Incense and Sensibility (The Rajes #3) - Sonali Dev Page 0,3

to let go. We have to get him off you and get you looked at. The paramedics are almost here.” The man was another guard from the security company. Yash couldn’t remember his name.

“Don’t touch him.” Finally, Yash’s voice reached his own ears, loud and forceful. He should have felt relief. He needed to feel something. “Where’s the ambulance? Do you know what the golden hour is? If we don’t get him to a hospital right now, his chances of survival will fall by seventy percent. Do you realize what seventy percent is? Where’s Rico? Rico!” He looked past the guard who was crowding him.

A crush of bodies moved in a wave toward the back of the stadium, leaving overturned chairs in their wake. Twenty thousand. Twenty thousand young people with their lives ahead of them. At the mercy of a shooter. Because of him.

Where was Rico? Had he made it off the stage when the shots went off? Yash’s hands trembled on Abdul’s wound. What if Rico was bleeding somewhere too? Rico wasn’t just a friend, wasn’t just Yash’s media wiz. He was dating Yash’s sister. Technically Ashna was his cousin but Yash only ever thought of her as his sister. Rico was family. Ashna was happy. It had been years since Yash had seen her happy. Just this morning Yash had teased Rico about his intentions toward his sister.

I intend to let Ash use my body for her shagging pleasure for the rest of my life, mate.

Had Ashna been at the rally? Why couldn’t he remember who else was here?

He turned to the guard. “I need you to find Rico Silva for me. Right now.”

“I’m here, mate.” Rico’s face came up behind the guard whose name Yash couldn’t remember.

Yash never forgot names. Ever.

He was also never this cold. Rico was alive and Yash could feel absolutely nothing. I should be feeling something. Something!

“Abdul needs to be in an ambulance,” Yash said as Rico squatted next to him.

He looked unhurt. The only sign that this wasn’t just another day at just another rally was that the giant YASH RAJE FOR GOVERNOR button on Rico’s jacket had come askew and was hanging lopsided.

“You need to let Abdul go,” Rico said, face tight with so many emotions that the emptiness inside Yash doubled down. “The ambulance is here. They need to look at you.” Rico looked over his shoulder as paramedics rushed at them with gurneys.

“This way,” Yash shouted, but they were already tugging his hands off Abdul and lifting him off Yash to a stretcher.

A paramedic helped Yash up and onto a gurney. “You need to let us look at you.” He tried to get Yash to lay down but Yash wouldn’t let him.

“I’m fine. He was hit.” Yash didn’t recognize his own voice, but something about his tone was familiar. “Why did it take you so long to get here?” Just like that Yash knew why it sounded familiar. He sounded exactly like his father. Yash had spent his life trying not to sound like his father.

He tried to soften it, tried to sound more like himself. “He’s within the golden hour. That means he’s going to be okay, right?”

The paramedic gave Rico a look and Rico pushed Yash back with a “Please, Yash.”

Yash resisted but suddenly pain shot through his arm making him lightheaded and he lay back.

He didn’t want to be on a gurney. The last time he’d been on one he’d ended up in a wheelchair for a year. His blood-soaked clothes, the pain throbbing in his body, all these paramedics. The numbness in his legs. He wasn’t fifteen, this wasn’t that day. He didn’t even have real memories from that day. Just these splashes of sensation.

It took some effort to stop himself from searching his surroundings for his bike. The one that had become as twisted and mangled as his broken spine.

“They’re taking care of him.” Rico pressed a hand into Yash’s chest to keep him on the gurney.

Before Yash could respond a woman screamed his name and ran at him.

Yash knew the woman.

He couldn’t for the life of him remember her name.

“Yash, honey. Oh no.” She was sobbing. Mascara ran down her face. She looked like she’d lost someone she loved.

That’s how I should look. That’s how I should be feeling. But nothing. He felt nothing.

“Naina, he’s going to be okay,” Rico said.

Naina. Of course.

Naina and Yash. Spoken for. The words made him laugh. They made him think of his parents. How would Ma