"There's someone here to see you. They say they've come from Zaheer's office."

"Zahra, who is Zaheer?"

"Bhabhi, he's Aamir Bhai's really close friend and lawyer. Don't you remember him, we've seen him at so many parties!"

"Oh yeah," Mayra felt embarrassed at the reminder. "For a moment I had forgotten. But why do they want to see me?"

Zahra shrugged her shoulders, "no idea."

Perplexed, Mayra walked out of her room, down the stairs to the lobby, her footfall echoing in the silent house. Nobody was home yet but the men were expected back soon enough from the office. Her mother-in-law and her sister had gone shopping. Zahra was busy working on a college project.

Mayra had been sitting in the room wondering how life had changed since Aamir had come back, fully recovered. He had become less angry and more thoughtful. She could sense the change in him, it was palpable even when he was silent. The rage that had emanated from his body at a continuous pace had quieted down.

He didn't scream anymore, didn't insult. He never raised his hand to her anymore.

A huge part of her wanted to rejoice. The liberation she sought from her monster seemed to have been delivered - a cause of quiet celebration. Yet her mind could never stop replaying the horrors of the night when Aamir had unleashed his worst to her.

His unpredictability was terror itself.

She couldn't and wouldn't allow herself to dream of a life of peace. At least not until Aamir was bound to her. The irony that she couldn't imagine a life without him! She was married to monster and disowned by her parents. Couldn't go back and couldn't move ahead.

She was stuck. In unholy matrimony. In hell.

She walked into the living room to find a man dressed in a black coat, telling her that she was faced with a lawyer. "My husband should be here soon," she said. "Please sit."

"I'm not here to see your husband. I'm here because of your husband. As the assistant of Aamir Hassan's legal representative, I'm here to serve you these papers."

Mayra looked at the sealed documents with fear. Her hands shook as she reached for them and the lawyer dumped them in her trembling palms.

She knew, instantly what they could be.

A small glimmer of hope in her heart tried to soothe her that it wouldn't be what she was dreading but when she unfolded the documents and the bold headline of the sickening word stared right back at her, her heart stopped.

He had done it.

Tearful eyes looked up from the papers at the legal representative, with shaking hands and quivering lips. "Why?"

The man looked at the woman, scornful at the painfully whispered word. "He doesn't want to continue with this sham of a marriage anymore, that's why. I am charged with delivering these papers to you and letting you know that by signing these, a quick and relatively quiet divorce is possible, or else court proceedings will take place and let me tell you, they will be very difficult."

Mayra collapsed onto the floor. "There's.. there's got to be a mistake! He.. he's changed now. He couldn't possibly want this. He.. he is being so nice to me now. He can't.. he can't do this.. "

The man laughed at the ridiculous attempt by the woman to sound so helpless. His boss's best friend needed a divorce and he'd be damned if he let this huge opportunity pass to impress the man for a promotion.

"Just because someone is being polite doesn't mean they can tolerate your presence any longer! He's just securing himself from you filing lawsuits for higher alimony on grounds of mental and physical cruelty! Women these days are too cunning and a man needs to be careful!"

"No," Mayra wailed, standing up to plead with the obnoxious stranger. "He was cruel, if I wanted to I could have filed a lawsuit ages ago. He can't do this now, not when I've done so much for him!"

"Listen, woman, all that is irrelevant! You've been served a divorce notice and that is it!"

The man turned around and walked away.

In that moment, Mayra could've sworn she knew what it felt like for a person to die. When the very air you breath stabs your lungs with the poison of an unwanted life, when each heartbeat sounds like the death knell a of convict whose time to hang had come, when each sight and sound was a mockery, and yet a harsh reminder that the faculties were fading and being rendered useless, didn't that mean that it was time up?

Mayra felt utterly and completely useless again, a feeling she had become accustomed to and yet it hit her again with full powerful force. Yet again her life was not her own to make decisions for. Someone was going to dictate them for her and she would have to blindly follow.

As always. As usual.

But this time it was so much more than that. This was the announcement of her end as a person.

Where would she go? How would she live? How would she survive? Without family or friends in a world full of enemies, Jaffar had already planned to have her killed once, he could easily do it again. Even if he didn't, how would she survive the slow pecking of this vulture-like life that bit away piece after piece of her in a struggle to live.

She started to walk out of the house as though it had dawned on her that the house didn't belong to her anymore, or rather there was no place for her there anymore. She walked without a care for where she was headed or what she would do, but her legs carried her forward and she kept walking on. The papers were clutched tightly in her hands as though they were papers of her identity, a call to the world of who she was and how unwanted she was. How big a failure she had been.

She walked and walked for what seemed like ages but then when a truck with a blazing horn came hurtling at her, its headlights glaring at her in the face, with ample time for her to move away, she looked at the truck and saw liberation.

She would be gone. There would be no need to deal with this divorce, or Aamir or her parents. The troubles would end and the peace would come. She didn't want to die, but living on a life like this was much much harder than dying itself.

So when she opened her eyes and met the gaze of the panicked truck driver head on, she knew her time had come.

Opening her eyes, Mayra revisited the history of the time that had brought her here in the first place. On the verge of certain death and on the brink of a miraculous survival. She had pulled through and in the months that followed her discharge from this very hospital, she had gone on to find love and respect and peace.

All that she had dreamt of was slowly coming together. It was blissful but it was scary.

When she looked at Faiza's pale, unconscious face the moment they arrived at the hospital, she felt sick to her stomach. This was not how this was supposed to be. With Aamir trying to end their history with Jaffar once and for all, Faiza shouldn't have to suffer this way.

They knew nothing about her at the moment. So high was her blood pressure that she was taken straight to the ICU and nobody was allowed to see her. Irfan was losing his mind over what would happen and how he would live if something happened to his child or his wife or both. He would die.

When Rafia asked him repeatedly what had happened that pushed Faiza to this, he could only tell her that she was muttering in her sleep that 'he' would destroy her life, 'he' would take everything away from her, and that she would lose everything to 'him'. Irfan raged thinking that she spoke of Aamir, but Mayra's heart clenched painfully for she knew who Faiza spoke of.

When Irfan had tried to wake her up from her nightmare, she clutched her head and screamed, "my head! My head!" And then fainted in his arms. Her blood pressure was so dangerously high that she wouldn't wake no matter how hard he tried to wake her up even as he drove as a formula one racer to the hospital.

He would kill Aamir for this. Truly he would.

The gynaecologist walked out of the ICU and Irfan ran upto her, the others following closely behind. He could barely form a word before she struck him down. "Your wife and child are extremely serious. She has progressed into Eclampsia, which is what we were afraid of since the beginning. There's no other treatment other than to end this pregnancy right now. We can't think of the baby right now, the only way to save your wife is an emergency Caesarian section."

Irfan felt the world collapse around him. He was going to lose his child. His unborn baby was going to die and there was nothing he could do about it.

"Will Faiza be ok?" Mayra asked, scared of the answer.

"I truly cannot say. Both mother and child are at very high risk. The baby is nearly 28 weeks old so there might be a chance that the baby will survive but its a very small chance. Very unlikely too. But if you want the mother to live then -"

"Go ahead," said Irfan, non-hesitant. "Go ahead and operate. My wife is more important."

He turned away from the doctor and his family, his heart and his soul tearing apart at the the thought of his baby dying, of him signing the death warrant for his own child. Why did it have to bethis way? He had loved his wife and his unborn baby with all his heart, had left no stone unturned to make sure she had all she needed for her health and that of their child. After everything, all the days and countless nights of whispering and hoping and dreaming together of cute little onesies and diapers and milk bottles, this was not what it should have come down to.

He sat down in one of the chairs in the hallway, determined not to break down, trying desperately not to cry but the moment he saw Aamir walk in, his resolve shattered. Tightening his hands into fists, he sprang to his feet and walked to him. Before Aamir could ask him what was happening a hard punch had landed in his face.

"I told you to stay away from her! I told you that you're risking her health! I told you! Happy now? My baby is going to die! Are you finally happy? Are you?"

With the second punch, Irfan had been restrained by the others in the family. Aamir remained quiet, receiving the blows he didn't deserve but taking them anyway because he still felt too guilty about his part that he played in hurting his loved ones. He wiped the trickle of blood that leaked from the corner of his mouth and turned away not wanting to cause any more drama.

Mayra ran to him and with worried eyes gazed at his bleeding face. There were bruises all over, as though Irfan hadn't been the only one to land punches there. She asked him, "what happened?"

Grabbing her hand he led her away from the crowd and a screaming Irfan towards the back staircase and sat down on one of the steps and sighed heavily. "Its been one hell of a day."

"Why? What happened?"

"Jaffar agreed but we had gotten into a fist fight. Zaheer had to put a stop to it. Finally this mess has been sorted, but then this happened," he sighed gesturing towards the ICU.

"The doctors say that Faiza can make it if they perform a Caesarian now," Mayra informed him sadly, "but they have no idea if the baby will make it. They aren't very hopeful about it."

Aamir's eyes glazed over with sadness, "how the hell did it come to this? I thought she was doing well!"

"She's been stressing too much about this entire issue. No matter how hard I tried to get her to relax, it was all she ever talked about. She's been so afraid of Irfan finding out."

"It won't happen anymore," Aamir guaranteed. "Jaffar is leaving the country forever. We've even managed to hack into his database and managed to delete whatever information he had on all of us. This mess is truly over."

"I can't believe it," Mayra whispered to him, sitting down beside him in disbelief. "This has been going on for so long, so many lives have been hurt by this, it's so hard to believe that its over."

Aamir wrapped an arm around her and pulled her into his side. "I just want to move on from this! I'm so tired of this nonsense! When will this end, Mayra? Am I that undeserving of finding peace in life? What more do I have to do? I'm just.. ugh!"

Mayra returned his hug. "It'll be ok. It will all get better soon. We must have faith and it takes time for things to get better. No matter how hard we wish for the negativity to end as soon as possible, it happens when it has to and we can only pray for it to get better."

Aamir kissed the top of her head and nodded. He knew he shouldn't be complaining, he had put her through much worse for far too long and that he had no right to be impatient now when his testing times had come. But he was human too, and when he was about to do good, start afresh, he just wanted to put all the misery and pain behind them.

In silence they sat, holding hands, seeking comfort in one another, and after very turbulent times, finally finding in each other what they were looking for.

Later they went back to the others to wait for any news. Aamir refused to get his wounds checked no matter how much Mayra begged him to. He wanted to hear that Faiza had been saved first but Irfan merely growled at that.

A couple of hours later, a pale Irfan, sobbing Rafia, and everbody else terrified beyond belief watched the gynaecologist come to them, still in her OT scrubs. Everyone scrambled to their feet and hurried towards her.

"Faiza is out of danger."

Irfan wiped the sweat off his brow and with fear ramming his heart asked the dreaded question, "the.. the baby?"

"Your baby girl is in the neonatal ICU. She has breathing difficulty but we think with time she should be able to pull through."

Irfan fell to the floor and buried his face in his hands and cried. The entire family crowded around him to hug him and celebrate but they could only shed tears of joy.

Aamir looked at Mayra and gave her a teary smile, "I can't believe it! Its finally over, sweetheart!"

Mayra wiped her tears, tears of love, tears of triumph, smiled back at him, and said, "yes. Yes, its finally over."

*****