Chapter 5: Tanvi

The food poisoning happened on a Saturday.

Not technically poisoning — cross-contamination, which sounded clinical and minor and completely failed to capture the experience of spending fourteen hours in a bathroom while your intestines staged a full-scale revolt against a microscopic amount of wheat protein that had somehow infiltrated your supposedly gluten-free dinner. Cross-contamination. The word of a bureaucracy. The reality was: war.

Mohit had ordered from Prakash Kitchen. Prakash Kitchen on Mall Road, the restaurant that knew me, that had my dietary requirements laminated behind the counter, that had a separate preparation area for my orders because the owner, Prakash bhai, had a daughter with celiac and understood. I ordered from Prakash Kitchen every week. The same thing: gluten-free roti with dal makhani made without cream, using coconut milk. Every time: safe. Every time: the one restaurant in Kasauli where I could eat without the: calculation.

But I hadn't ordered. Mohit had. Online. Through the app. He'd typed my special instructions — I'd watched him type them, every word, the way you watch a surgeon handling a scalpel near your: face. The instructions were clear. The delivery driver had confirmed. The receipt showed: GF, DF, separate prep.

Something had: failed. Somewhere between the app and the kitchen and the delivery and my plate, a grain of wheat or a drop of cream had crossed the: line. And my body, which maintained a standing order to destroy all intruders with the enthusiasm of a border guard who had been: personally offended, had responded.

The first sign was at 10 PM. A cramp. Not the regular cramp — the regular cramp was a 3 on my personal scale, the scale that went from 1 (manageable, take a buscopan, carry on) to 10 (hospital, IV fluids, do not pass go). This was a 7 by 10:15. An 8 by 10:30. By 11, I was on the bathroom floor.

The bathroom floor was cold. Tile — the white tile of every Indian bathroom, the tile that was cool in summer and freezing in October, the tile that pressed against my cheek as I lay on my side, knees drawn up, waiting for the next wave. The waves came every fifteen minutes. Then every ten. Then every: five. The body emptying itself with the systematic efficiency of a machine performing: an emergency evacuation.

Mohit knocked at midnight.

"Tanvi."

"Go away."

"I'm not going away."

"I don't want you to see me like this."

"I've seen you like this before. Class 10. The school picnic. The samosas had: wheat."

"That was — that was sixteen years ago."

"And I carried you to the bus. And I held your hair. And I told Mrs. Mehta that you had heatstroke because you didn't want anyone to know. I remember. Now open the: door."

I opened the door. Not because I wanted to — because my body, which had been operating on autopilot for two hours, had decided that stubbornness required energy I no longer: had. Mohit was in the doorway. Pyjamas. Hair uncombed. The expression on his face was not the expression I expected — not pity, not disgust, not the specific discomfort that men displayed when confronted with the reality of a woman's body doing something: unglamorous. His expression was: focused. The expression of a person who had: a plan.

"I've called Prakash bhai," he said. "He checked the kitchen. The regular cook was off tonight. The substitute didn't follow the protocol. He's — he's devastated. He says he'll—"

"I don't care about Prakash bhai right now."

"Right. Okay. What do you need?"

"Electrolytes. The ORS packets are in the kitchen, second drawer, left side. And the heating pad — the electric one, not the hot water bottle. Under my bed. And—" A wave hit. I turned to the toilet. Mohit did not leave. He stayed in the doorway, and when the wave passed, he was there with a wet cloth — cold, wrung out, the precise temperature for pressing against a forehead that was: burning.

"I did this," he said.

"You didn't cook the food."

"I ordered it. I should have called. You always call. You told me you always call. And I thought — I thought the app would be enough. The instructions were clear. I thought—"

"Mohit."

"I'm sorry."

"I know."

He brought the ORS. Mixed it — the ratio correct, because of course he knew the ratio, because he had known me for eighteen years and had been: paying attention. He brought the heating pad. Plugged it in. Placed it against my abdomen with the care of a person handling something: fragile. He brought a pillow from his room and a blanket and made a nest on the bathroom floor — because the bathroom was where I would be for the next several hours, and if I was going to be: here, I was going to be: comfortable.

"You don't have to stay," I said.

"I'm staying."

"It's not — this isn't pleasant. This is the: ugly part. The part that people don't see. The part that makes people—" I stopped. The sentence I almost said: the part that makes people leave. The part that had made my college boyfriend leave. The part that my flatmate had carefully never witnessed because I had timed my worst episodes to: coincide with her: absences. The ugly, humiliating, body-betraying part that I managed in: private, because privacy was the only dignity the: disease left.

"The part that makes people: what?" Mohit said.

"Nothing."

"Tanvi. I'm not going anywhere. You're on a bathroom floor. I put you here because I was: lazy with an app. The least I can do is sit on this floor with you until you can: stand."

He sat. On the cold tile. His back against the wall, his legs stretched out, his phone playing — not music, because music required energy to: process — but the specific white noise of rain on a tin roof, the sound from a sleep app that he'd once told me his therapist had recommended after Diya's death, the sound that meant: safe.

We sat on that bathroom floor until 4 AM. He refilled the ORS three times. He replaced the heating pad when it cooled. He told me, at 2 AM when I was shaking and crying from the pain — not the stomach pain, the joint pain, the inflammatory response that celiac triggered in my knees and wrists and fingers, the pain that felt like every joint was being: pried open — he told me the story of the Kasauli Wildcats' worst game, the one where the opposing team scored fourteen points in the first half and the crowd started leaving and Mohit, in the tiger costume, had done a cartwheel that went wrong and he'd landed in the: commentary box, and the commentator had screamed, and the crowd had come back because "the mascot might die," and from that moment the Wildcats had: rallied. Not because of skill. Because the crowd was back. Because: laughter.

The story was: stupid. It was: exactly what I needed.

By 4 AM, the waves had slowed. The shaking had stopped. The joints were: aching but stable. Mohit helped me to my bed — his arm around my waist, careful, the way you support a person who is: standing but barely, a person whose body has spent six hours: emptying and is now: hollow.

"Thank you," I said. The words I had never said to him. In eighteen years.

"You're welcome," he said. "And Tanvi? I will never order your food again. You call. Always. I will never: assume."

He closed the door. I heard him walk to his room. I heard the door: not close. Left open. So he could hear if I: needed.

I lay in the dark, the heating pad against my abdomen, the taste of ORS in my mouth — salt and sugar and the specific chemical tang of rehydration, the taste that meant: recovery. The taste that meant someone had: stayed.