The Discarded.

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She had been watching her own funeral again.

There was comfort in floating—no weight, no edges, no skin to hold her in place. From above, she looked down at what had carried her for thirty-three years. It lay still on the bed, like an abandoned shirt, folded badly, no longer needed. Bone, skin, memory. She felt no grief for it. Only distance. It was time to move on, she thought. Or perhaps, time had already moved.

The room around the body was neat and unexpectedly ordinary. Large enough to breathe in. Green-painted windows stood open to the outside, where hibiscus flowers leaned into the light, red and unapologetic. Khus blinds were rolled halfway up, their faint scent lingering. The bed was neatly made—white sheets, a rubber sheet beneath—prepared for mess, prepared for return.

“She is coming to awareness,” a voice said nearby.

The floating stopped.

Radhika felt herself settle, heavy all at once. Her heels touched the mattress. Her hands lay stiff at her sides. Her head pressed into the pillow. A needle tugged faintly at her wrist. The body she had just left closed around her again, firm and insistent.

“Radhika… sakshi,” the voice said gently. “How are you feeling?”

She almost laughed. What could she say? That she felt like she had been run over by a truck? That she had been nowhere and everywhere moments ago?

The ceiling fan whirred above her, loud and relentless. A voice beside the bed kept talking, words blurring into sound. Then another sound rose through it all—thin, urgent, unmistakable. Crying.

Not hers.

The realization came slowly. The crying was close. Too close.

As the nurse leaned in and removed the drip, the sharp smell of disinfectant softened under rose essence. The air shifted. The nurse’s hands were steady, practiced. Nurse Waheeda lifted something small and warm and placed it carefully into Radhika’s arms.

“Patient has come back to awareness,” she announced.

The crying stopped.

The weight against Radhika’s chest felt exact, undeniable. A life fitted to her without effort, without instruction. The room did not disappear, but it faded to the edges. This—this small breathing body—was complete in itself. She held him instinctively, rocking once, then again.

Her eyes remained open. Light moved across the wall. Shadows passed. Sounds came and went. The body no longer felt like a prison. It was a container—firm, reliable, finally hers to inhabit. The hospital smells lingered, mixed now with something softer, almost like incense. Nothing competed. Everything simply existed.

She called the child Gaurāṅg.

Rādhikā Rānī smiled, the name settling into her like truth. For a long time, she had believed her journey was about healing—repairing, fixing, escaping pain. Only now did she understand. It had never been about leaving the body, or floating above it when things became unbearable.

It had been about staying.

The small life pressed against her chest did not ask her to explain, or to be certain, or to understand what she had seen beyond herself. It asked for nothing but presence.

And this time, she remained.