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Niyati: The Girl Who Waited - 4

Chapter 4: Shattered Worlds

 

The morning was heavy with an unsettling stillness. The hospital corridors, once filled with hope and soft murmurs of reassurance, now felt suffocating, as if every wall carried the weight of grief. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic, but to Niyati it carried only dread, thick and unshakable. She walked with trembling steps, her ears straining for some words of comfort, some thread of hope — but instead, it came, sharp and merciless.

The doctor’s words echoed in Niyati’s ears, cutting through her like shards of glass:
"We did everything we could… but your brother… he didn’t make it."

Time seemed to stop. The sound of the world dulled, and everything blurred. Niyati’s world, once anchored in the love and laughter of her small family, collapsed around her. Aarav — her protector, her constant companion, her closest friend — was gone. The warmth, the teasing, the care he had always offered, all vanished in a single, cruel instant.

Her mind rebelled against it, refusing to accept. Aarav, who had always stood tall between her and every fear, could not simply be gone. Yet the doctor’s eyes held no room for denial, only the finality of truth.

Her father, already weakened by shock and grief, clutched his chest and collapsed to the floor. The words “heart attack” cut through the chaos as nurses rushed to help him. The beeping monitors, the hurried footsteps, the urgent calls for assistance filled the air, but to Niyati, it all seemed distant, like echoes from another world. She stood frozen, her heart splitting into pieces, unable to console him, unable to cry out loud. The man who had always been their steady pillar was now as fragile as she felt inside.

Her mother’s anguished cries tore through the room, raw and piercing, mingling with the alarm of machines and the urgent voices of hospital staff. Niyati could only stare blankly at the scene. She felt an unbearable emptiness settle in her chest — a hollow ache that no words could fill, no comfort could ease.

For a fleeting moment, she wanted to scream, to shatter the silence with her pain, to call out to someone who could understand the whirlwind inside her — the loss, the fear, the helplessness. But there was no one. No one could truly understand the depth of her loss.

Even Parth, who had come to comfort her, could only stand beside her silently, his hand resting gently on her shoulder. His touch spoke of support, of shared grief, yet no words passed between them. He could not reach the cavern of pain that had opened inside her.

That day, everything changed. The world she had known — filled with warmth, family laughter, and fleeting moments of happiness — shattered into fragments too sharp to touch. Niyati felt herself break silently, deeply inside, carrying the weight of her brother’s death and her father’s collapse. She felt alone in her pain, surrounded by people who loved her yet unable to reach the depths of her suffering.

The city outside went on as usual — Mumbai’s relentless energy, the honking of cars, the chatter of the streets — but for Niyati, time had stopped. She had stepped into a new reality: one of grief, responsibility, and a lonely strength that no one had prepared her for.

Sitting beside her father in the quiet hospital room later that evening, the machines humming softly around him, Niyati realized something terrifying yet undeniable — life could change in an instant, tearing away everything you thought was secure. And sometimes, the only choice left was to endure, even when your heart felt irreparably broken.

And in that suffocating silence, with tears she could no longer hold back, Niyati made a promise to herself. She would survive — not just for her shattered self, but for her grieving mother, for her fragile father, and above all, for the memory of the brother she had lost. Aarav’s laughter, his care, his love — they would live through her. The home that still needed her would not fall apart.

Niyati would endure. Niyati would fight. And even in her brokenness, she would carry their world forward.