Secrets Hidden In Time (Time #1)

84 | The Man With Grey Eyes

In the corner, erect on their feet, are two more people, one woman and one man.

Shubhankar Dogra doesn't utter a word. Meanwhile, his wife marches towards Mahadevan, clutching his forearm, concern in her eyes, noticing his puffy eyes and the dark circles underneath, "How is she now?"

The Dogra patriarch maintains his silence, finishing their conversation with just three words. "Stable and better."

Then he evades her, not even meeting her eyes.

Walking past her, he opens the door of his wife's hospital room wide, entering inside with his son.

Everyone else follows.

"Mamma!" The toddler calls out loud, his lips stretched wide over his ruddy and chubby face, the moment his eyes land on his mother. "Mamma!"

Two obsidian orbs, the left one surrounded with a black lining, avert themselves from the window a few meters away to settle on the toddler.

The owner of those eyes, the Dogra matriarch, lies on the hospital bed, covered with a white blanket from top to bottom, leaving only her head for everyone to see, which too is bandaged.

The weariness on her face is visible, yet her crystal-clear eyes make the weariness invisible.

She smiles as her husband inches closer to her. He settles Anirudh next to her on the bed. Then, without a word, he helps her in taking her uninjured arm out of the blanket. For some reason he avoids looking into her eyes. Not a single word slips out of his mouth.

But she lets it go, focusing on Anirudh instead.

The toddler mewls. He relaxes in her hold, his soft roseate lips puckering out to form a pout as he buries his head against her chest, clamping his eyes shut.

She feels a bit of pain even though she puts only one of her arms to use, but both of her hands quiver for a completely different reason altogether.

Her hands quiver not from weakness but from the sacred weight of finally holding what she had longed for in those grueling hours: her child. Her son. Her baby.

For this doesn't seem like it is the embrace of the Dogra matriarch. Nor did this embrace belong to a civil servant.

This, in fact, is the embrace of a soul who loves without conditions: the soul of a mother.

The mother-son duo stay like this for over a quarter of an hour as the kid blabbers all sorts of things for his mother to listen to, which she does with doe eyes and keen ears.

Indrani, feeling awkward, slips out of the room, and witnessing this, Aridaman also walks out of the room, giving privacy to the couple.

Only Mahadevan, Vijaypath, Karim, Manasvini, and Anirudh remain.

Fearing that the weight of the kid might put pressure on her torso, Mahadevan detaches Anirudh from Hinduja and swiftly walks out of the room.

The mother looks on with doleful eyes as the child thrashes his arms in his father's hold, crying out loud with his lips puckering out and his wet eyelashes moving rapidly, but Mahadevan carries forward with his actions without any relent.

Hinduja eventually calms herself and meets her sibling's eyes. They have a soft exchange of unsaid words. He's the only person who was allowed to enter her chamber and meet her apart from the physicians from the past few days, since he's a surgeon himself.

Following this exchange, he too walks out of the chamber.

Manasvini and Shubhankar step forward silently, as the former caresses the left side of Hinduja's face while tears slide down her cheeks.