(Book 3) Hayden Mackay and The Shaatrumani Stone

7. Tyrell's Grudge

A chronic and an unrelenting headache grounded into Tyrell's temples. He knitted his brows, finding his eyelids heavy. It was as if shards of glass pieces were poking back his eyeballs. He lifted his hand up, finding some strength to his weakened muscles, and gently caressed his temple trying to get a relief from the piercing pain.

Slowly his senses started sending reports to his brain. He recalled how his body jarred with each blow, giving him the pain of a lifetime. It was as if someone was reaching from inside and pulling his gut out of his throat. He winced, only the thought of that sort of pain was sending him shivers.

But this intense feeling and suffering wasn't new to him. From the past two months he was experiencing the same amount headaches, a crushing pain on his sides of his head that came and went in a pattern and that pain spreading down throughout his body. He didn't know how, he didn't know why, but this suffering was turning into a necessity just like he was required to breathe to barely live. As much as he wanted to scream and tell his friends about this, he wasn't able to. It was as if an invisible force was constraining him to speak anything about it.

He was suffering, yet his friends weren't able to understand his misery. Hayden was still new, he couldn't complain. But Pruthvi and Leena who have been living with him for years, the two who knew and understood him very well weren't able to see him suffer. They said he was behaving unnaturally, that he wasn't being himself. Why aren't they able to see that it wasn't his fault? Why are they blaming him for everything that was happening with him?

And then there was someone who seemed to have completely forgotten about him- Celina Hanslay, the one person, deep down his heart knew that he loved her since the day he had met her. Her boldness, her feistiness and her love for petty things in nature was something that has attracted him towards her. Living under the same roof for years did not bring them together but her departure to run her family business did. At first he believed Leena when she told him that this change was because he was missing her, but now, this intense suffering, this was certainly foreign. The feeling of transforming into something else, the feeling of sometimes forgetting his own identity- it was dark, disastrous and filled with negative force which he and his friends weren't able to acknowledge.

Steeling his heart, he put all his might to open his eyes, inhaling deeply. For a while he squinted around the canopy of his room till he felt a quick vigour, subduing the heaviness in his heart and finally relaxing his muscles.

"Tyrell?"

He swallowed a bile on hearing and quickly recognizing the voice. He slowly turned his head towards the direction the voice came from, watching the one person who he wasn't ready to see, not at least in the situation he was forced to be right now. It was Doctor, watching down at him with his concerned eyes. Tyrell sighed and slowly lifted himself up in the seated position, sinking his legs down the bed. His eyes automatically sought for his cap that was resting on the table beside his bed. Reacting on that impulse was something he took as a proof that he was being himself right now.

"I hope you are feeling alright," Doctor said, his voice calm as usual.

Tyrell numbly nodded, having his head down. He wasn't able to look into the elder man's eyes. There was too much sympathy in them which he thought he didn't deserve to have.

"Good," said Doctor, "Then we need to talk."

Tyrell knew what it was going to be about. It was embarrassing to talk about it and so he replied immediately.

"Nothing is going on with me. I am absolutely fine."

He was absolutely not fine. But he hated to show that to the world. He has always been the most energetic person of the academy, now suddenly being called as a sick person was completely against his dignity.