“It wasn’t your fault. You weren’t the one who shot him,” Ashna said.
“I’m aware,” Yash snapped. “But Rico was there with me. If he’d been standing closer. If he’d been hit, would you still think it wasn’t my fault?”
Her fingers twisted together. “Yes,” she said after a long pause. “I would still blame the person with the gun, not you. You’re a victim here too. There’s a hole in your shoulder too. And a rip in your arm.”
That, too, he was aware of. As if on cue, the wounds in his shoulder and arm gave a throb. Good thing the bullets had struck his left side. Since there was no more space for scars on his right side. The accident had already taken care of that. Automatically his hand went to his chest; the hospital gown covered his torso and shoulders, but he still pulled his blanket up to his neck.
Nisha picked up a bag from a sideboard. “Ma brought you your pajamas.” Obviously, Ma knew he’d need his clothes as soon as he woke up.
For a moment the discomfort of unspoken things, unspeakable things, silenced them all.
This wasn’t a time to wallow in old wounds. He turned to Trisha. She was his only hope. “I need to see Abdul. You know you can make it happen.”
Trisha looked at Nisha.
“Fine. I’ll talk to the family,” Nisha said. Then the three of them exchanged another one of their loaded looks.
“What now?” he said. “I’m fine. Just spit it out.”
“You haven’t asked about the polls.” Ashna was the one who spoke.
Right. The election. Another thing that felt several lifetimes away. He wondered if he should tell someone about the numbness. What would he say? I’m not feeling anything? I can barely remember the election.
His family would only argue that not feeling anything was a feeling in itself. Then they would freak the fuck out.
“Yash?” One of them prodded him. He wasn’t sure who. All of a sudden he couldn’t bring himself to focus. The fog in his brain had thickened to sludge.
They stood there, his wall of sisters, watching him so intently that he had to respond. He pushed through the sludge and racked his brains for what they wanted to hear and came up with, “What are the polls looking like?”
Last he remembered Joshua Cruz, his opponent, had been leading by a narrow margin. Cruz sold himself as the blue eyed and blue collared, father of four, “all-American” candidate. If Yash had a penny for every time the man used the term “middle class family values” Yash may never need to do another fundraiser again. Cruz had played in the NFL, so middle class was pushing it.
“What?” he asked when no one answered.
All three of them looked at him like they were going to explode.
Finally Trisha squealed, like a child who’d just received a long coveted present. “You’re leading in the polls! By ten points!”
What? “Leading Cruz?”
“That is who you’re running against. So, yes.” Nisha retrieved her cell phone and navigated to a video, bouncing on her heels. “The entire state is in an uproar over the shooting. Vigils everywhere. For you. For Abdul. For Naina.”
“For Naina?”
“Yes, she’s a damn hero!” Ashna said.
At the cost of repeating himself: What?
“The footage of Naina leaning over your gurney and sobbing as you bled all over her has hit the public hard. It’s everywhere. She’s Jackie Kennedy.”
“Except. She isn’t. I’m not dead in her lap.” Neither was he her husband or the father of her children. He was, in fact, no more than her friend. A partner in crime. Someone who had conspired with her to cheat their families so they didn’t have to deal with their pressuring tactics.
On the phone Nisha handed him, Naina was crying mascara-stained tears into Yash’s face. She looked devastated, and he looked quite near death. Were they more than friends? Had he forgotten more than just her name?
“The video has been playing on the news cycle nonstop,” Ashna said.
“Is Rico responsible for this?” His tone must have been harsh, because the wall of sisters turned their joint frowns on him.
“You got shot. What exactly is that question supposed to mean? Are you suggesting Rico made that happen?” Ashna, who was the least mean person on earth, snapped in a tone that sounded pretty darn mean. “You’re acting very strange,” she said more gently. “Are you feeling okay?”
Not at all. I feel like a block of ice encased in paper. “Of course I’m okay. I’m great. I can’t feel my shoulder. A man might be dying because of me and no one will let me see him. But I’m just peachy, thank you very much. You’re right, we should all be celebrating the polls!”
“Yash,” Nisha said with all the gravitas of someone who had dedicated her entire adult life to his career. “We are all heartbroken about Abdul, every one of us. We’re praying that he wakes up. He believed in you. He was obsessed with you winning this election, just like the rest of us. We will do everything we can to make sure he and his family are okay. But did you not hear us? With these numbers and the outcry so close to the election, only an act of God can stop you from winning in November. The election just became ours to lose. Everything you’ve worked for—we’ve worked for—it’s going to happen.”
TRISHA WHEELED YASH down the eerily quiet hospital corridor. Nisha and Rico had done a great job working with the hospital to keep the press out.
“Stop here,” he said to Trisha, when they got to the door of the private lounge where Abdul’s family was waiting for him, and stood. He didn’t need a wheelchair, but Trisha had refused to let him leave his room if he didn’t use one. God save us all from bossy sisters.
This one was looking at him as though he were breaking her heart. “I’m fine. I’m not going to do anything irresponsible. Don’t worry.”
“I know that. You’re Yash. Do you even know how to do something irresponsible?” She smiled at him kindly enough that he knew she was hurting for him. “I know how hard this is on you. But it’s not your fault. Abdul was doing his job.”
“His job was to keep people from getting too close and familiar. Taking a bullet was never in the job description.”
“Taking a bullet is always in the job description. You just wish it wasn’t.”
They had arrested the shooter. Your garden-variety white supremacist who didn’t want his state handed over to a foreigner. Yash should have been angry, but he was still having that little problem of not being able to feel anything. Plus, dealing with bigots was half his job. It was half the job of anyone not born white in this country. He could do it in his sleep.
The good news was that the man was going away for a very long time. The bad, but not surprising news was that for all the outrage and sympathy that had landed Yash at the top of the polls, there was no shortage of people on social media turning the bastard into a martyr and supporting his “cause” and wishing death upon “browns who conspire to steal America.”
“You have five minutes. Then you need to be back in your room,” Trisha said. “I’ll be back to get you.”
“Doesn’t a fancy surgeon have anything better to do than wheel patients around?”