RAHIM – Twenty Months After

The blood on the supermarket floor changed something inside me.

Not with shouting or tears. It changed me the way concrete sets — slow, heavy, and permanent.

I carried Sana out of New Market like she was made of the fragile glass I install in skyscrapers. Her salwar was dark and wet against my shirt, her face buried deep in my neck so no one would see her cry. The evening crowd parted around us — curious eyes, whispered words, the sharp smell of spices and drain water mixing with the metallic scent of blood. I didn't say a single word the entire drive home. My knuckles stayed bone-white on the steering wheel. If I loosened my grip even a little, I was terrified I would start screaming and never stop.

That was the second loss.

Now, twenty months after the accident, the third one had already happened without us even trying.

It just arrived.

Sana found out in the bathroom mirror while I was at a site meeting in Bashundhara. She didn't tell me until the bleeding had already stopped. She called me with a voice so flat it sounded like she was reporting a leaking pipe.

"It's done," she said. "You can come home now."

When I reached the apartment, her parents were already there. The living room smelled of the rosewater they had sprinkled for comfort and the faint agarbatti my mother-in-law always carried. The ceiling fan turned slowly, fighting the sticky humidity that made everything feel heavier.

I stood silently at the bedroom door, unseen, watching everything unfold.

Sana sat on the edge of the bed, looking small and fragile in her pale yellow nightie. Her mother was beside her, gently holding her hand, stroking her hair with the patient love only a mother can give. Her father stood near the window, looking older and wearier than I had ever seen him, his white panjabi wrinkled from the hurried journey across Dhaka.

Sana's voice was quiet, but every word carried twenty months of suppressed pain.

"I lost another one, Ma," she whispered, her voice cracking like dry earth. "I couldn't hold on to this one either. I feel like... I'm failing Rahim. He deserves a child. He deserves a wife who can give him the family he has always wanted. I keep trying, but my body... it just keeps failing us."

Her mother's eyes filled with tears. She pulled Sana into her arms and rocked her gently, the way she must have done when Sana was a little girl. "Sana, beta... you are not failing anyone. These things are beyond our control. Allah has His own plan for us. You have already suffered so much. Look at your scars, beta. How much more can one body take?"

Her father spoke softly from the window, his voice measured and educated, yet heavy with emotion. "We are worried about you, Sana. Not just physically, but emotionally. You have been carrying this grief alone for too long. If staying here is becoming too painful... you know you always have a home with us. We will take care of you. Your brother has already cleared the guest room. No one will pressure you there."

Sana shook her head, still in her mother's arms, her shoulders trembling. "I can't leave him, Baba. I love him. But every time I see the quiet disappointment in his eyes... even when he tries so hard to hide it... it breaks me. I feel like I'm slowly becoming a burden in his life. He is a good man. He deserves better than this broken wife who cannot even give him one living child."

I stood frozen at the door, unable to move, unable to breathe. Hearing her say those words — that she felt like she was failing me — was worse than any physical pain I had ever felt. My chest tightened painfully, as if someone had poured wet cement over my heart.

Her mother noticed me standing there. She gave me a small, sad nod, but didn't say anything. I quietly stepped back into the hallway, my back against the cool wall, eyes closed, trying to swallow the lump in my throat.

That night, the apartment felt colder than ever, even with the humid Dhaka air pressing in from outside.

Sana lay on her side in our bed, facing the wall. I lay beside her for the first time in weeks. I didn't touch her scars. I didn't try to hold her. I just stared at the ceiling fan turning lazy circles above us — the same way it had turned on the night of the accident.

Two hundred and ten days had become six hundred and ten days.

Three pregnancies.

Three losses.

And still my architect's brain kept calculating the same impossible equation: how many more tries before the entire structure of our marriage collapsed completely? How many more cracks could we patch before the foundation gave way?

Sana's breathing eventually slowed into sleep. I turned my head and watched her in the darkness — the woman I had promised to protect in front of Allah and our families, the woman whose body had become a living map of everything we had lost. The lightning scars I had kissed so many times now looked like warnings.

I pressed my palm to my own stomach the way I had seen her do a thousand times and felt nothing but the steady, useless beat of my own heart.

Tomorrow we would go to the specialist again.

Tomorrow the doctor would probably tell us what we already knew in our bones.

And after that... I didn't know what came after that.

I only knew I could not watch Sana carry this pain alone while the empty nursery door kept mocking us both from down the hall.

But deep down, in the quietest part of me, Ammu's words from last week kept echoing louder than the ceiling fan:

"Beta... time is running out. A man needs a child to carry the family name. There is a girl... quiet, respectful... she would never be a threat..."

I closed my eyes and prayed for strength I wasn't sure I still had.

Author's Note This chapter was really heavy... Sana finally broke down in front of her parents, and Rahim overheard everything 😭💔

Tell me in the comments:

How are you feeling about Sana after this breakdown?Do you think Rahim will finally understand the depth of her pain?Is this marriage slowly dying, or is there still hope?

Vote if this chapter hit you emotionally ❤️ 

Comment your thoughts — I read every single one. Next chapter tomorrow at 8:30 PM BDT.

Thank you for staying with this painful journey 🖤