I pulled away. “No. How much longer can we do this? I’m tired of creeping around like we’re doing something wrong, like our relationship doesn’t mean anything. And do you think people at work haven’t noticed already? Cat’s out of the bag, Ravi. Let’s tell your parents and enjoy this the way we deserve to.”
Then he said those awful words again: “I can’t.”
For the next ten years I saw Ravi mostly from a distance. We did our best to remain professional at work, since we shared patients all the time, and I tried not to dwell on what he was thinking when we were forced to discuss our cases. Such is the curse of working in a small hospital like St Agatha’s. I knew he saw my eyes straying down to his moustache on occasion, where I noticed the grey hairs multiplying. I said nothing when he lost a significant amount of weight over several months (though of course I pondered which exercise regimen he followed, or indeed if he was sick and hadn’t thought to tell me). I even went to Pride by myself one year - sans sunglasses - and hoped that he saw me on the BBC.
I saw less of him over time. He was promoted to Chief Medical Officer for the entire hospital and shifted his cardiology practice to purely private clinics. When we did encounter each other at St Agatha’s, it was always brief and professional. We became strangers for a time, but I was sure he never married, never even dated anyone else; he knew that year of his life with me was perhaps the only time when he had been himself, and that it was the closest he’d ever been to the happiness he deserved. He knew this, and that was why he waited.
the story is from mr.Shuvayon Mukherje
on blog.reedsy.com
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