Inaaya's POV
The day didn't end — it dragged.
Like something clinging to the hem of her coat, Inaaya carried the weight of Aleena's remarks all the way down the corridor. Her reflection in the passing glass panels looked like a stranger — tense jaw, downturned eyes, a crease between her brows that hadn't been there a few weeks ago.
She didn't know where she was walking until she heard the soft murmur of voices down the hallway — near Aaryan's office.
She paused.
The door was open.
And inside, framed by amber lamplight and quiet rain on the windows, Aleena stood beside Aaryan's desk.
Inaaya froze, barely breathing.
Aleena was smiling — soft, attentive, her fingers gently resting on the table as she leaned a fraction closer.
Aaryan said something inaudible.
Aleena laughed — a light, throaty sound. Then, her hand grazed his sleeve.
Inaaya's heart stilled.
From where she stood, the moment looked... intimate. Not romantic exactly, but familiar. Like an old pattern slipping back into place.
Her fingers curled around the edge of the wall. She knew she shouldn't be standing here. Shouldn't be watching. But she couldn't walk away.
Aaryan didn't smile.
That struck her more than anything.
He simply looked at Aleena with that impassive, tired gaze he always wore when enduring something obligatory. Polite. Distant. Civil.
He stepped away to file a document, barely looking at her again.
But Inaaya had already turned.
The sound of her own footsteps echoing against the corridor tiles was somehow louder than the thunder rumbling outside.
⸻
She skipped dinner.
When Aryav texted asking if she was joining the post-op debrief, she said she had notes to finish. Then she stared at her screen for a full ten minutes, unmoving.
Finally, she packed a few essentials into her tote, slipped out the side entrance, and made her way toward the hospital intern dorms.
The receptionist blinked in surprise when Inaaya requested a room.
"I... just have back-to-back shifts this week," Inaaya explained. "It's easier to stay here. Saves time."
It was a weak lie. But the woman didn't question it.
Inside the narrow dorm room — white walls, a thin mattress, and buzzing ceiling light — Inaaya sat on the bed and stared at her hands.
Why did she feel so small?
She thought she had moved past this — the gnawing self-doubt, the shadow Aleena cast just by entering a room. But today proved otherwise.
Aleena didn't even have to try. She merely existed — with her silken voice and pristine record and connections that stretched through every boardroom crack — and Inaaya felt her own roots shake.
And now...
Now there was Aaryan.
She hadn't touched him in weeks. Not really. Not since the night he'd fallen asleep on the couch, head tilted toward the sound of her voice without hearing it.
Something had been pulling between them since the Code Blue. She didn't know if it was grief or guilt or something more fragile.
But whatever it was, it was slipping.
And she wasn't sure she could hold it together while the floor kept shifting under her.
⸻
The next morning, she skipped the usual breakfast table near Aaryan's office. Walked the longer way around the emergency wing. Didn't look up when he passed her in the hallway, even when she sensed his glance lingering.
And when he asked — quietly, later — "Did you sleep at the hospital last night?" she answered without turning:
"I had work. It was easier."
A pause. She didn't look at his face.
"Okay," he said simply.
She hated how much that hurt.
⸻
Days passed like that. A blur.
She avoided the rooftop. Avoided eye contact in boardrooms. Buried herself in patient cases.
But she couldn't silence the voice inside her that whispered, She fits into his world. You don't.
And though she'd never say it aloud — not to herself, not even in her thoughts — a part of her had always feared that she was just a placeholder.
That if Aleena had wanted him back... maybe he would've said yes.
⸻
Late one night, after a long shift, Inaaya walked into the surgical wing to find Aleena sitting alone on the consultation bench, flipping through notes.
It was late. Too late for polite presence.
She nearly turned around. But Aleena looked up.
Their eyes met.
"Inaaya," Aleena said gently. "Are you avoiding me?"
Inaaya blinked. "I've been working."
"Of course. You always do." Aleena smiled. Then tilted her head. "You're staying in the intern dorms now?"
How did she even know?
"I didn't realize I needed to inform you of my sleeping arrangements," Inaaya said, tone calm but clipped.
Aleena chuckled lightly. "Touché."
She set her file aside and folded her hands.
"I hope you're not upset about yesterday," she said. "I wasn't undermining you. I was only trying to offer a different lens."
Inaaya wanted to say something sharp. Wanted to tell her she saw through the velvet words and soft hands. But instead, she asked:
"What did you want from Aaryan?"
Aleena blinked.
"In his office," Inaaya clarified. "What were you talking about?"
A pause.
Then Aleena's lips curved slightly.
"He's an old friend," she said softly. "Sometimes it's nice to talk to someone who remembers who you used to be... before the war."
Inaaya couldn't respond to that.
She turned and walked away.
⸻
The on-call room wasn't quiet — not really. The fluorescent light overhead buzzed with a low, maddening hum, and somewhere in the background, a distant ECG monitor beeped steadily, like it knew no other rhythm but survival.
Inaaya sat on the edge of the cot, still in her scrubs. Her stethoscope was looped loosely around her neck, and her fingers picked absently at the threading of the worn bedsheet beneath her.
She hadn't gone home again.
For the third time this week.
There were messages and calls from aaryan.
But she didn't feel like talking to him.
Aaryan: "Got out of OR. Heading to board meeting. Let me know if you need anything."
Inaaya: "I'm fine."
Aaryan: " i'll be late today, don't cook i'll bring home some takeout .
Inaaya: covering of for Mina ,busy.
She said to herself that she was okay.
But she wasn't.
⸻
It's been a week now.
She didn't know what she was waiting for.
An accusation? A confrontation? Or worse — indifference?
She had told herself it didn't matter.
That staying here was just...easier. More efficient.
But the truth?
The truth was she didn't want to see them together again.
Aaryan and Aleena.
His silence when she brushed his shoulder. His lack of protest.
His face — unreadable.
Like it didn't matter anymore what Inaaya thought.
⸻
She had caught him glancing her way in the hallway earlier. Just for a second. And she had looked straight past him. Pretended not to see.
That should've stung him. It should have meant something.
But he didn't stop her.
He didn't even try.
⸻
What was she even doing here?
A forced marriage. A fractured family.
And her — playing doctor in someone else's war.
It was foolish to think he saw her. Really saw her.
He probably pitied her. That was all.
Why else would he keep asking her to come home with that practiced politeness, like a man doing his moral duty?
Why else would he say nothing when Aleena touched his arm like it belonged to her?
⸻
She pressed the heel of her palm to her chest — that aching, restless spot under her ribs. The place she couldn't explain to herself.
"Get it together," she muttered.
But she didn't.
She just stayed there, staring at the sterile floor, the space between her and Aaryan growing more unbearable by the hour.
⸻
Outside, the sky cracked open with the promise of a coming storm.
Inside her, it already had.
That night, she dreamed of drowning.
Of shouting in rooms where no one heard her. Of walking through corridors where doors shut just as she reached them. Of Aaryan, sitting in the dark, unreadable, distant — while Aleena whispered something in his ear she couldn't hear.
When she woke, the dorm room light flickered once.
And outside, the hallway felt colder than it should.
⸻
"I am disappearing," she wrote in her notebook later that day. "And I don't know if anyone's noticed yet."