The Doctor's One Night to Remember

It was extraordinary to find that after all these years he still sought his big brother’s approval. He still felt lacking when Daksh looked at him with anything other than love. And still Nikhil forced himself to continue.

‘I did. He was raging, and he had a knife. We wrestled and I managed to take it from him, I remember that. But then I felt suddenly angry, so angry, and he was still coming at me, and...then he wasn’t.’ Nikhil swallowed. ‘I looked down, and there was blood, so much blood, and then his body was slumping on top of mine and I knew.’

‘Christ, Nikhil...’ His immaculate brother raked his hand through his hair, looking dazed. As if the two of them had just gone ten rounds.

‘He was a monster, yes,’ Nikhil ground out. ‘But he didn’t deserve to die. Not by his own son’s hand.’

‘You didn’t kill him, Nik.’ The unexpected nickname fired a salvo of memories at him, bombarding his head and bursting in his chest. ‘Have you believed that all these years?’

‘I remember it,’ Nikhil managed harshly.

‘You remember it wrong.’

Daksh sounded so certain, so angry, that Nikhil hesitated. It was as though he was standing right on the edge of some black, bottomless precipice—he wanted to back away; he just didn’t know how to.

‘You weren’t there, Daksh.’ He shook his head.

‘But I read the police report.’

Snapping his head up, Nikhil could only stare at his brother.

‘Not that I would care if you had killed him. He deserved it. But did you never wonder why, if you had killed him, you’d never been arrested?’

Nikhil felt as though his brain was swimming through treacle.

‘I thought it was because I was fifteen, and there were no witnesses.’

‘No, Nik, it’s because you never did it. A neighbour heard the noise and they called the police. By the time they broke the door down, you were still in the position you’d been. Slumped on the floor with your back to the wall, and Dad on top of you.’

‘But the knife was in my hand. It was in him.’

‘The knife was there, in him, yes. But you didn’t go for him. He put that knife right through your shoulder, didn’t he? Pinning you to the wall? Your blood was on the knife, and the wall—it all fitted.’

‘Yes...’ Nikhil heard the voice but it took a moment to realise it was his own.

He’d never told anyone any of this—except for Isla—there was no way Daksh could have known it unless he had, indeed, read the report.

‘The blood mark from your shoulder travelled down the wall, where you’d slid. There was no break, which means your body never left the wall.’

‘No break?’

‘None,’ Daksh confirmed. ‘Which means that if you didn’t move off the wall, you couldn’t have lunged for him. He had to have been the one to come at you again. And you were in the process of collapsing to the floor, Nikhil, so the only possible explanation is that he came at you too hard, maybe he stumbled, but, either way, he impaled himself.’

‘No...?’ Nikhil choked out.

Could it really have been that simple? Had he been carrying around a guilt, all these years, which had never been his to bear?

‘Yes, Nikhil.’ Daksh gritted his teeth. ‘The angle of your hand, the force, it just wasn’t there. You didn’t do anything, little brother. I would say you were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘No.’ Nikhil shook his head again.

Was he really not the monster he’d believed himself to be? Had he sent Isla away from him, to protect her from him, for no good reason?

‘I killed my father,’ he repeated dully. ‘I’m a monster.’

He watched, almost in slow motion, as Daksh threw himself up from his seat and came to crouch in front of him, his hand grabbing the back of Nikhil’s head and pulling until they were forehead to forehead. The way they used to do as kids.

‘You’re no monster, little brother,’ he bit out hoarsely. ‘He was the monster. Always him. And me, for leaving you there to suffer at his hands.’