[SilverArrow]

The days after the worst of the fever settled into a quieter, heavier rhythm.

Rakesh could leave the bed now. He could walk to the bathroom without help, sit on the sofa for half an hour at a stretch, and on the better mornings even reach the kitchen and pour his own glass of water. But the improvement was fragile. His eyes stayed puffy. Any longer than a short walk left his legs trembling. Sitting upright for too long made the fatigue roll back over him like a thick net. He moved through the flat carefully, always aware of how easily his body could still fail him.

Monica and Ranga had fallen into an unspoken division of labour. Ranga handled the outside work— grocery runs, medicine refills, the occasional trip to the diagnostic centre for follow-up blood work. Monica on the other hand cooked, timed the tablets, changed the sheets, and kept the quiet, practical order of the house.
Rakesh watched them from the sofa or from the doorway of his room. He saw the easy way Ranga set the grocery bags on the counter and how Monica, without looking up from the stove, told him which items needed to be put in the fridge.

At night his fear grew teeth.

He would wake in the dark after a filthy nightmare with his heart already racing. The worst fear he had.
Monica having sex with Ranga in their master bedroom!


The dream was always vivid enough that the residual fever-sweat on his skin felt like someone else’s. He would push himself upright, wait for the dizziness to pass, and walk the short distance down the hallway on unsteady legs. The master bedroom door was usually left ajar so the air could circulate. He would push it open with his fingertips, pulse hammering, prepared for the worst.

Every time he found the same thing.

Monica asleep alone on her side of the bed, one arm tucked under the pillow, breathing evenly. The second side of the mattress empty and undisturbed. No second person in the house. No tangled sheets of the kind he had seen that afternoon.
Only his wife, only his Monica whom he loved so much!

sleeping the ordinary sleep of someone who had worked all day and still carried the quiet weight of looking after an unwell husband.

He would stand in the dark for long like a ghost appreciating the beauty of his sleeping wife.
Then he would tell himself like a bipolar maniac, as he had told himself every night that week, that the fever and the medicines were still inventing things.


Ranga and Monica are just business partners, or at most friends. Nothing more.
He would turn, walk back to his own bed, and lie awake listening to the distant sound of the fan until sleep finally returned.


And the next night, again he would stand silently in the dark after the same nightmare like that same deranged ghost silently observing Monica from the edge of the door.


In the morning, the nightmare would vanish leaving Rakesh confused.
Does he walk in his sleep ?

Why does he stand on the edge of the door and silently observe Monica ? Is he awake that time ? Or is it actually the dream working over time ?
Does he really do that every day ? Why is he so suspicious if there is no sign of Ranga at night ?