Terminal.

She looked me in the eye. Held me with them for a few seconds before looking away. She must have been thinking about this deeply. About me, deeply. I felt like asking her if I was troubled for real. Then that urge got very urgent. As she was looking away, she looked peaceful. Strands of long shiny hair fell on her face, she didn't care enough to tuck them behind her ears. It was sunny and windy. And when it is both sunny and windy, there is always an impending danger in the air. I came back to my coffee.

This had been happening for the last two months with me. May, June and now consistently running into its third, July. Every morning after opening my eyes, I felt a constant aching pain. Initially it was but obvious, the hurt after the accident. It stayed for the morning, disappeared by lunch. Sometimes when I got busy, I would totally forget about the pain. Later I would have to squeeze myself to find out if it still pained. By the time dusk appeared, it would find its way back to me. Definitely; without fail. Late in the night it would make me weep, curse myself. I would make promises to myself not to drag this any further and visit the doc the first thing in the morning.

Meanwhile, I changed six doctors. They would tell me nothing is the problem with me. They would ask me to engage my mind in other things. In anything I want to. But not think about the pain. Not worry about it the way I did. I failed in explaining to them, how on earth was I supposed to not think of it while it was the only thing irking the insides of my mind. Thinking wasn't as voluntary a process as they thought, I thought. They would tell me that I was just fine, I knew I wasn't. So I changed them. My table was cluttered with empty bottles of tonics, strips of tablets, prescriptions, my test reports. When I looked at them I felt sick. Very sick.

People I knew, started looking at me as someone who had been ill for years. Their concerns felt nosy sometimes, relieving some other times, indifferent the rest of the time. But they always felt obvious, like I was meant to be asked about my illness. Everyone knew. Many asked me what the hell the problem was. And wanted me to get a serious doc. Suggestions too came pouring in. Those helped me switching doctors.

I called my doctors up, they would stop taking my calls. They wouldn't return them even in the rarest of chances. When this happened, I got scared. Scared because, I had a disease, they didn't have a cure for. I would die.I was terminal. And they were avoiding me. So I called on her, and stared at her, at her hair fly in the windy sunny morning. Waiting to ask her if I would live.