A Change of Heart (12 page)

His hand went to her hair, meaning to lift it off her face, but something held him back. Let her sleep, he told himself. She never gets enough sleep.

She raised her head. A glassy brown gaze met his. An alien gaze.

Jess. Anger surged through him. How dare she be here? Where Jen should have been.

In an instant, the sleep in her eyes cleared. Her brows drew together with concern. “How are you feeling?”

The question was too intimate. Why the hell should he feel anything at all? “I'm just fine. What are you doing in my bed?”

She pulled her arm off the bed and scooted back a little on the carpet. Technically, she wasn't in his bed, but she didn't correct him. She just wrapped her arms around her knees and drew herself in.

He got off the bed. Springing to his feet like that made the room spin. His head felt like someone had placed a bomb inside it and lit the fuse. She was next to him when he opened his eyes, steadying him with one hand and holding out a glass of water with the other.

He wanted to swipe the water from her hand and push her away, but the queasiness cut off any chance of movement. All those mornings on the ship when he had started his day bent over the pot rose up to meet him. He flew to the bathroom and emptied his stomach almost solely through his nose.

She stood behind him but she didn't touch him. Which was just as well, because being touched right now would lead to more gut emptying.

“You shouldn't be here,” he said when he was sure speaking wouldn't cause more pressurized vomit to project from him. “Seriously, I don't know what you're trying. But it's not going to happen.”

For one stretched-out, suspended moment, she looked as if he had slapped her. But only for one moment. He had the sense that he was seeing her in flashes. That she was two people, one who stood before him and another who flashed at him from behind her.

She took a step toward him and poured the glass of water she was holding into the toilet he had been hugging. Shame, because suddenly a glass of water was exactly what he needed.

“Why are you in my room anyway?”

“I'm not,” she said, sticking her chin out until, from his vantage point next to the can, the wings of her jaw seemed as sharp as knives. As sharp as the temper she was letting him see in one of those flashes. “This is not your room, it's mine. You came here last night.”

He opened his mouth to speak. She raised a hand to shut him up. The huge sweatshirt lifted around her like a balloon, not exactly ammunition for seduction. “No. I don't want to hear it. I'm going out to get some fresh air. Before I'm back please get out of my room.”

With that, she stormed out, slamming the door loud enough to indicate that the temper he'd seen simmering under her frozen-lava façade wasn't his imagination. He tried to stand up, but his body wasn't quite ready to let him off the hook yet. His stomach did another kickass backflip, and air and bile and definitely some of his esophageal lining flew hurtling into the inky-blue water. He was done with the Jack. Definitely done with this particular morning ritual, thank you very much.

He could have sworn he was letting himself into his own room last night, but he must've grabbed the duplicate key to her room. Not surprising at all, given that standing up straight had been a problem. She hadn't chastened him for it, or thrown him out on his butt. All she had done was help him and all he'd done was be a prized jerk.

He pushed himself off the pot and got himself a glass of water. Meeting his own eyes in the mirror was out of the question, but the rest of him was near impossible to recognize. There was a huge splatter of blood and dirt on one side of his shirt. He had broken into a run after leaving the bar and fallen.

He squeezed his throbbing temples. Something tugged at his elbow but he ignored it. The absolute anger blanketed over wounded dignity on Jess's face when she had asked him to get out made another bout of nausea rise inside him. He grabbed his shoes and let himself out of her room. For the first time in a long time, he had the urge to get cleaned up.

15

 

—Dr. Jen Joshi

 

 

I
f Rahul knew anything, he knew that when evidence was tampered with, it meant something really nefarious was going on and someone really high up was involved.

“You're right to smell a rat, boss!” Ramesh, his information specialist, said over the phone. He was going to lose his job if anyone found out he was digging through a private hospital's records without authorization. They both were, but this only proved that they had unearthed something. “When I first searched through the organ donor database last week, the records for Dr. Joshi's recipients listed two kidneys and eyes but that's all. Everything but a heart showed up. Which is normal, because heart transplant cases are next to nonexistent. But then I went back to check on something and suddenly there's a heart recipient and there's no record of the database being updated. Someone changed it without knowing I had already looked. If I'd been even a few days late, we wouldn't even know.”

Rahul opened the file and read the name on the recipient form for the hundredth time. “So were you able to locate this Jess Koirala?”

Ramesh's voice grew even more excited. The young recruit loved his job in that way only the really young can. Rahul wished there was a way to hold on to that. “Amazingly enough, no one by that name exists in Mumbai. It's almost as though someone came up with that name after making sure it didn't exist and then used it to falsify the record.”

“And the address?” All Rahul had asked Ramesh to find was a name so he could call Jen's husband and try again. Not that the good doctor
saab
was taking his calls. But this put a whole new angle on the case.

“The building was torn down six months ago to build a mall. It was a leave-and-license rental property and all the renters were paid off. No forwarding addresses.”

“Naturally.”

“Exactly! So, boss, the address doesn't exist, and you know what else doesn't exist?”

“Jess Koirala.”

“Exactly!”

He thanked Ramesh and left him to continue digging. But he had a feeling they weren't going to find anything more from the hospital records. First, Jen's diary had been stolen from right under his nose, then, the donor registry Jen had worked so hard to build had been erased without a trace, and now someone had tampered with Jen's health records. He'd investigated everyone from the senior-most officers to the newest
hawaldars
on his team, offered immunity if the diary showed up. But it remained gone, Jen's words as lost as the cause and the evidence she had sacrificed her life for, and now every trace of the lease on life she'd given someone was also gone.

Guilt coated his ever-present anger. He had promised to protect her when he'd sent her into the alligator's jaws. Even though it had often felt like her charging ahead while he tried to hold her back. Jen's beautiful eyes sparkled in his head as if she had just smacked him down about something and flounced out of his office.

But it wasn't simple. He was choking on red tape. One of his instructors at the academy had once told him that an IPS officer's success depended on how well he could navigate bureaucracy. With a mentor like Kirit Patil, Rahul hadn't realized how true those words were. Why was it that it took losing things before you recognized the full value of them?

He needed bodies. Without bodies, he couldn't prove that the disappearances in the slum were deaths, let alone murders to carve out organs. And without murders he had no case, and without a case, no funding or authority to investigate. He needed both to go searching for undocumented bodies. But those who didn't exist couldn't disappear.

That was how Jen had responded when he'd told her about Kimi and how they couldn't find her a match for years.

Jen had reminded him so much of Kimi. Jen had Kimi's fiery spirit. She had been what he had always known Kimi could be, once they fixed her heart. He had spent all those childhood years watching that spirit triumph every time she struggled for her next breath, every time she struggled to fight off her next fever. For Kimi and Jen, he had no choice but to keep going until he had put away the bastards who were carving up innocents for the cost of their organs.

Maybe he was looking in the wrong place. Maybe the thread to follow was Jess Koirala. All he needed to do was find Jess Koirala or at least find out who had fabricated her and why.

16

 

—Dr. Jen Joshi

 

 

“W
here the hell have you been?” Nikhil jumped up from the open stairway he was sitting on. “I've been looking everywhere for you.”

Were she a different person she might have believed that he looked worried, but she was nothing if not realistic. He was angry because she had disappeared without telling him. She didn't really care, because he had essentially accused her of trying to seduce him and asked her to get out.

But he had been in hell at the time, so she was going to let it go. Then there was the other little fact, that she had no choice but to let it go. “I'm sorry. I didn't realize how far the pharmacy was.”

Now he just looked confused. “What's wrong? Are you not feeling well?” He studied her in that way he had, as though everything but what was wrong with her was immaterial. He was such a doctor, and he wasn't even trying. She refused to let that stupid concern of his make her stupid belly clench again. Refused to let it dig up the memory of his hands on her skin, the back of his fingers pressed into her scar. “I'm fine.”

She handed him the bottle of water she was holding and tore open the packet of Alka-Seltzer she had picked up at the pharmacy. Sweetie got the worst headaches when he drank, and this always helped him. She took the bottle back, broke each large pill in half so it would fit and dropped the pieces into the bottle, and pushed it back at him.

He watched the water fizz and bubble with eyes so tortured she might as well have offered to suck his soul from him.

“I'm not a doctor, but I do know you have to drink it before the fizz is gone. Otherwise it won't work.”

He touched the bottle, but he didn't take it from her. “Actually, the fizz makes no difference to the efficacy. The fizz just helps it dissolve without a spoon.”

She tried not to roll her eyes, and failed. His eyebrows lifted the slightest bit and the hint of something like amusement dented his cheek.

She pushed the bottle into his hand. “Drink.”

He did, his throat working as he drank. His stubble dithered off and disappeared down his jaw and down his neck. The tendons on his neck were long and lean, just like the rest of him.

“You didn't have to do this,” he said when he was done.

Without responding, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a bag of lemon drops. “These are supposed to help with hangovers too.”

“Why are you doing this?” He looked at the candy, that same tortured look on his face again, as if what she was offering was so much more than just the candy.

“We have to get on the road. We need to get to her things.”

“Jen, her name is Jen.”

“I know what her name is, Nikhil. And her name
was
Jen, since we are getting technical. And before you go making all sorts of assumptions again, the only thing I want out of this. The. Only. Thing.” She gave him her hardest look. She wanted no doubt in his mind about this. “Is to find that evidence, and then I need to get back home.” To her baby.

He brought his hand to his hair, once more finding nothing to grip. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that.” He met her eyes. “In fact, I shouldn't have said any of that stuff I said before.”

Yes, he shouldn't have. “And just so you know, when I told you I was a dancer, I don't know what you understood it to mean, but I'm a chorus dancer. A backup dancer in films. I . . . I dance only for the camera . . . as part of a dance troupe . . . not . . .”

He tilted his head to one side, a curious frown folding between his brows. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I'm not a bar dancer, not, not that kind of . . .”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

She pushed away the leering faces in her head and raised her hand to stop his words. “I was not trying to get in your, in your . . . I have no interest in . . . Are you smiling?”

Sad as his eyes were, he was definitely smiling. Heaven help her, those dents in his cheeks, they were by no means little. They stripped away everything harsh in his face and transformed it. She stepped away from him, trying to get away from what that smile did to him.

“You can't even say the words. How could I, how could anyone ever think of you that way?” He looked incredulous. More than anything he could have said, even more than that smile, his incredulity pooled in her chest, wet and hot.

“Hey.” He lifted his hand but stopped it inches from her cheek and then dug it back into his pocket. “The way I behaved last night. It had nothing to do with you. That was just . . . I was just . . .”

She wasn't the only one who couldn't speak her past.

She shook the bag of lemon drops at him. “Lemon drops are great for headaches.”

“Is that your medical opinion?”

“No, that's my mummy opinion.”

He bowed his head and gave her the last word, taking the bag from her and popping one into his mouth.

“You don't have to take care of me, you know.”

“I don't carry debt well. You took care of me yesterday; now we're even.”

“Actually, you took care of me last night, so you're plus one.”

* * *

Apparently, she wasn't the only one who didn't carry debt well.

He had lied. He hadn't been looking for her everywhere when she walked to the pharmacy. The car he unlocked and threw his bag into was small and red with two doors. Not the monstrosity they had driven yesterday.

When he held the door open for her, she just stood there, sure she'd collapse to the floor if she moved.

“It's going to get pretty cold as we head north. You don't want to drive in an open car.” He left the door ajar for her, got into the driver's seat, and started the car, forcing her to move.

They sank into their seats and back into silence. He burrowed back under the shell that had been snapping on and off him so fast and relentlessly it was making her head spin. It was just as well. Because no matter how much she told herself she could do this, do anything she needed to do, in this moment, she could not open her mouth without breaking down. Not even to thank him.

This is not how she had expected to feel when they left the motel and its decrepit surroundings behind. She didn't know how she knew they were decrepit. There was none of the obvious decay of such places back home, but something about it couldn't hide the fact that money and privilege didn't reside here. Or maybe her heart just recognized beaten-down and forsaken things.

For all his silence, Nikhil's hands were a little steadier on the steering wheel today. He'd had nothing more than another mug of black coffee for breakfast. She had no idea how he survived. Apart from those poppy-seed muffins, which smelled like old ink from her uncle's table, and a few morsels from the junk food stash, she had never seen him eat.

Instead of filling his stomach, she had actually watched him empty it out a few times.

She remembered the feeling only too well. She had thrown up everything she ate for so long after what those bastards did to her, she hadn't realized that she was pregnant until she was six months along. “It's too late to get rid of the baby,” the doctor had told her with such regret that she had changed doctors. How could she let a doctor who thought of her baby that way bring him into the world?

Another pang of longing to hold Joy hit her. Between the memory of Joy's voice from when she'd called him this morning—trying so hard not to let her see how badly he wanted her to come home—and this car they were driving in, it was time for her to shut down all the rawness she was allowing herself.

The only blessing was Nikhil's silence next to her.

She tried to shut out all thought, focus on her breath, and center herself. But today, she couldn't manage it. The longer they drove in silence, the harder it became. Between a past she couldn't seem to put away, a present she couldn't control, and a future she couldn't avoid, she couldn't shut her mind down. She wanted to shake Jen for all the things she had said. She wanted to kill Nikhil for living up to each one of those things.

“How's your head?” she asked, resisting the urge to twist her fingers together.

He shrugged. She gripped her hands together and tried to accept that his silence was going to be impenetrable.

“What happened to you?” he asked, just as she was easing back into the silence again.

“I knew you'd had too much to drink, so I asked the receptionist where I could find some Alka-Seltzer and the place was two miles away.”

He threw her an unsure look, trying to gauge whether she had really misunderstood his question, and decided she knew exactly what he'd been asking. He let it go, nonetheless. “So this car helps, then?”

This time she shrugged.

“Does it help to talk?”

She should have said no and shut him down, but she couldn't. “I wouldn't know.”

“Want to try?”

She didn't respond.

“Tell me about Joy.”

Despite herself she smiled. “What do you want to know about him?”

“I don't know. What's he like? Is he a handful?”

She almost laughed at that. “No, quite the opposite actually. He carries the weight of the world on his shoulders.”

“He's a lot like his mother then.”

“Oh no, he's nothing like me. He's affectionate, full of love. He's a cuddler; he loves to be held. It's really hard to be sad around him. He's also incredibly funny and wise.”

“And this is your seven-year-old we're talking about, not his dad, right?”

Her gut clenched.

She usually told people Joy's father was dead. That he had died in a car accident in Calcutta. Which is why she had moved to Mumbai. She usually enjoyed filling in the details of his death in colorful and gory detail, at least in her own head.

“Hey, I'm sorry. I was making a joke, or trying to make one.”

“I know.”

“So, tell me more about Joy.”

“Think of the most perfect little boy you can imagine. Sometimes I think he's more perfect than any child should feel the need to be. He's caring and kind and sees beauty in everything.” She wrapped her arms around herself and imagined his body melting into her, his baby breath collecting on her neck. “Even the smallest little things, like a twin pod in an orange, or a centipede crawling on our floor, the smallest little thing just excites him so much he almost explodes with it.

“We had a sparrow lay three eggs behind the railing in our balcony earlier this year. Every single day for a week, he would run home from school and run to the balcony to see if they had hatched. And once Raja . . . he, umm . . . lives with us, told Joy that the eggs were close to hatching, Joy just refused to leave the balcony.

“He spent every moment out of school there. He ate there, did his homework there, basically he'd just stare and stare at the sparrow sitting on her eggs until he fell asleep right there. One day he looks up at me and says, ‘Mamma, isn't it funny, that I sit and sit on your lap, and the mama bird sits and sits on her babies?'” She smiled at the memory. “I had to carry him to bed after he fell—”

She stopped short, and the strangest jolt sparked through her heart. Nikhil was smiling. Not the halfhearted, I-think-it-might-bea-smile kind of smile, but a wide, flat-out smile.

By all that was holy, how on earth had she forgotten what those dimples could do to his face? Two full-fledged whirlpools dug deep into his stubbly cheeks and his eyes crinkled and shone.

“And?”

“And what?”

“And what happened when the eggs hatched? Did he get to watch?”

She swallowed. “Yes. First thing in the morning when he was brushing his teeth. He pulled me out of the kitchen, dragged Raja out of bed, he didn't want anyone to miss it. We were both late for work that day, and I think he missed the first half of school.”

“That's amazing.” He was still smiling and it was like watching the sun break through clouds in bright, sharp columns of light. “That you let him miss school for that.”

“Heaven help me, can you imagine if he had missed it? I had a good mind to crack the eggs myself at one point and let the baby birds out. I swear I lived in fear of it happening while he was at school that week.”

“I don't think Aie—that's what I call my mom—ever let me miss school. I think I had perfect attendance almost all twelve years.”

“You never got sick as a child?”

“Well, I would have had to be in the hospital or in a coma for Aie to let me stay home from school. Even then she would have rolled my bed into the classroom if she could. Education for my parents is like a religion. My mother is a teacher, and I mean she doesn't just teach, she has the genetic composition of an educator, you know what I mean?” He raised an eyebrow at her. “What?”

She found her hand pressed to her mouth. “Mine too. My mother was a teacher too.”

“Great, so you're familiar with the Homework Before You Get to Breathe theory of parenting.”

* * *

She giggled. Nikhil could never have imagined such a thing, but it sounded so natural on her he wondered why he was so surprised by it. That light that had engulfed her when she talked about her son lit her up from the inside.