“Wait what? What did you just say?” stuttered a shocked Dr. Nelson.

“Erm… You need to keep your voice down Dr. Nelson. Else you are going to wake up the entire flight.” Saying that Elina took out a bottle of water and gave it to Dr. Nelson because it looked like he needed it.

He immediately gulped the water, almost on the verge of chocking on it and then wiped his mouth with the cuffs of his shirt to get a hold of things.

“So it was her wedding that you were talking about? The wedding that you missed?” asked Dr. Nelson.

“Right,” Elina replied and then continued. 

“Actually she was quite young when she was adopted. In her family only her parents knew about it. Even her brother doesn’t know. They have a family friend with whom they are quite close…”

“Vikram?” questioned Dr. Nelson.

“Yeah! You know him too?” Elina was surprised to see how much Dr. Nelson knew about Alita.

“Vaguely”, replied Dr. Nelson.

“Erm… so the thing is, when Akira was adopted Vikram and his family knew about it, but they have never discussed it. I got to know about it when I saw that Akira’s blood group didn’t match her either parents. I was about to question her, but Vikram had stopped me from doing so. Later on he told me about it. But coming to the point, this still doesn’t explain how she looks like your wife.”

“Even Alita was adopted!” 

Dr. Nelson replied and took a deep breath.

“So you mean to say, they both have been adopted from the same source of parents?”

“I don’t know. Maybe!” and saying that he pinched the space between his eyebrows and closed his eyes tight. He didn’t want to speak or hear anything. He had enough of drama going on in his life already and this sudden new revelation was worsening it because now all that he could think about was her. She was clouding his mind, his thoughts and even his breaths.

Elina sat there silently for a second and then again blurted out,

“So does that mean you had been to her wedding? Is that from where you are returning?” 

Dr. Nelson looked at her with a bit of irritation but in the next second he realized that it was a best friend who had to miss the wedding of her best friend for a noble cause. So taking a deep breath and settling the knots inside his stomach he said,

“Yes. Coming straight from the wedding.”

“Do you have any pictures? I mean how did she look?” Elina asked and Dr. Nelson was just about to open his mouth to answer the question when he heard her say,

“I am pretty sure she looked fabulous. And have you seen Raymond? Doesn’t he look dashing? They make such a good pair!”

“Yes they do!” sighed Dr. Nelson.

While driving to the airport he had got a couple of messages, but he hadn’t bothered to check them. So he took out his mobile phone wanting to check those messages as he thought that t would give him an opportunity to think about something else other than Akira or Alita.

There were a couple of work messages and a few images sent by David.

And the moment he opened the images sent by David, he was torn. 

David had noticed that Dr. Nelson had left even though he was busy with the preparations. He knew what kind of man Dr. Nelson was. He knew that once he had decided to say goodbye to New York, he was never going to come back. So he had gathered a couple of images which he was in frame along with Akira and had sent them to him.

There was one image in particular in which the final sermon was happening and Akira was fondly looking at Dr. Nelson for a moment, and he was looking at her too. 

While he was scrolling through the images, it didn’t go unnoticed by Elina, how fondly she he was looking at her.

So she looked at Dr. Nelson for a moment and stayed silent because inside her head she was having extremely weird notions.

‘Was he in love with her friend?’

‘Was he just a consulting doctor? Just a friend?’

‘Was he disturbed because she got married to someone else?’

She badly wanted to speak to Akira and ask her all the questions but given the travelling nature of her job, she hardly got time to connect with her. She had heard about a doctor who was helping her and if her guess was right it was Dr. Nelson.

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t contain her curiosity and asked,

“Ermm… Don’t take me wrong but did you have… I mean because she looked like … I mean to say… Does she…”

Dr. Nelson took a deep breath of air and turning towards her, he asked,

“Do you want to know if I had feelings for her? Then yes I did. Maybe because she looked like my ex-wife, then yes, maybe I did. But if you think this has anything to do with her, then no. My feelings and my thoughts are entirely my own. Yes, she knows that she looks like my ex-wife. And she had these questions too but I could never tell her the truth. And if you might ask why am I telling you all this, then even I don’t know that answer for that. I don’t know why I am blabbering all these things in front of you. I have no idea what is going on with my thoughts and my heart. But this is how it is. Later on if you want to go ahead and expose me in front of your friend then be my guest. But I have severed all my ties with New York and that includes Akira too.”

“I want her happy. Trust me I do and that’s why I am running away. There, I think I have answered all your questions. Now if you may, then I would like to spend the rest few hours in peace without being questioned for any actions of mine.”

Elina was shaken for a second because those harsh words were coming from the mouth from one of the best behaved man that she knew.