The hospital room was quiet — too quiet for Viom Chaddha.

Piya lay in the narrow bed, her hand bandaged and elevated, her breath slow, chest rising and falling with the rhythm of sleep. The soft monitor beeped steadily, a comforting lullaby he knew too well.

She looked peaceful now. Almost... small.

Not like the firebrand chef the world saw. Not like the woman who had walked out of his life with unspoken fury in her eyes.

But here, beneath the cold hospital lights, she was just Piya.

And his chest ached with a longing he hadn't allowed himself to feel in years.

Viom sat beside her, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He studied her — not clinically, not like a doctor.

Like a man remembering.

Regretting.

Wanting.

Just as he began to let himself believe that this reunion might mean something — a crack in the universe, a second chance, a thread of fate pulling them back together —

Piya screamed.

It was sudden. Raw. Terrifying.

She jolted in her sleep — eyes shut, body frozen.

Her mouth opened in a voiceless cry, but her limbs didn't move.

"Piya—!" Viom was on his feet instantly, grabbing her shoulders gently. "Piya, wake up. It's okay. It's me."

Her face twisted in agony. Her body trembled, trapped in the space between a dream and reality.

"HELP!" she cried out, her voice finally breaking through — hoarse, full of panic. "No! No! Don't touch me!"

Her eyes snapped open — glassy, wild, confused — staring straight at him but not seeing him.

Viom froze.

"Piya... it's me. You're safe," he said, his voice tight, calm, the way he spoke to trauma patients on the edge of breakdown. "You're in the hospital. You're okay."

Tears spilled down her temples as her chest heaved.

Her fingers clawed at the sheets, still trembling.

The nurse rushed in. "Is she seizing?"

"No," Viom said quickly. "Night terror. Possibly sleep paralysis. Get 2mg of midazolam ready — just in case."

But even as he said it, he couldn't take his eyes off her.

What had she seen?

What was she remembering?

And why... did it look like she was fighting off something no one had ever asked her about?

"Stay with me, Piya," he whispered, brushing a stray hair from her damp forehead. "Whatever it is... you're not alone this time."

Her lashes fluttered.

And for the briefest second, she reached out — her bandaged hand curling ever so slightly toward his.

The sedative had calmed her.

Her breathing slowed, her hands stopped shaking, but the room still pulsed with a kind of invisible aftermath — as if something unspoken had been ripped open in the walls.

Viom stood near the foot of the bed, arms crossed, jaw clenched.

He had seen hundreds of trauma responses.

But not hers.

Not like this.

The nurse returned quietly, adjusted the IV drip, and left without a word, respecting the silence between doctor and patient — between man and woman with history too tangled to name.

Piya stirred, a groggy whisper escaping her lips. "Still here?"

He moved closer, his voice gentle but steady. "Didn't plan on going anywhere."

She blinked up at the ceiling for a moment, like she was trying to wake from something far deeper than sleep. "Did I... scream?"

Viom hesitated. "Yeah."

A pause.

"I scared you."

"Yes." His voice didn't waver. "You did."

Piya's eyes flicked toward him then — sharp, aware, embarrassed. She tried to sit up, but her body was still too heavy from the medication.

"Don't," he said softly, reaching to support her back. "You're okay. It's over."

"No, it's not," she muttered. "It's never over."

Viom looked at her. "What happened to you, Piya?"

She let out a low laugh — bitter, tired, hollow. "Nothing happened. I just had a bad dream."

"Piya," he said her name with quiet weight. "That wasn't a dream. That was trauma."

She looked away. Her lips pressed into a thin line.

"You're not the only one who changed, Viom," she said finally, her voice cracking just enough to expose the hurt behind the walls. "I learned to cook pain into silence. Learned how to smile when it burned. I learned how to survive."

He swallowed, heart sinking.

"Who hurt you?" he asked — not as a doctor. As the boy who once promised to protect her. As the man still willing to.

Her silence told him everything and nothing.

Piya leaned her head back against the pillow. "Please don't ask me that right now. I don't want to feel anything anymore today."

Viom nodded, even though every part of him wanted to scream. To demand answers. To find whoever it was and tear them apart.

But instead, he sat back down beside her. Quiet. Unmoving.

Just... there.

And in the stillness, with only the soft beeping of machines and the whisper of midnight in the air, she reached out — not to speak, not to explain — just to rest her hand lightly over his.

A silent plea.

A beginning of trust.

A thread tying them to something that hadn't died — only disappeared.

The room was quiet again.

Piya had fallen into a sedated sleep, her fingers now loosely curled near her chest — a stark contrast to the earlier panic etched in her body.

But Viom Chaddha couldn't sit still.

He stood at the glass window of her hospital room, fists in the pockets of his coat, his heart pacing far faster than his calm face allowed. Something in her scream had shaken him — not just the sound, but the truth in it. The kind of fear that didn't come from knives or blood.

It came from memory.

From something buried.

And he was done waiting for answers that would never come willingly.

⸻

An Hour Later – His Apartment, 2:17 A.M.

He pulled out his old phone — not the one the hospital had given him, but his personal one, still filled with fragments of a life before the silence.

He found the contact.

"Ma 👑"

He hesitated for a second, then hit call.

It rang once. Twice.

"Viom?" came the warm, groggy voice of Dr. Radhika Chaddha, retired police surgeon, social worker, and woman whose intuition had been sharp enough to raise him into the man he was.

"I need your help," he said quietly.

She was fully alert in seconds. "What is it? Are you hurt?"

"No. It's... it's Piya."

A pause. "Piya Kaur?"

"Yes."

He heard the rustle of sheets, her tone hardening just slightly. "Didn't she vanish after school? What's happened?"

"She came into my ER today. Kitchen accident. But that's not what this is about. She had a full-blown trauma response in her sleep, Ma. She screamed for help like someone was hurting her — like it was happening all over again."

"Has she told you anything?"

"She won't," Viom said, pacing now. "But I can't ignore it. I felt it, Ma. It was real. That kind of fear doesn't just grow on its own."

Radhika was silent for a few seconds.

Then: "What are you asking me to do?"

He lowered his voice. "Fifteen years ago. I want to know if she or anyone in her family filed a case — assault, harassment, molestation, anything. Maybe even under someone else's name. Small town, rural Punjab. She never told me where they went when they left."

"Fifteen years is a long time, Viom. Records get buried. Names get changed."

"I know. But if anyone can find it, it's you."

Radhika sighed softly. "This isn't just about helping her, is it?"

"No," he admitted. "It's about the girl who once trusted me with her whole world. And now won't even look me in the eye when she screams."

His mother was quiet for a long moment. Then: "Send me every detail you have. I'll start with the NGO database — the ones who documented assault cases that never made it to court."

"Thank you, Ma."

"Don't thank me yet, Viom," she said. "If what you're looking for is real... you might find more than you're ready for."

He ended the call and stared at the blank screen in his hand.

A knot settled in his chest — one he hadn't felt since the day Piya Kaur disappeared without a word.

This time, he wouldn't let her disappear into silence again.

Not without a fight.