"Oi. sleepyhead! wake up. your tea is getting cold." Sophie's voice sliced through the crimson fog of Aman's dream. He woke up with a violent jolt, his forehead drenched in a cold sweat. His breath came in ragged, shallow gasps, and his hands wouldn't stop trembling.
"Chuckles". That familiar mocking vibration in his skull. "Funny isn't it? How a man who carves open body is s easily shattered by a little dream." Aman looked up at Sophie. The first thing he saw, the only thing he could focus on, was the piercing blue of her eyes. In an instant, the terror of the operating room faded.
He felt a profound calmness wash over him like a traveler who had been dying of thirst finally stumbling upon an endless ocean. He didn't realize that ocean water no matter how beautiful, is salt and poison to those who drink it. "Thanks Sophie", he rasped, his voice dry. "I've always liked the tea you make."
"Yeah, yeah whatever, just drink it," she said her, tone dismissive but her eyes staying fixed on him, "i'm leaving now." "Wait come on," Aman said trying to regain his usual playful footing. He reached out and poked her cheek." At least stay and make me some dinner?"
"Oh fuck off!" she laughed swatting his hand away with a smirk. "Drink your tea and make your own food, you lazy dork." "Eh fine." Aman looked down at the mug. The liquid was dark streaming. And normal. "As if he would notice," "As if he could see the green ghost hidden in the brown."
Aman drank the tea in one long gulp. Almost immediately a heavy, velvet, like calm settled into his muscles. His eyelids felt like they were made of lead. 'You know Sophie.....every time you make me tea, It makes me so....sleepy," he murmured, his head collapsing back in the sofa.
"Shut up dork. Just go to bed." Aman didn't argue. He stumbled toward his bedroom, collapsing onto the mattress as the world turned to black. The apartment fell into a heavy artificial silence. On the bedside table sat the wall-clock Sophie had given him years ago. It was still broken.
Aman hadn.t even got the chance to install the batteries. Sophie stepped into the bedroom, moving silently across the floor. She looked down at Aman's sleeping form for a long moment before her gaze drifted to the clock. She reached out and picked it up, her fingers tracing the frame. A small, chilling smile played on her lips. Suddenly, the silence was broken. Tick, tock, tick, tock/
Without batteries, without repairs, the clock began to breathe again.
Aman had succumbed to darkness long before Sophie left. She had moved through his room like a phantom, draped a blanket over his shivering frame, and placed a lingering kiss to his forehead before vanishing into the Banaras night.
He didn't wake up for twelve hours straight, he lay in a state of suspended animation, a sleep so deep it felt less like rest and more like coma. When the sun finally peeked through the window next morning, it felt like an intruder curious to see if the doctor was still among the living. It was 8:00AM when his alarm when his alarm finally cut through the heavy silence.
"Good morning to me," Aman croaked, his voice thick with sleep. He stumbled out of his bedroom, rubbing the crust from his eyes, but he stopped dead in the hallway. The air was filled with a familiar rhythmic pulse. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. He looked at the wall. The clock was hanging there, its pendulum swinging with perfect precision.
"Huh, i didn't hang that back up. And how is it even working? The question flickered in his mind for a moment, but his groggy brain pushed it aside. "Sophie it must have been Sophie. She probably put the batteries in while i was passed out". After that he moved into the kitchen to start his morning ritual. His hands moved on autopilot, reaching into a jar he didn't remember opening. He pulled out a shriveled, brown plant, dry and brittle looking as dead as the desert. Without a second thought, he tossed it into the pot with the tea leaves and sugar.
The transformation was instant. The tea bled a deep, sickly green. "Ugh. I hate this color", Aman muttered staring at the brew. "It looks more then medicine then breakfast." Still, he poured a cup and carried it to the sofa. He sank into the cushions and fished a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. The flare of the lighter was the only spark of heat in the room. He took a long drag, the smoke curling around his head like a silver shroud.
"Ah...that's the feeling." He sat there, lost in the green stream and the grey smoke, until sudden shrill scream of his phone shattered the peace. He checked the caller id, It was from the hospital.
"Hello?" "Aman sir! please you have to hurry!" it was Nikita, the student nurse who worked under his wing. Her voice was thin, trembling with a level of terror that Aman had never heard in a clinical setting. "Nikita? slow down. What happened?" "Sir it is regarding the patient from yesterday, there are some complications. I can't explain this on the phone, i suggest you come to the hospital sir,