very dry and my throat feels parched. I can’t think clearly. But I have to know …

‘How is he? Karthik …?’ I manage to whisper.

Mandar looks at me, with a puzzled expression on his face. ‘Karthik? He was not in the accident.’

‘What? But you said it was Karthik’s bike Tanmay was driving …?’

‘Yes, it was his bike. But Tanmay had it with him before he got to the party. Karthik was not there,’ he explains. He tells me that Karthik apparently had let Tanmay take his bike for the night, since he did so well in the match yesterday. A little after midnight, Tanmay had left with another guy—Ratul,
another player from the football team—and they got the news of the accident shortly after that.

I let out a sigh of relief.
Karthik is okay.
But almost instantly, another emotion overtakes me.
Fury.
Why does Karthik not realize what he is doing to Tanmay? I can forgive him for trying to interfere with mine and Akshat’s matters, but I cannot tolerate him harming Tanmay. First he teaches him to drink and now the bike? He knew Tanmay would be drunk at the party, and he still let him have that bike for the night? How can he be so careless? If something happens to Tanmay …

‘How is that other guy? Ratul …?’ I ask meekly.

‘He is in the ICU too.’

Pia can’t listen to any more of it and pulls me away. I make her sit with me on one of those steel benches lining the hospital walls. She clutches me tight and keeps asking me whether Tanmay will be all right.

‘He will be okay,’ I keep whispering in her ears as she keeps on crying. After an hour, tired, she goes off to sleep. As a few more hours pass and the doctors finish their operation, they come out and one of them walks towards us. It is 8.30 in the morning. Everyone, except Mandar, another player, Pia and I, have left. Pia wakes up with a jerk and we all get up and huddle around the doctor, praying silently for good news.

‘How is he, doctor?’ Mandar asks.

‘We are trying our best, but he is still critical. There has been some severe head injuries and he has lost too much blood,’ the doctor says.

‘But he is going to be okay, right?’ Pia asks.

‘We can’t say anything now. We are thinking about how to proceed and may need to go in for a surgery immediately …’

‘Again?’
Pia asks.

‘But wasn’t he in an operation just now?’ I ask.

‘Yes, but we are talking about major surgery here,’ the doctor says and looks at us seriously. ‘Isn’t there an adult here? His parents? Or guardians? In case we decide to perform the surgery, we will need someone to give us a go-ahead …’

‘His parents will be here soon,’ Mandar says.

‘Good. We’ll be back in a while and let you know what we think is the best way to handle this from here. Ask his parents to be here soon,’ the doctor says and leaves.

‘Tanmay’s parents are coming? You told them about the accident?’ I turn to Mandar and ask, as soon as the doctor is out of sight. I had known that the accident was serious, but until this moment I had been thinking that Tanmay will be all right soon. The words ‘surgery’ and ‘parents’ now make me realize how much I have been underestimating the turn of events.

‘Yes, it looked serious, so we informed them immediately. They must be about to reach anytime now,’ Mandar says. ‘I don’t know how to answer their questions …’

‘It will be better if we handle all that. They might see you and blame you for it, since you were the ones he went out with,’ I suggest.

‘Blame
us
? They should blame that asshole—Karthik. It was
his
bike. Why did he even have to give Tanmay his bike? He knew we were going to get drunk. That piece of junk. Drunk or not drunk, anyone could be in an accident in that shitty bike.’

‘Let’s not think about all that now. You can go home. I am sure we can manage his parents,’ I say. After a little more discussion, I convince them to go home. They give me the numbers of Tanmay’s parents and leave. I am left in the hospital and my mind goes back to what Mandar just said. It was Karthik’s fault. He is right in more senses than he knew himself. Had he not taken Tanmay drinking out on the day they had first won, this would not have happened. Had
he not given Tanmay the bike, this wouldn’t have happened. Had he not helped Tanmay make it to the team, none of this would have happened …

My mind battles with images of Tanmay—smiling, adjusting his funny spectacles and then to an image of him confined to a bed with severe head injuries and multiple broken bones. They do not let us see him, and I dread the moment when we will eventually have to. I don’t think I can bear seeing him in the condition that he is in. I close my eyes and pray for that cute smiling face.

I swear to God that if anything happens to him, I will kill Karthik.