Grandmother, Who, Me?

Grandmother, Who, Me?

Chapter 33: The Hospital Light

Shreya’s POV

I did not remember much.

There had been rain, pain, the sound of my own voice screaming a name that no longer answered, and then a long stretch of nothing. When my eyes finally opened, the light was white and clean. The air smelled of antiseptic and something faintly sweet. I was in a hospital bed. To my left, in a small clear bassinet, a tiny wrapped bundle slept with one fist curled near her mouth.

My daughter.

I reached out carefully and drew her against my chest. Her warmth and the soft, milky scent of her settled something frantic that had been running inside me for months. I held her and cried without sound for a long time.

A nurse came in, checked the monitors, and smiled when she saw I was awake.

“You gave us a scare,” she said gently. “But everything is fine. Healthy baby girl. You should thank your mother-in-law. She delivered the baby at home during the flood when no ambulance could get through. If she hadn’t known what to do…” The nurse shook her head. “Thank God for her.”

I stared at the ceiling and felt the words settle like stones.

Later the door opened again and Lakshmi Attai walked in.

She still wore a simple cotton saree, the thali resting in its usual place, her hair neatly braided. There were dark circles under her eyes and a tiredness in the way she carried the heavy breasts and wide hips, but her hands were steady when she came to the side of the bed. The doctor who had followed her in asked the routine question.

“Relation to the patient?”

Lakshmi’s mature voice answered without hesitation.

“Grandmother of the baby.”

The doctor nodded and left us alone.

For a moment neither of us spoke. Then I reached out with the arm that was not holding the child. Lakshmi leaned down, and I pulled her into an awkward, fierce hug. The soft weight of her body, the familiar scent of rose and skin and faint sweat, the solid reality of the person who had once been my husband and was now the woman who had brought my daughter into the world, all of it crashed over me at once.

“You were right,” I whispered against her shoulder. “We needed a mother-in-law.”

She did not answer. She only held me a little tighter.

Rajan came soon after, quiet and respectful, standing at the foot of the bed like a proper father-in-law. The false Satish arrived as well, carrying a small bouquet of jasmines, calling me by name in that perfect copied voice and leaning down to look at the baby with soft eyes. The four of us filled the small hospital room. Nurses smiled at the complete family picture. For a few hours it felt exactly like the thing I had once ached for in a different hospital waiting hall ,whole, protected, ordinary.

But underneath the warmth a colder clarity had begun to form.

I knew it had to end.

No matter what comfort I had taken from the structure, no matter how real the photographs looked or how naturally Lakshmi now moved as my mother-in-law, the man I loved was still trapped inside that body. I had kept him there for my own longing. The baby in my arms made the cost suddenly visible in a way it had never been before.

When the others stepped out to speak with the doctor, I looked at Lakshmi and spoke the name I had not used in months.

“Thank you, Satish.”

Her eyes widened. Something raw and complicated passed across her soft face. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Before either of us could say more, the others returned.

We were discharged the next afternoon. At home, with the baby asleep in the new crib, I asked Rajan to take a photograph. The four of us arranged ourselves the way we had before, mother-in-law, father-in-law, son, and new mother. The shutter clicked. Another perfect family image.

Later, when the house was quiet and the baby had been fed, I sat on the edge of our bed with the child in my arms and looked at the closed door of the guest room where Lakshmi and Rajan now slept.

I wanted my husband back.

Not the mother-in-law who had saved my life and delivered my daughter.

Not the soft-voiced woman who wore the thali and cooked and prayed.

I wanted Satish.

The real one.

And for the first time since the entire chain of choices began, I was ready to undo what I had done.