Poison

Miraj was silent for a minute. Then he turned his body to sit sideways on the couch so that his back was against the side of the couch. He took one of my hands in his and said, "Fret not, wife. I am YOUR husband. You have nothing to fear from a past flame."

"The half bottle of Whiskey you just drank suggests otherwise."

He let out a heavy sigh and said, "Eli, I am not drinking because I am pining after her. I am drinking because I don't want her to come back in my life. The years when she was in my life were the darkest years of my life and her return brings back all those memories. The idea of her arrival makes me feel like that pain and darkness will return too. I don't want it to. Not now. Not when I am about to fight my father for my son's safety."

He took a deep breath and moved a bit closer to me. He was still holding onto my hand and now he started rubbing the back of my palm with his thumb. It felt like he was trying to seek comfort in my body but I wasn't willing to give any. I just wanted him to finish this so I could put that woman behind us.

He continued, "You know that I lost my mom to cancer at fourteen. But there are deeper secrets that not many know. Everyone knew my dad had been cheating on her for a long time. She had accepted it long ago. I hated it. But I thought he would maybe show some signs that he cared about her when she dies. I was wrong. He married his mistress two days after her funeral."

I could feel it coming before he said it. I prayed it wasn't what I was thinking.

"The day my mother died, I saw my dad going into her room. He never visited her so I was suspicious. I walked up to the door and pushed it just enough to see inside. He injected something in her IV tube. I didn't know what it was but I knew it was gonna kill her. I was about to rush in when someone muffled my mouth and pulled me back. Before I could struggle further he injected me with something. If it wasn't for him stopping me that day, it would be either me or my dad alive today."

Fuck. I had experience with bad fathers but Miraj's father was a special kind of evil. He deserved all that we were gonna do to him. I started working on a special torture plan for the man in my head as Miraj continued speaking.

"When I regained consciousness I was tied to a chair. I saw that I was in Mathews' room and he was sitting on his desk looking at me. I was angry at him for stopping me and the way he did it, I believed he was involved in it too. My father had to get whatever he put into her system from somewhere. He let me scream at him and threaten him for an hour before he told me my mom would be dead by night. He asked me then how I would like to spend her last few hours, with her by her bedside or tied to a chair in his room."

Wow. The doctor didn't mince his words. My hate for Dr.Mathews was never ending. Why did I have to live between such disturbing people?

"I told him to let me go to my mother. But I also told him I would remember his betrayal. That was when he told me how he had accidentally stumbled upon a junior doctor leaving my father's study a couple days ago. He was obviously confused why my father would require another doctor when he was available. He figured it out too late but he had proof that the junior doctor had brought the poison to my father on his orders. He knew but he couldn't do anything about any of it. The one who could do something was me but I was still too young to face my father. So he had decided to stop me."

"And you believed him? He could have been working for your father then. How could you be sure he was on your side then?"

"You really don't like him, do you? Anyway, I didn't believe him. He made the choice to let my mother die. I didn't have any resources to help her and he was the only one willing to even care about her death. I didn't believe him but I needed to get to my mother so I went along with whatever he said. It wasn't till after a month when I found the junior doctor and tortured the truth out of him that I thought about believing him."