Chapter 1: The Last Breath
# Chapter 1: The Last Breath
*Ishita's POV*
The hospital room smelled of antiseptic and something colder — the smell of an ending. Ishita lay on the narrow bed, her hand instinctively pressed against her stomach, though there was nothing there now. Nothing but emptiness where four months of a heartbeat had been.
She had told herself it was a mistake. A baby now, in the middle of everything falling apart, in the middle of a marriage she barely understood — it had felt like a mistake too heavy to carry. Vikas had told her so, again and again, until she believed it was her own thought.
"Ishita?" Vikas's voice came first, low and syrupy, the voice she used to trust. He was sitting beside her bed, and beside him stood Tanvi — her best friend since college, the one person Ishita thought would never leave her side.
Ishita's eyes fluttered open fully. Her body felt hollowed out, weightless in the worst way. "Vikas... it's done?" she whispered, her voice cracking. "The baby..."
Vikas leaned back in his chair, and something in his face shifted — the softness she knew dissolving into something sharp and mocking. "Tum bahut bewakoof ho, Ishita."
*("You are very foolish, Ishita.")*
She blinked at him, not understanding. "Kya... kya bol rahe ho tum?"
*("What... what are you saying?")*
He laughed, a short, ugly sound. "Yaad hai woh raat? Jab tumhe kisi ne kuch pilaya tha, aur tumhe hosh nahi tha?" He leaned closer. "Woh main tha. Maine tumhe drug diya tha us din."
*("Remember that night? When someone gave you something to drink, and you lost consciousness? That was me. I drugged you that day.")*
The words did not make sense at first. They floated somewhere above her, refusing to land. "Nahi... nahi, mera pati... woh mujhe bachane aaya tha—"
*("No... no, my husband... he came to save me—")*
"Haan," Tanvi's voice cut in now, sweet and venomous. "Aur maine hi tumhe yakeen dilaya ki tumhare pati ne hi sab kuch kiya tha. Maine hi galatfehmi ka beej bo diya."
*("Yes. And it was I who made you believe your husband had done everything. I planted the seed of misunderstanding.")*
Ishita's lips trembled. Every night she had spent hating the man she married, every accusation she had screamed at him, every door she had slammed — all of it built on a lie Tanvi had fed her, spoon by spoon, smiling the entire time.
"Nahi... yeh sach nahi ho sakta—" Ishita tried to sit up, tried to reach for something solid in a world that was crumbling beneath her.
*("No... this cannot be true—")*
Vikas shoved her back down, his hand rough against her shoulder. The slap came a second later, sharp and sudden, snapping her head to the side. Tears spilled instantly, hot and endless, dripping onto the hospital sheet.
"Kyun?" she sobbed, barely able to form the word. "Aakhir kyun, Vikas?"
*("Why? Why, Vikas?")*
He crouched beside the bed so his face was level with hers, and there was no trace left of the man she thought she loved. "Kyunki mujhe tumhare pati ki daulat chahiye thi. Aur tum... tum sirf ek zariya thi."
*("Because I wanted your husband's wealth. And you... you were just a means to an end.")*
Ishita's chest heaved with silent, broken sobs. She could taste salt and something metallic now, a strange bitterness spreading on her tongue.
"Aur haan," Vikas added, almost casually, straightening up, "maine tumhe zeher bhi diya hai. Tum bachogi nahi."
*("And yes — I've also given you poison. You won't survive.")*
For a moment the room was silent except for her ragged breathing. Then Tanvi laughed — a light, delighted sound, as if she'd just heard good news. "Bechari Ishita," she said, shaking her head with mock pity. "Itni bhooli thi tu."
*("Poor Ishita. You were so naive.")*
Vikas pulled Tanvi close then, right there in front of Ishita's dying eyes. "Tanvi meri premika hai," he said, almost proud. "Shuru se thi."
*("Tanvi is my lover. She has been from the beginning.")*
And then he kissed her — slow, deliberate, cruel — while Ishita's vision blurred and her heartbeat stumbled inside her chest.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to claw her way off that bed and demand the truth be undone. But her limbs had turned to stone, and her throat only let out a whisper. "Mera... mera pati..."
*("My... my husband...")*
Neither of them heard her. Or perhaps they simply didn't care. Still tangled in each other, still laughing under their breath, Vikas and Tanvi turned and walked out of the room, the door clicking shut behind them like the final period on a sentence.
Alone now, Ishita felt the poison working faster, a cold fire crawling up from her stomach into her chest. Blood rose in her throat, and when she coughed, it splattered dark red against her trembling fingers.
Her mind, in those last fading seconds, did not go to Vikas. It did not go to Tanvi's laughter, or the slap still burning on her cheek. It went to a face she had pushed away for months — quiet eyes that had never once lied to her, hands that had reached for her even when she screamed at him to stay away. Her husband.
*Maine tumhe kabhi samjha hi nahi,* she thought, the words dissolving even as she thought them. *Aur humare bachche ko... maine khud apne haathon se...*
*("I never understood you. And our child... I killed with my own hands...")*
The monitor beside her bed let out a long, flat tone.
Ishita's eyes closed for the last time, tears still wet on her lashes, one hand curled weakly over the empty space where her baby had been.
The room went silent.
Somewhere beyond that silence, a second chance was already beginning to stir — though Ishita did not know it yet.
